Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
or, racism is bad, kind of
Catch up here:
In my previous review, I mentioned a strange breakdown in the worldbuilding but didn’t get into it. In my memory, this doesn’t become part of the series until much later, but, as it turns out, the series delves into it here in the second book.
I’m talking about the bloodlines of it all.
Dark wizards, and Voldemort in particular, believed that only pure wizards should be allowed to use magic. Pure, here, meaning the children of two magical adults from wizarding families.
I think the clear real world analogue here is the Nuremberg Laws with muggles being, essentially, Jews. Now, this isn’t really a one to one analogue and there are many confounding variables, but the rhetoric and logic is very Nazi, which is very US Government pre-1865 (really, pre-1965).
A drop of blood and all that.
And so this novel becomes about the problems with this ideology. It is, in a way, standing as an anti-racist novel. A novel about harmony and diversity.
Of course, this is also the novel where we discover that wizards enslave elves and keep them in absolutely abysmal conditions. And it would be one thing if only the Malfoys and other bad wizards kept elves, but the Weasleys, those nice British folk, would keep an elf or two if only they had the wealth to buy one.
Which, uh. Well, what does this tell us about wizards?
Further, while the good wizards are all quite tolerant and open to muggles becoming magical, this also involves taking the children of muggles away from their families to indoctrinate them into the wizarding world’s culture. While they’re allowed to maintain their relationship with their muggle families, it seems quite clear that no wizards really do this.
Becoming a wizard is joining a cult, if you really stop to look at it. Another analogue could be those infamous boarding schools where indigenous children were taken from their families.
Worse, it will become clearer as time goes on that the wizarding world essentially rules over the muggle world. They do this through power, threats, and secrecy. When the Minister of Magic speaks to the Prime Minister in a later novel, it’s clear that the PM has no authority in the conversation or even really any recourse or room to disagree.
And so Rowling has developed a world where magical people, through the magic running through their veins, are the ubermenschen and this is justified because…well, I guess because they do an all right job of it?
Or maybe it’s not justified.
But, whatever the answer is, it makes sense that wizards would and do feel superior to muggles and, therefore, superior to wizards and witches born of muggles.
Their whole culture and society and even government reinforces this dynamic. In fact, the structure of their world necessitates it.
They can do magic!
That’s not to say that JK Rowling built a better Third Reich than Hitler but that she built the dream of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It’s as much a neoliberal power fantasy as The West Wing. You see, the government and culture reinforce the importance of magic in your blood, but they would prefer everyone be pretty chill about it, ya know? Don’t be a, well, you know, a nazi about it. Just be chill. Be cool.
Like, yes, I do believe that you were born from subhumans and are at least in part subhuman yourself, but, I mean, we can still be friends, yeah? I’ll still hire you, and isn’t that the same thing?
Now, I don’t think Rowling did this on purpose. I don’t think she did much of anything at this point in the series on purpose, honestly.
She wanted to write a bit about racism but without worrying about the color of people’s skin, so she invented a closed experiment where she could make her point without ruffling anyone’s feathers.
And, sure, it’s kind of dumb to belabor this point since this book is made primarily for children to have a good time while introducing some of the dark themes that they’ll encounter in life and to do it in a controlled and comforting way. The novel achieves this.
But it is why I think it’s embarrassing for adults to use this as the handbook for understanding real life politics.
Anyway, this novel and the first basically don’t exist in my memory, except for a few moments so it’s quite interesting to return all these years later. And while it probably seems like I was being mean when I said Rowling didn’t do any of this on purpose or at least with much forethought, I actually think that’s part of why these first two novels work to the extent they do.
These books are driven by vibes and good times. The silly names, the Dickensian caricatures, the idle mockery towards middle class British folk, the silliness of the magical world and their absolute incomprehension of the most basic aspects of the muggle world.
It amuses and delights and Rowling is writing to amuse and delight. She’s not trying to make a solid world that feels real and internally consistent. If she had, people wouldn’t have spent a decade asking her to clarify random things about the wizarding world on twitter.
