Thats because rowling was writing a story about maintaining the status quo. Its interesting just how much she wrote overtly class conscious inequality, like wizards being an isolated superior class who can act with impunity on muggles, but then hand waves it as appropriate and good because the alternative is “bad”.
That and a lot of the early books had an editor tweaking things.
Remember when Harry traded some food he bought with Ron even when he didn’t want Ron’s food? Then later he and Ron crashed the family car and Harry couldn’t be bothered to help pay for a new one?
The entire bit about the weasleys being poor was just another example of the horrible writing anyway. Remember how a metric crap ton of the ministry of magic employees commuted to work? Floo powder. Remember what they had just laying around at home in the burrow? Floo powder. If the weasleys were supposed to be way below the level of others, it wasn’t shown very well in random moments, just the ones where the author was deliberately making that the point of the scene.
At best, arthur’s choice of transportation was because of his obsession with muggle stuff, but if it was supposed to be another example of their poverty…
If I’m being really charitable, the biggest thing that was going for the poverty/wealth divide in the magical world was where you lived. Castle/urban/picturesque = rich, while countryside/rural/cottage type = poor. But let’s not discuss the ‘magical villages’ because their details were always incredibly vague.
Thats because rowling was writing a story about maintaining the status quo. Its interesting just how much she wrote overtly class conscious inequality, like wizards being an isolated superior class who can act with impunity on muggles, but then hand waves it as appropriate and good because the alternative is “bad”.
That and a lot of the early books had an editor tweaking things.
Remember when Harry traded some food he bought with Ron even when he didn’t want Ron’s food? Then later he and Ron crashed the family car and Harry couldn’t be bothered to help pay for a new one?
The entire bit about the weasleys being poor was just another example of the horrible writing anyway. Remember how a metric crap ton of the ministry of magic employees commuted to work? Floo powder. Remember what they had just laying around at home in the burrow? Floo powder. If the weasleys were supposed to be way below the level of others, it wasn’t shown very well in random moments, just the ones where the author was deliberately making that the point of the scene.
At best, arthur’s choice of transportation was because of his obsession with muggle stuff, but if it was supposed to be another example of their poverty…
If I’m being really charitable, the biggest thing that was going for the poverty/wealth divide in the magical world was where you lived. Castle/urban/picturesque = rich, while countryside/rural/cottage type = poor. But let’s not discuss the ‘magical villages’ because their details were always incredibly vague.