Harry Potter and the Spectre of British Identity

There is and has been only one school of magic in the UK and Ireland for about a thousand years[2]. And that’s Hogwarts.

Since its foundation by Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff and Salazar Slytherin, Hogwarts stands inexplicably as the only magical school. And since its foundation, its method of selecting students comes down to the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance, magical items that somehow divine the suitability of children born presumably within the UK and Ireland.

But why these particular areas?

According to the Sorting Hat Song, Ravenclaw is from the glens, Hufflepuff the valley and Slytherin the fens. Gryffindor was born in Godric’s Hollow, which is somewhere in the West Country, so he is presumably from the “wild moors” there.

A thousand years ago, the United Kingdom was simply not united. One could guess that Ravenclaw had some land (or knew of a good location) and that she convinced the three southerners to found a school in the Highlands, far from their original homes.

One might think that the four founders were meant to be representative of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom, but that simply doesn’t map comfortably onto their respective epithets. The glen is presumably somewhere in Scotland and the valley wales, but the fens can’t really be referring to anywhere but the Fens and Gryffindor’s origins the most detailed by far.

Which is to say that none of the founders were Irish. A thousand years ago is before even the Normans were conquering the place. Why does the Quill and Book even cover that whole other island?

If anybody understands what powerful and long-lasting magic causes this book and quill to behave as they do, nobody has ever confessed to it, doubtless because (as Albus Dumbledore once sighed) it saves the staff tedious explanations to parents who are furious that their children have not been selected for Hogwarts. The Book and Quill’s decision is final and no child has ever been admitted whose name has not first been inscribed on the book’s yellowing pages.
 — Rowling, The Quill of Acceptance and The Book of Admittance

I could wonder what muggle parents made of the idea of sending their child to a mysterious foreign school for all the centuries when that was true.

There’s an uncomfortable tinge of magical predestination about the way the Quill and Book are set up, that it just knows. Perhaps it responds to the changing identities and borders of the world around it or perhaps it writes those identities and borders through its selection of particular children.

Why don’t you confer with Mr Finnigan? As I recall, he has a particular proclivity for pyrotechnics.
 — Professor McGonagall discussing blowing up the Wooden Bridge right before the Battle of Hogwarts in the Deathly Hallows film

Given the fact that the books are set during the 90s, the Troubles are hardly a thousand years ago to the characters or the reader. Which makes the above joke about Seamus Finnigan more than a little uncomfortable. Whilst one can blame the American filmmakers, it’s also canonised by Rowling on Pottermore.

But tasteless joke aside, the fact that Seamus Finnigan is from Ireland rather than Northern Ireland is important. In that one detail lies far more about British imperialism and Irish nationalism and than I could possibly unpack here. The fate of these two islands are intertwined in the Rowling’s world, magically so, via the Quill and Book of Hogwarts.

That and the fact that the Ministry of Magic isn’t part of the British Government, but does rule over Ireland as well as the UK.

Thus it’s not the determination of magical talent of the Quill and Book that I linger on, but the fact that nationality. Rowling doesn’t touch on this spell this out, but implictly, there have to be magical children born in the world that it doesn’t record and deem worthy of admittance since letters aren’t being constantly sent halfway across the world.

Hogwarts isn’t without diversity, of course, with the Patil twins, Cho Chang, Blaise Zabini and Dean Thomas. Cho is Scottish in the movies, though the books are mute on that and merely letting her strange composite name speak for itself[3]. Dean Thomas is a black Londoner and has an interesting backstory that was largely cut from the books. His blackness is somewhat notable as it constitutes one of the bigger differenes between the UK and the US editions of the books, as it is made more explicit in the US version.

Even looking at The Original Forty, Rowling’s first list of the students in Harry’s year, one could see that Hogwarts was never meant to be all white and all English. Still, the portrait is incomplete and the many of the non white, non English names are pushed to the margins of the narrative. Harry, Ron and Hermione are all from the South, as well as being very middle class.

And all in all, I can’t help but wonder if I would be British enough by its standards[4].

Of the people who are excluded from Hogwarts (and implicitly, Britishness) are the students of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, the only two European schools that have been written of. The national stereotypes at play be summarised quite neatly by their respective entrances. A lot of narrative and thematic shorthand is at work, setting up Beauxbatons and Durmstrang as foils to Hogwarts as well as each other. Beauxbatons arrive by air, all the named characters from it are female[5]. In constrast, Durmstrang arrive via water and all their character are male.

