It's interesting to meet Dobby once again, for the very first time. I'm reading The Chamber of Secrets, this time in French, and I'm finding it really fascinating to have this little house elf introduced to me at this point, when I already know so much about his future fate.
I can't say I ever liked Dobby. I found him irritating in the books and even more so in the films but he does play a more and more important role as the series goes on. I'm also not sure how J.K. really feels about him: certainly she gives him a hero's role and a hero's death but she also pulls no punches in showing that the rest of the house-elf community sees him as an embarrassment, an elf without shame, so to speak.
His relationship with Winky is also interesting. While both have been freed from their service, Winky responds to this emancipation with shame and humiliation. She worries about her former master and would no doubt accept her enslavement back were it to be offered to her.
Is Rowling sympathetic to Winky? Does she believe that house elves have the right to choose to be enslaved (if that makes any sense)? Would she support Hermione's campaign for house-elf rights, even when the house elves Rowling herself created seem to reject it?
When I think about questions like that, I can't help but go back to the scene where Dobby, having accepted a paid position in the kitchens of Hogwarts, brags about how he argued Dumbledore down to a lower salary and fewer holidays.
To me, the house-elf issue is one of the more interesting philosophical questions that emerge from the novels: is the plight of house elves truly enslavement, such that all right thinking witches and wizards should oppose it, or does it represent a happily symbiotic relationship between the elves and their masters, where both benefit? And what does J.K. have to say about all that?
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