Rowling is winging it and that’s all right. This is most notable in The Sorcerer’s Stone, since the book essentially stops 3/4ths of the way through in order to give it a plot that leads to a showdown.
This novel does a bit more foreshadowing but it still ends in the same kind of left turn leading us towards the PLOT quite late in the novel.
And while this makes the novel’s shape pretty goofy, it works all right!
But this lack of thought also leads to strange confusion. Like, the wizarding world is all egalitarian when it comes to humans and their genetic background, yet it sees no issue whatsoever with enslaving other sentient species like elves. As we’ll discover in the next novel, prejudice is also quite real and alive.
So I don’t know. It’s weird, all right. I mean, should we really blame Malfoy for calling Hermoine a mudblood when his entire life—not just because of his family’s attitudes but the entire culture surrounding him—makes it clear that muggles and, by extension, muggle born are less worthy of consideration than those from generational wizarding families?
Anyway, there’s also the whole bit with Professor Lockhart, which feels like someone telling their own future. Well, that’s probably unfair. Rowling doesn’t seem obsessed with her own fame and doesn’t spend her life mythologizing her own life, but I think she’s using Harry as a foil to Lockhart, and she sees herself more as Harry than Lockhart.
Fame was thrust upon her and she’s being a pretty chill dude about it, but some of these other people are pathetic fame-hounds who are wholly undeserving of the attention they’ve received.
Which, fair enough. It reminds me of Philip Roth’s version of himself in the Zuckerman novels and I mean that in the most insulting way possible, but people are allowed to think of themselves however they like.
And this second volume, this Chamber of Secrets, mostly works for what it is. Seeds are planted here that payoff much later and relationships continue to develop, though everyone remains a nice stock character. Predictable and reliable.
But the darkness Rowling introduces so early into her series is interesting. These novels seemingly meant for 8-10 year olds don’t shy away from murder, genocide, child abuse, and slavery alongside lighter but still serious topics like bullying, racism, narcissism and so on. The way these all play off together sort of muddies much of it, I think, but the novel is quite clear in what it wants you to take away from it.
It’s just not especially thoughtful.
Like, I’m still slightly gobsmacked by how casually Dobby’s enslavement is treated and how his freedom had nothing to do with Harry wanting to better his life and everything to do with pulling one over on some asshole.
But, yes, again, I find it odd that these books would become what they became. They’re not bad books, but I don’t think they’re especially great either.
But they are propulsive.
One of the most noticeable aspects of these early novels is how relentlessly things happen. The narrative doesn’t go in a straight line or lead always towards its resolution, but it is always moving, always pushing and pulling the reader and rewarding them for understanding the book they’re reading.
And, to be honest, I think that’s really what all readers want. Yes, the dorks want to talk about prose and depth or the solidity of the world, but most everyone else just wants to open up a book and have a swell time.
That’s not such a bad thing.
Some may even dare to call it a good thing.
Next month, we’re onto The Prisoner of Azkaban, which, in my view, is where the series simultaneously grew legs and began running.
Here’s some free books:
Propulsive, nice stock characters, not very thoughtful...
If we think of the Harry Potter series in relation to other published novels and the whole publishing industry at the time of its release, its eventual popularity is sort of mystifying.
But you're planting the seeds here, in my mind, of an analysis of the Harry Potter series as the forebear to the manga explosion we're currently seeing in North America (and everywhere, really).
I think a lot of parallels can be drawn, but I'll have to mull this over a bit more, first.
Such a great point that Rowling has created a neoliberal, Tony Blair-esque meritocracy. Later books, particularly because of Cornelius Fudge (who I think she intends as a stand-in for Neville Chamberlain) do suggest that the wizard regime is not perfect, but you are right to point out that the Wizard-Muggle hierarchy is otherwise unquestioned.
I think it does matter that Hermione is horrified by the enslavement of the elves and campaigns to stop it (although Harry and other “good guy” characters think she’s being foolish).