Classism In Harry Potter

Classism

At first sight, the class system in the Harry Potter books may appear simple and straightforward. The main clash of classes seems to be between muggles and wizards. However, even the wizarding world of Harry Potter is strictly stratified into classes. There is a hierarchical division in terms of descent. The following classes are ordered by the pureness of blood: pure-bloods, half-bloods, muggle-borns, squibs and muggles.

I. Purebloods

First of all, the purebloods are wizards who have well-documented and pure magical heritage dating back for centuries. Second of all, in this particular class, material wealth also plays an important role. The wealthy and the pure usually think of themselves as better than those with less pure heritage

Half-bloods

Pure-bloods seem to be the one of the most radical thinking part of wizarding the society, even though they are slowly dying out . The most common are half-bloods, descendants of a muggle or muggle-born parent and a magical parent. Examples of such characters would be Harry Potter, Voldemort, Severus Snape and Albus P. W. B. Dumbledore. It is interesting that all these half-blood characters play a crucial role in the story of the books. Also, half-blood parentage is more or less accepted by pure-bloods.

All the above mentioned characters attend or attended Hogwarts. The school is divided into four Houses which are, in fact, partially affected by ethnicity. Voldemort and Severus Snape went to Slytherin, whereas Potter and Dumbledore to Gryffindor. Slytherin is one of the four Hogwarts Houses, the others are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Each House bears the surname of its founder: Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw. Students at Hogwarts are Sorted into their Houses the very first evening they arrive at school by the Sorting Hat. As the Hat sings in HPOP, Slytherin favours those with the purest ancestry, Gryffindor the bravest, Ravenclaw the most intelligent ones and Hufflepuff the rest, being the most tolerant of the Houses . However, during the sorting, the Hat may make an exception by sorting, for example, a half-blood into Slytherin. Though, there is not any record that Slytherin would accept a Muggle-born student.

However, when Harry calls Voldemort by his name in front of the Death Eaters, Bellatrix shrieks at him: “you dare besmirch it with your half-bloods tongue” . In this case, she makes Harry unworthy to say his name. She wants Harry to show some respect, even though he points you that Voldemort is also half-blood. By this remark, he makes her angry enough to try to jinx him.

III. Muggle-borns

Muggle-borns are those whose parents are only of Muggle descent. They are often prejudiced to be bad wizards or witches but their abilities are not affected by their origin. Even professor Horace Slughorn in HPHP could not believe Harry’s mother to be of a muggle-born origin because she was so good. He even admitted he thought her to be pure-blood. When Harry contradicts him by saying that the best witch in their year is of a muggle-born origin, Slughorn comments: “funny how that sometimes happens” which forms a negative impression about the professor.

This class is loathed by pure-bloods. They are the main aim of the Death Eaters and other fanatical pure-blood families. In some cases, those families even call this class Mudbloods as Draco in HPCS or Walburga Black, Sirius’s mother, in HPOF. Hagrid describes it to be “the most insulting thing” and whenever someone hears this insult in public is utterly shocked, as Madam Malkin in the Diagon Alley in