Here in the United States we at least pretend to be an egalitarian society. So I don’t know if it’s just a British thing or what, but the Harry Potter series is absolutely obsessed with class and status–especially around matters beyond one’s control.
Seriously though, literally anything can be a status symbol in the world of Harry Potter, from what kind of pet you have to your cause of death. For real! A bunch of veritable headless huntsmen come and troll Nearly Headless Nick’s deathday party – interrupting his I’ve-been-dead-for-500-years speech to be all like “hey loser, your head is still attached to your body, but I can juggle mine around!”
Shouldn’t these party crashers be off laughing at the guy that killed him insufficiently? Why is this not a merit-based society?
Also at play is a sort of Hitler Youth vibe among the Slytherins. Whether or not one has enough wizard blood is a source of much anxiety for certain Hogwarts students. Indeed, a “mudblood” is a racial epithet for those born to non-magic parents. And of course, the impoverished and orphaned are ceaselessly bullied and ridiculed.
Rowling for her part, is careful to ensure that scholarly achievement is never overtly linked to wizard blood purity or wealth. This is all generally well and good until Harry’s discovery that the school’s caretaker, Argus Filch, was surreptitiously enrolling himself in Kwikspell, “A Correspondence Course in Beginners’ Magic.”
While we are generally meant to sympathize with the downtrodden at Hogwarts, here J.K. Rowling takes a nasty turn, asking us to laugh at the idea of a less than ivory tower approach to the study of magic (read: anything), going so far as to bastardize the spelling of “quick,” and offering us collateral materials for the school that parody their real world correspondence class counterparts in so-called amusing ways. Filch is enraged and embarrassed that a blue blood like Harry has discovered his dark dirty secret and we are meant to understand the cause of his shame.
The University of Exeter is a perfectly fine institution, and the one where J.K. Rowling received her higher education. It is not Oxford though, the school that did not accept our author. Some folks carry a life-long anxiety about these matters, the legacy of which is projected onto their friends and siblings; their progeny and colleagues. It is a tethered pain. When you are J.K. Rowling however, the whole world is going to know firsthand the shame of having had to attend one’s safety school.
Harry Potter Virgin 