Is Hogwarts a xenophobe's allegory for Anglo assimilation of the British Isles?
This is just something that occurred to me reading u/Dina-M's breakdown of the different houses, because it made me think, don't the four houses of Hogwarts kind of align with the four nations of the British Isles? Because if so, the fact that Gryffindor is practically the only house worth anything while the others are either useless or evil, is well... very fucking yikes
Like I don't know if I'm reaching here, but
- England: Gryffindor. I mean the lion, gold and red is basically the English coat of arms.
- Scotland: Rowena Ravenclaw, a Scottish witch, house colours blue, the intelligent house. Possibly a connection to the history associated with the university of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment?
- Wales: Helga Hufflepuff was Welsh. ''Loyal'' and the least problematic house. Wales was pretty much subjugated under the English crown after the 15th century, compared to Ireland and Scotland who maintained independence and rebelled for many centuries after.
- Ireland: According to the Ilvermorny lore, Salazar Slytherin's descendants were based in Ireland. Colours green. One of Ireland's patron saints St. Patrick is also associated with snakes, although it has to do with banishing them.
I think what's reaaaally interesting here is that the only sovereign nation, Ireland, seems to be represented by the least integrated and most maligned and backward house, the one who is the threat to the entire establishment. If you consider the plot of the final books as a WW2 allegory, all of the Slytherins running away from battle could be similar to how people blame Ireland for their neutrality during WW2. (Voldemort's initial reign of terror in the 70s also has some parallels to the IRA bombings.)
We know how she feels about Scottish independence (the thought if it sends her into a frothing rage) and she purposely wrote the wizarding world as if Irish independence never happened, with the Irish Quidditch team being represented by the British prime minister.
We're also expected to believe that Hogwarts is the default school for the entire British Isles, except it isn't shown as a collaborative project between the different nations; the entire teaching staff is English. So I guess all the Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish etc. speaking kids were just expected to abandon their languages to assimilate into Anglo wizarding culture (and we'll just conveniently ignore the brutal methods that made this happen in real life).
Thoughts?