The Dursleys – Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley – serve both as a
driving point of the plot by neglecting and abusing Harry and as a comic
relief. However, it seems odd that a family who despises Harry so much would
continue to provide for him and put up with his magical shenanigans, especially
with their intense desire to be ‘normal.’ To Aunt Petunia, Harry is a constant
reminder of her sister, whom she disliked, stating “But for my mother and
father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a
witch in the family!” (53). At any point in time, the Dursleys have the option
of putting Harry up for adoption, effectively removing him from their lives,
but they never do. As the Dursleys pride themselves in their normality, there must
be another factor behind their adoption of Harry.
It’s no doubt that Aunt Petunia wasn’t the biggest fan of
her sister, the late Lily Potter. She sees Harry as the embodiment of all the
things she disliked about her sister, especially her magic. To erase this
magic, Petunia and Vernon keep Harry extremely sheltered from the magical
world, telling him nothing about his true past and Hogwarts. I believe that
this is an action not aimed towards mistreating Harry, but by protecting him. Petunia
obviously cared about her sister; if she didn’t, she would not hold such a
grudge against her magic, the aspect of her life that led to her death.
Therefore, as Petunia views Harry as she does Lily, she attempts to wipe magic
from his life to prevent harm from reaching him. If the family was ready to send
Harry away from them into the wizarding world, they wouldn’t stop Harry from
reading the acceptance letters from Hogwarts.
However, the family goes way too far in their attempts to
shield Harry from wizardry. They give him a room beneath the stairs. They spoil
Dudley and hardly celebrate Harry’s achievements. They reprimand Harry for acts
of magic, like after the snake incident, “Go --- cupboard --- stay --- no meals”
(29). Instead of filling Harry’s life with the love he lacks from his parents,
the Dursleys go to extreme measures to try and beat the magic out of Harry. All
these actions culminate to give Harry a terrible childhood, one without magic,
and especially without affection. Their fear of what they don’t know and their
desire for normalcy combine to create the evil figures we read of in the novel.
I agree with your statements about the misguided love Aunt Petunia has for Harry. While Harry is at Privet Drive, Uncle Vernon is the one who doles out Harry's punishments while Aunt Petunia is passive in the background. I am not trying to excuse her actions, but she does seem to be more tolerant of Harry than her husband. Like you said, Uncle Vernon fears what he does not understand and that fear twists him into the evil character that we read about. Both by actually inflicting the punishment and by going along with it, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon do all that they can to "'put a stop to all that rubbish...[and] stamp it out of him'" (Rowling 53). I agree that locking Harry in a cupboard and denying him food is going to the extreme to prevent magic from entering their lives. I also think that Petunia must care about Lilly and Harry at least a little. If she hadn't cared about either of them, despite what Dumbledore's letter said, she would have had no problems shipping Harry off to an orphanage. She put up with the occasional bits of accidental magic for some reason and I believe that it is due to the love she still felt for her sister.
ReplyDeleteI see your point, and I understand you are not trying to give the Dursleys a pass on their behavior, but I think you are giving them too much credit nonetheless. I think taking Harry in is just another part of the Dursleys' quest for normalcy - that is to say, their desire to keep up appearances. Petunia spends much of her time snooping into other people's affairs, so it is only natural that the Dursleys are overly concerned with how their own affairs must appear to other snoops (Rowling 1). Where I disagree with you is in your assertion that putting their nephew up for adoption would help rather than hurt their public image. It is far easier to hide child abuse than to hide the fact that the family put its own flesh and blood into "the system" whatever that may entail. The act of keeping Harry in their home, with or without the problems and minimal expense associated with that, is selfish. They cannot compromise their appearance to give Harry a chance at a better life, despite the fact that they do not want him with them any more than he wants to live with them.
ReplyDeleteAs for your comment, Olivia, I wonder if Petunia's passivity versus Vernon's aggression is to be attributed to an attempt to maintain gender roles in a family so determined to maintain the status quo in all ways - surely that includes how men and women should behave.
DeleteI think that you make a great point, and one that I failed to see in my previous reading of the book. Obviously, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have been put in a sticky situation with Harry. He's not their child, and he possesses power that they cannot control, and so they try and keep his magical background a secret. I truly believe that they think they're doing him a favor. However, while I do believe they may have meant better than they showed, it is hard to condone keeping a child living in a cupboard for 11 years of his life. Their blatant disregard for anything to do with Harry is inexcusable. "Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Harry was left behind" (22). There really isn't any reason that the Dursley's couldn't bring Harry along with them on their family outings on Dudley's birthday. The way they treat him: "As though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them - like a slug" (22) is reprehensible. It's hard to believe that treating an eleven year old boy as if he isn't there is something done out of love and not resentment - resentment that he may ruin their perfectly normal lives that the Dursleys cherish.
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