Class Consciousness in the Magical World

I wrote an entire page on class and blood.

Beyond those notes, I think it really interesting when Mrs. Rowling states that a Malfoy ancestor argued against the ISWS, was active in “high-born Muggle circles, and that much of the family wealth comes from the non-magical world.¹ This provides an additional potential motivation for the dislike of the first generation “immigrants” and concordant emphasis on blood status. The Malfoys, and families like them, may well want the ISWS to fail.² They want the ISWS to fail not because they like non-magicals, but because they dislike the restrictions on making money off of the non-magicals. They may have successfully transitioned and found new sources of wealth, but interacting with the muggle economy will always be, in a sense, free money to those with the most ambition and the fewest moral scruples, those willing to “use any means to achieve their ends.”³