Actually it's still tuition based. Harry just has his covered from his trust fund. But this is still a setting where magic can substitute most forms of labor and still there's a poor under class and a fucking slave caste.
I think the tuition can't be that bad, right? Since all 7 Weasely siblings get to go to Hogwarts based on a single low-ranking government employee's salary? Just adds to the point that poverty and class for Rowling is a sentimental and/or aesthetic thing, since the "hardship" arising from poverty just means living in a rustic country house, having second-hand clothes and pets, and not exclusion from social and educational opportunities.
That's true. My gripe is more that there's an unexplored aspect in the books with having a tuition cost for the equivalent of k-12 education. In a setting where an uneducated person can do all sorts of catastrophic things if left untrained in magic. Then there's the lack of mention of the people who can't afford tuition. The poorest people depicted, as you said areare still very comfortable.
The only time the books even get into anything of a class analysis is when Hermione is trying to abolish actual chattel slavery of elves. She's intensely passionate about it, but most of the other characters treat her as some annoying shrill activist worried about nothing. Then she just seems to drop the entire thing later.
No other class structure seems to exist among wizards. Every wizard presented has a job as a government bureaucrat, athlete, teacher, or small business owner. I don't remember any wizards being described as wage based workers for a private business. Those types of jobs seem relegated to elves and goblins. I think I remember one book had a discussion about what the students wanted to do after they graduated and all of them said either magic cop, teacher, or small business owner.
writing about class struggles is when you acknowledge that poor people exist
Accurately depicting a class-based society with vast wealth disparity is when literally everybody gets to go to wizard Eton/Oxbridge.
Actually it's still tuition based. Harry just has his covered from his trust fund. But this is still a setting where magic can substitute most forms of labor and still there's a poor under class and a fucking slave caste.
I think the tuition can't be that bad, right? Since all 7 Weasely siblings get to go to Hogwarts based on a single low-ranking government employee's salary? Just adds to the point that poverty and class for Rowling is a sentimental and/or aesthetic thing, since the "hardship" arising from poverty just means living in a rustic country house, having second-hand clothes and pets, and not exclusion from social and educational opportunities.
That's true. My gripe is more that there's an unexplored aspect in the books with having a tuition cost for the equivalent of k-12 education. In a setting where an uneducated person can do all sorts of catastrophic things if left untrained in magic. Then there's the lack of mention of the people who can't afford tuition. The poorest people depicted, as you said areare still very comfortable.
Like you said, poverty is aesthetic and cozy.
why don't poor people just use their government connections to get into prestigious schools??? :very-smart:
The only time the books even get into anything of a class analysis is when Hermione is trying to abolish actual chattel slavery of elves. She's intensely passionate about it, but most of the other characters treat her as some annoying shrill activist worried about nothing. Then she just seems to drop the entire thing later.
No other class structure seems to exist among wizards. Every wizard presented has a job as a government bureaucrat, athlete, teacher, or small business owner. I don't remember any wizards being described as wage based workers for a private business. Those types of jobs seem relegated to elves and goblins. I think I remember one book had a discussion about what the students wanted to do after they graduated and all of them said either magic cop, teacher, or small business owner.
Harry Potter is literally a temporarily embarrassed millionaire