It’s also only now that I notice that Durmstrang is actually located somewhere in Scandinavia since its named characters hail are rather more Eastern European in flavour. Both Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are said to be much, much bigger than Hogwarts, accepting students from surrounding countries. I also wonder what language they teach in.

But I’m not here to pick apart these details. The two schools are there to define an Other and they do that with great effectiveness, tapping into longstanding ideas about Europe, about how they aren’t us. Even as our real world borders don’t matter to Wizards, it does matter very much to them that we aren’t French or Eastern European.

Implicit in the way Rowling writes about Hogwarts is the fact that only people from the South need to go there. Scotland is that place people go to but are not from.[6]

The history of the Hogwarts Express talks about the vast numbers of airborne wizards travelling northwards, but really, all the Express has done is create the problem that now all the students need to travel to London first, regardless of how close to Hogwarts they already live.

Despite being located in Scotland, there isn’t a lot of Scottishness to Hogwarts. I don’t mean kilts and bagpipes, just that the London scenes have a vivacity to their sense of place that is comparatively absent in those of Hogwarts.

And there is, of course, the matter of class.

The Weasleys are poor and struggling, but they are still very middle class with Mr Weasley’s civil servant job. Class isn’t, after all, just about income and there is also something nebulously aristocratic about their pureblood status that makes them seem more like impoverished nobles than anything else.

Hermione’s parents are both dentists, well off and idyllically comfortable before moving to Australia. James Potter comes from old money and the Blacks have an equally Noble and Most Ancient House. There is also the Malfoys who are bluebloods through and through.

This is not to say that there aren’t impoverished characters within Rowling’s world. Snape grew up in the dilapidated Spinner’s End, in ill-fitting mismatched clothes, his neglectful mother and his possibly abusive father. Voledemort was orphaned and was found by Dumbledore at an orphanage. Both saw Hogwarts as a means to escape their backgrounds. Both looked upon their maternal, aristocratic lineages as a birthright to reclaim. Neither are most pleasant of characters.

All this paints the Wizarding World as very middle and upper class, which does make sense since Hogwarts is at the heart of it. Public schools[7] are fundamentally linked to the middle and upper class. It’s where that ruling elite sent their children and to a greater or lesser extent, it still is. That represent a very real divide within society. To make it the only society is problematic to say the least.

Well, not the only society. There are also those who are born without magic.

And this is where we stumble upon the few working class characters, such as squib caretaker, Argus Filch, groundskeeper Hagrid (who was expelled) and Stan Shunpike who has a strong Cockney accent.

Though the books confront the prejudices faced by the muggleborn in Hermione’s arc and show those who treat her differently as squarely in the wrong, there is very little examination of the plight of those born without magic.

Almost all of Hogwarts’ problems come from the fact that British boarding school culture is quite simply not representative of all of the UK (and Ireland). Its stories have always been about a very specific segment of the population and is full of their idiosyncracies. They are stories I am familiar with and am fond of[8], and for the most part, these stories do not claim to be the sum all of Britishness (plus Ireland).

Except in Harry Potter, it does.

Perhaps from a desire to keep the world small and simple, Rowling decided to have only one school of magic for the United Kingdom and Ireland[9] and as such, it suddenly has to speak for all of us.

There is a lot to be said about the fact that books deal with ideas indirectly. Applicability, as Tolkien liked to put it, instead of direct allegory. The attitudes about the muggleborn of the Wizarding World are there to stand in for all manner of real world prejudice. There is power in talking about things obliquely.

But the thing is, Rowling’s books aren’t set in another world. They are set in this one. They capture the imagination by presenting an alternative, secret world hidden beneath mundane one. The books are both of this world and not, where part of the escapism is that the conflicts of this one simply don’t matter anymore.

Perhaps it’s unfair of me to be picking over the details of the world instead of looking at the larger thematic picutre. After all, the Dursleys can be said to encapsulate those perfectly ordinary people (thankyouverymuch) that Nigel Farage likes to say he speaks for. That Harry escapes from their control into a world of extraordinary people that accept him and love him is a powerful story.

And yet, it still sits poorly in my mind.

Looking at the divisions in my own country now, Rowling’s world is a lot less cosy and comfortable. She presents not a slice of that world or a glimpse, but very explicitly the sum of it.

Because those perfectly ordinary people that the Dursleys seem to encapsulate are still part of this country. If Hogwarts is the sum of Britishness, then it is one that has written out the Dursleys[10]. Harry could escape them into a Wizarding World that doesn’t contain them, but you and I cannot.