48 Naomi Staller – Morals and Money in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Naomi Staller (she/her/hers) is a Senior from Huntertown, IN a majoring in English. This work was prepared for Alisa Clapp-Itnyre’s English L371, who states, “Naomi wrote a very fine paper applying Marxism to Harry Potter: I appreciate the hard work in revising, and enjoyed reading this paper slowly this time! It is very strong, especially when she got to the complications of Tom and Harry.”

Morals and Money in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

In J. K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second in her popular seven-book series, the British author equates elevated socioeconomic status with poor moral character and vice versa. Good characters, such as the Weasley family and Dobby the house-elf, tend to be poor and of little renown. Bad or selfish characters, such as the Malfoy family, the Dursley family, and Gilderoy Lockhart, tend to be of good social standing and at least financially comfortable. Two notable exceptions to this classification are Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, one of whom is wealthy and good and the other of whom is poor and evil. We learn from Marxist critic Terry Eagleton that “literature is neither a product of pure inspiration nor the product of the author’s feelings…[but it] is a product of an ideology, which is itself a product of history” (Bressler 175). In her article “Class and Socioeconomic Identity in Harry Potter’s England,” critic Julia Park observes that “Rowling does not necessarily believe in her upper class characters’ inherent goodness or evil, but…a common urge exists among all people to envy and resent those further up the social ladder” (185). This paper will use a Marxist lens, along with Park’s article, to show that, regardless of the author’s intent, Rowling’s message in this novel is that goodness is likelier to be found amongst people of lesser socioeconomic status and vice versa.

The main argument that Julia Park makes in her article is that J. K. Rowling’s first four novels (the only ones written at the time Park’s article was published) show that the author is most comfortable with the middle class of her youth and early adulthood. Park argues that Rowling’s work exhibits unconscious biases against both the upper and the working class, with the middle class being the only one in these novels that “seems to escape general criticism” (179). For example, Park observes that the wealthy Malfoy family’s “attitude of entitlement enables them to sneer and bully their way through life” (184). She argues that Rowling depicts Hagrid, the gamekeeper at Hogwarts, as rough and “uncouth” in his speech, language, associations, and even his cooking (Park 185). According to Park, Rowling uses a “subtly mocking, stereotypical view of the Irish” in her depiction of the working-class Weasley family, from the family’s size to their lack of financial resources and even the foods they eat (186). From a Marxist perspective, it is unsurprising that Rowling’s background would seep into her work. All texts supersede their authors’ intentions and exist as a product of their cultural and economic contexts. J. K. Rowling’s novel reflects her position as a firm occupant of the middle class (and later on, the upper class). Looking at Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it would seem that Park is correct in her arguments. However, this essay will argue against Park’s argument as it regards Rowling’s treatment of her working-class characters, showing that Rowling sympathizes with these individuals, assigning them the highest moral character in the novel.

The family who exhibits that high moral character is the loving, kind, working-class Weasley family. (Ron Weasley, sixth in a large family of seven children, is one of Harry’s best friends at Hogwarts.) The Weasleys, poor in material goods, are rich in kindness to those around them. Mrs. Weasley welcomes Harry to her home, lavishes food on him, and sends him a hand-knitted sweater for Christmas (Rowling 33-35, 212). Mr. Weasley also treats Harry with generosity, his children with kindness, and others with dignity (Rowling 62). The parents’ moral character is mirrored by their children: Ron and older brothers Fred and George risk serious consequences to rescue Harry from his aunt and uncle; Fred and George defend Harry when a rogue ball attacks while the three are playing Quidditch. While not perfect, the Weasleys consistently exhibit kindness, acceptance, and integrity.

