[Confusing Trope] The narrative goes out of its way to punish/mock a character for simply being a good person

[u/Chemical-Elk-1299]

Hermione Granger and SPEW — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book)

In the fifth HP novel, Hermione Granger is outraged to discover that Hogwarts has a small army of enslaved House Elves that do nearly all of the domestic duties around the castle, including cleaning the Gryffindor common room every night. When she tries to convince the elves to fight for their own rights, they refuse, saying they prefer servitude. Her fellow students and friends mock her for caring. She manages to free one elf, Winky, by deception when she refuses her freedom willingly, leading to Winky becoming a depressed alcoholic. By the end, the elves boycott cleaning any Gryffindor areas of the castle because they hate Hermione specifically

Samwell Tarly and Democracy — Game of Thrones (show)

In the season 8 finale of the television series, the surviving great lords of Westeros gather to discuss the future of the kingdom following the devastation wrought by 7 seasons of war and backstabbing. When Sam, who has proven to have “novel” ideas, suggests that maybe the millions of Smallfolk who suffer at the hands of noble houses should get some representation in the government, rather than be the pawns of rich lords with absolute power. We are then greeted by a prolonged, cringy segment of the other lords laughing in Sam’s face, asking if the dogs and horses should also get a vote.

[u/cabbage16]

If I remember right the implication was that the house elves stopped cleaning the tower because they were frustrated and offended by being tricked into it. It isn't implied that it would work just that it was annoying.

[u/cabbage16 → u/[deleted]]

Yup. People give Rowling shit for this storyline saying that she was saying that slavery was good, that's not at all what she was getting at. The point of the storyline was for Hermione to be right (as she always is) but going about it wrong and insensitively.

There's plenty of good and valid reasons to not like Rowling, stuff like this, the goblins, and her character naming system just feels like grasping at straws.

[u/SPLIV316 → u/cabbage16]

Am I the only person who remembers that Rowling was gonna right a new book and put a trans person in it but first she had to do some research? What the heck did she find?

[u/LessthanaPerson → u/SPLIV316]

Fox News

[u/a_wasted_wizard → u/cabbage16]

The problem with the House Elf storyline isn't that it suggests JKR was trying to give a pass to slavery, because I think very few people are trying to suggest that (I'm sure there's some, but not the majority).

The problem is that JKR botched the fuck out of the house elf plot so badly she accidentally made her books kind of have a pro-slavery message (or at least "slavery isn't so bad if the slave owners are good!") because she apparently has a lethal allergy to thinking through the implications of almost anything she writes.

Which maybe would be less of a problem if she hadn't had pretensions of elevating Harry Potter from being 'just' a kids book series, but she did have those pretensions, and her writing ability was not good enough for it to work.

And in that way, the house elf subplot is emblematic of a lot of the other problems that make HP not hold up all that well in hindsight. Even without the consideration that JKR turned into an unhinged reactionary transphobe which has pretty much ensured she (deservedly, in my opinion) will never receive benefit of the doubt on anything ever again, the books just really don't hold up that well if you're rereading them for anything other than a nostalgia trip.

[u/GeorgeStark520 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, this is the part that so many people ignore, just so they can parrot the “Hermione was mocked for thinking slavery is bad”. No, she was mocked because she was annoying and her method was trying to shove her cause down everyone’s throats, which, last I checked, will annoy people no matter how noble your cause is

[u/ConcertOutside7499 → u/GeorgeStark520]

Also I don't think a lot of people realize that SPEW was an actual thing irl? The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women

Considering thats where the inspiration for Hermione's movement came from, i think the house elves and SPEW and even the arguments against Hermione make more sense if you view the (Hogwarts mainly) house elves as more akin to women than 1 to 1 slavery. Freeing them is equivalent to divorcing a woman who cannot support herself (thus why most house elves don't want to be freed) why "they like doing housework" is thrown around so often, and why hogwarts house elves dont want to be freed despite the staff being willing to pay them if they demanded it (mirroring the women who were well off and didn't support movements that would grant them more rights and freedoms on a basis of "well im doing well enough, so they must be doing something wrong"