Despite their generosity to others and Mr. Weasley’s position in the Ministry of Magic, the Weasleys lack material wealth and social status. Early in the novel, George wonders how his parents will be able to afford the numerous textbooks and other materials required for their five children attending Hogwarts (Rowling 44, 46). Mrs. Weasley is forced to withdraw the entirety of her family’s vault to provide these school materials (Rowling 57). Their lack of wealth and the minimized social standing that others assign to it leads to conflict amongst parents and children alike. While shopping for school supplies at the local shop Flourish and Blotts, Mr. Weasley and his children are sneered at by Lucius Malfoy and his son Draco, Harry’s arch-enemy. The Malfoys disparage the Weasleys for their lower financial status and the corresponding “company [they] keep,” leading Mr. Weasley to physically attack Mr. Malfoy (Rowling 61-62). It is clear that the Weasley family occupies a lesser position in the hierarchy of wealth and social status. However, through the Weasleys’ kindness and integrity, Rowling shows that she respects and values the working class.

Another major character in The Chamber of Secrets that matches the characteristics of the Weasleys—good people without socioeconomic status—is Dobby the house-elf. Harry meets Dobby when the latter comes to Harry’s home to warn him not to return to Hogwarts when the school year begins. This errand shows Dobby’s selflessness as he faces both self-flagellation and censure from his master (whom the reader later discovers is Lucius Malfoy) in order to protect Harry. Even when Harry returns to Hogwarts, and in spite of the consistent failure of his attempts to protect the boy, Dobby continues his campaign. At the end of the novel, Dobby’s kindness is rewarded when Harry tosses one of his socks to Lucius Malfoy who quickly discards the sock as Harry had expected he would. Malfoy’s method of discarding the sock is to throw it to Dobby, a selfish act which actually sets Dobby free (the gift of clothing is a house-elf’s only path to freedom).

Like the Weasleys, Dobby is selfless, kind, and impoverished. This is evidenced by the disgusting “old pillowcase, with rips for arm- and leg-holes” that Dobby wears throughout this early acquaintance with Harry Potter (Rowling 12, 177). Unfortunately, Dobby is an enslaved occupant of a capitalist society in which he is “cut off from the full value of [his] work as well as from [other house-elves]” (Bressler 169). Additionally, Dobby is cut off from the community that would be necessary to revolt and seize the means of production in the wizarding world. The fact that it takes a person of means (Harry) to set Dobby free shows J. K. Rowling’s understanding that, in a capitalist society, wealth and status always hold more power than poverty and anonymity.

To pivot from the working class to the middle class, the reader finds an unkind family with some material wealth and social position, Harry’s relatives the Dursleys. Until he is eleven, Harry lives full-time with his maternal aunt Mrs. Petunia Dursley, her husband Vernon, and their son Dudley. The Dursleys hate Harry, forcing him to live in a closet under the stairs. Their dislike only intensifies when they learn that Harry is a wizard, treating him “like a dog that had rolled in something smelly” (Rowling 5). In contrast with the Weasleys, the Dursleys limit his food options and ignore special events like his birthday. Selfish and mean like his parents, Dudley bullies Harry whenever he can.

The Dursleys are a typical middle-class suburban family intent on building financial success and social standing, caught in capitalism’s never-ending drive to produce and earn more. Julia Park highlights the fact that these are the only middle-class characters exempt from Rowling positive treatment of that group (179). Park writes, “The Dursleys…lack any type of creativity” which is “one of the greatest evils that dwells in Muggle suburbia” and may be “a subconscious jab at her parents and an upbringing that focused on money and pensions instead of the fulfillment of desires” (187). This echoes Eagleton’s view that literature reflects ideology, both of which are shaped by history. With the information the reader has been given so far, one can surmise that, in addition to other causes, the Dursleys’ treatment of Harry stems from resentment for the added financial burden of caring for him. Family love—indeed, human decency—cost more than the Dursley family is willing to spend.

Another prominent character in this novel who lives in the comfort of the middle class but possesses questionable morals is renowned author Gilderoy Lockhart. Harry first meets Lockhart when the latter, who is something of a celebrity in the wizarding world, is signing copies of his autobiography (aptly titled Magical Me) in Flourish and Blotts (Rowling 58). Spotting Harry in the crowd, Lockhart yanks the young boy to his side and poses for the news photographer standing nearby, certain that with Harry’s renown the two “[together]…are worth the front page” (Rowling 60). This early interaction shows that Lockhart is vain, self-seeking, and oblivious to the needs and wants of others. As Hogwarts’ new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Lockhart assigns seven of his own books as texts for his course (Rowling 43-44). The first quiz he administers asks questions regarding his favorite color (“hardly any of you remembered that [it] is lilac”), his ideal birthday present (“harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples—though I wouldn’t say no to a large bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky!”), and his secret ambition (“to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions”) (Rowling 100). Lockhart exaggerates his abilities with spells, at one point removing from Harry’s arm all the broken bones he had said he could fix (Rowling 172-173). At the novel’s climax, Lockhart, who had boasted he knew where the Chamber of Secrets was and should have been allowed to handle it, attempts to run away, finally admitting to Ron and Harry that his numerous successful books were appropriations of others’ stories (Rowling 297-298). Not only is Lockhart selfish and vain, but his financial and social position result from the theft of others’ experiences. In true bourgeois fashion, the man of means has exploited the working class and profited from their labor.

Returning to the class spectrum one final time, the reader finds that one of this novel’s wealthiest upper-class families—the Malfoys—is also its most morally bankrupt. Draco Malfoy, the school bully, is as spoiled and whiny as his father is crafty and hateful. Lucius Malfoy degrades witches and wizards who are not “pureblood” (Rowling 62). He mistreats his house-elf Dobby (Rowling 13, 334, 337). Through unscrupulous means, he has Dumbledore removed from his position as headmaster of Hogwarts, and he gives Voldemort an “in” to Hogwarts by planting Tom Riddle’s diary amongst Ginny Weasley’s school books (Rowling 335-36). Following the pattern already established by Rowling, this self-serving family lives on a vast manor. Draco Malfoy is known by his classmates to have “the best of everything,” evidence of his family’s “rolling in wizard gold” (Rowling 29). When Draco joins the Slytherin Quidditch team, his father provides the team with the latest and most expensive brooms. Once again, Rowling equates wealth and social standing with a propensity to mistreat those of a lesser socioeconomic position.

In contrast to the pattern Rowling has created, in which her characters’ position on the class spectrum reflects their moral character, are the novel’s two main characters, Harry Potter and Tom Riddle. Tom, the novel’s antagonist, is an evil, selfish person who grew up with little in spite of a wealthy family background. Harry, on the other hand, is a kind, respectful person who, like Tom, endures an impoverished childhood but, unlike Tom, discovers at eleven years old that he is wealthy. Are these two characters the exception that proves the rule (that wealth equates with poor character), or is Rowling arguing that that outcome, while possible, is not inevitable? Perhaps it is both.

Julia Park would offer a third explanation, that Rowling is distinguishing between high-brow, inherited riches and lowly, reluctant wealth that results from hard work (Park 180-81). Charles Bressler writes that Karl Marx “assumed that the totality of a people’s experience—social interactions, employment, and other day-to-day activities—is directly responsible for the shaping and the development of an individual’s personal consciousness” (Bressler 169; emphasis added). Applying this to Rowling and her writing shows that the author, who attained wealth and renown through the hard work of writing, believes not that money is the sole indicator of a person’s moral character—it is where that money came from and how it is used. As a young boy, Harry becomes aware of his inheritance left by his parents, and he chooses to share his resources with his friends. Tom Riddle gains power as an adult, but he uses his resources to control and hurt others. Like Headmaster Dumbledore tells Harry at the end of this story, “It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities” and as is relevant here, our material resources and social status (Rowling 333).

Like all other texts, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets reflects the ideologies of its author and its social and historical context. The good, disadvantaged characters are often exploited by the bad, wealthy characters, evident in the relationships amongst the families Weasley, Dursley, and Malfoy; and the individual characters Dobby and Gilderoy Lockhart. In contrast to these characters are Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, the exceptions who prove the rule. Even this reality reflects the ideology and contexts of author J. K. Rowling: The character whose material circumstances most closely resemble those of Rowling herself is Harry Potter, the pinnacle of moral character and the hero of her stories.

Works Cited

Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Longman, 2003.

Park, Julia. “Class and Socioeconomic Identity in Harry Potter’s England.” Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays, edited by Giselle Liza Anatol, Praeger, 2003, pp. 179-89.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Scholastic, 1998.