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Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

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This got me into a deep dive and I found out that one of the two mainstay cookbooks from the 1800s- Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management- which apparently plagiarized or was plagiarized by other contemporaries- had a recipe for curry in it.

Despite that, I still can't really see Vernon eating it. He just doesn't seem like the sort who would have any tolerance for things he considers foreign.

Part of that too is that curry was apparently featured in "Dainty dishes for slender incomes" which would make it absolutely unacceptable to him. Not only foreign, but a dish for poorer people? The Dursleys are always shown as extremely status conscious, so I think that would also take it off their menu.

But regardless I feel like the books probably do have some more examples of the breakfast and dinner menus. So I'll defer to anyone who does the digging on that.
 
Martin Bajar said:
Why? I mean, beef, Stilton cheese and the other ingredients aren't exotic for the British AFAIK
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English, not 'British'. Porridge is likely something Vernon won't touch, because it's 'Scottish'? Cheddar cheese, OK, Stilton... maybe less so. It's not just the ingredients, it's the recipe and cooking method...

Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Vernon strongly favours certain named brands ('Heinz' would be likely), objects to supermarket own-brands. Strange? It's a bit, maybe a lot, about [i[ritual[/i], certainty, control...

Of course, I might be wrong about all this - We've rather limited info to go on...

(BTW, Vernon going away to school, a more wealthy individual, a scholarship, might have paid for that. Some families beggar themselves to send kids off to schools...)
 
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With his insistence on normalcy bordering on pathological for both of them, I wonder if the Dursley grandparents actually weren't.

Maybe there are things on his background he is deadly afraid of coming to light, beyond their contact with the magical world. Wouldn't;'t it be funny if it resulted that grandma and grandpa Dursley were the British version of the Addams family without the charm?
 
Nmaiz said:
Maybe there are things on his background he is deadly afraid of coming to light, beyond their contact with the magical world. Wouldn't;'t it be funny if it resulted that grandma and grandpa Dursley were the British version of the Addams family without the charm?
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While a fun idea, odds are more likely they were New Age, pot-smoking, 'flower power' hippies...
 
Honestly, the weirdest part I think is that I'm pretty sure that Vernon actually used to be a normal person. Like, one with actual likes and dislikes and a personality.

It's Petunia who has the normalcy obsession, and eventually I guess she rubbed off and infected him with it.
 
kaplo_blast said:
As fascinating as an insight into Vernon's motivation for being 'normal' that would be, it most likely isn't true. Vernon, like Dudley, attended Smeltings. Smeltings seems to be an boarding school, unless it's the standard in UK is for state schools to provide knickerbockers for their students (remember the nurse's comments that started the Dudley Diet arc?), which can't be cheap (the school, not the knickerbockers, although considering the uniform...). So more likely than not, Grandpa and Grandma Dursley were on the higher end of the income scale when raising Vernon.
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I wouldn't be too sure about that. My father grew up without much money—his mother was a first generation immigrant and his father died when he was young—but he also attended a Catholic private school. Not all private schools are the same, in terms of costs and who they cater to. It's also pretty easy to see how poor parents could value a private school education highly enough to go through some extra hardship if it means their child has better odds of living a better life.

Nmaiz said:
With his insistence on normalcy bordering on pathological for both of them, I wonder if the Dursley grandparents actually weren't.

Maybe there are things on his background he is deadly afraid of coming to light, beyond their contact with the magical world. Wouldn't;'t it be funny if it resulted that grandma and grandpa Dursley were the British version of the Addams family without the charm?
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Now that seems like it could be the seeds of a fun story. It turns out that Vernon is an Adams (or just one generation removed) and he became estranged from the main cast. At some point, Gomez and Morticia decide to try and reconnect, and then they find out about Harry. Bonus points if the Adams aren't actually connected to the wizarding world.

DestinyPlayer said:
Honestly, the weirdest part I think is that I'm pretty sure that Vernon actually used to be a normal person. Like, one with actual likes and dislikes and a personality.

It's Petunia who has the normalcy obsession, and eventually I guess she rubbed off and infected him with it.
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I could easily see that. Being perceived as normal can be an important thing for certain types of conservatives (see: how much angst being called weird caused the Republicans), but most of the time they also assume that perception is something of a given. Petunia being paranoid about normalcy, and causing Vernon to constantly be aware of it and how normal is something of an illusion, could have broken that perception and caused Vernon to enter his own spiral of hyperfixation and maladaptive behaviour.
 
Epsilon Rose said:
I wouldn't be too sure about that. My father grew up without much money—his mother was a first generation immigrant and his father died when he was young—but he also attended a Catholic private school. Not all private schools are the same, in terms of costs and who they cater to. It's also pretty easy to see how poor parents could value a private school education highly enough to go through some extra hardship if it means their child has better odds of living a better life.
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In regards to regular private scools being accessible to lower income families, you're absolutely correct. I know of a few people who attended the local religious school that were not financially well off. It's why I hedged the statement with "more likely than not".
However, in regards to Smeltings, this is a school that has, as part of their compulsory uniform, the Smelting Stick. Something that is used to hit each other with and that the institution believes is "great training for later life". If that doesn't scream 'Elite Boys Club', then I don't know what does. I highly doubt that a place with this attitude would open it's doors to the underprivileged, even if they could scrounge together the tuition without any payment options. Which led to my conclusion of Vernon growing up higher income than average, at least upper middle class.
 
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Ravenwood240 said:
The only time we saw him with guests in the house they had a very British pot roast with a pudding, which Dobie dumped on the woman's head, if I recall the book correctly after all these years.

It might have been a cake.
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It was referred to as a pudding, but in Britain "pudding" can refer to any sort of dessert, not just sweet, milk-based semisolids. So the pudding could easily have been a cake.

For example, the classic Christmas dessert plum pudding is a cake with plums in it (topped with a frosting that consists almost entirely of sugar and butter).
 
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kaplo_blast said:
However, in regards to Smeltings, this is a school that has, as part of their compulsory uniform, the Smelting Stick. Something that is used to hit each other with and that the institution believes is "great training for later life". If that doesn't scream 'Elite Boys Club'
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It sounds more pseudo-military, to me, with the author maybe pushing the idea a little too far. If military, then an ex-military relative might have been enough to get Vernon into there?

All-in-all, sounds like a nasty place to inflict on a child... 'Character building' is... something that needs to be done with very great care. The prospect of violence, around every corner... from peers or staff, really doesn't work.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
It sounds more pseudo-military, to me, with the author maybe pushing the idea a little too far. If military, then an ex-military relative might have been enough to get Vernon into there?

All-in-all, sounds like a nasty place to inflict on a child... 'Character building' is... something that needs to be done with very great care. The prospect of violence, around every corner... from peers or staff, really doesn't work.
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To play the tiniest possible Rowlings advocate (something I should never do, but internet) we only learn the purpose and utility of a "smelting stick" from Vernon Dursley, not exactly a bastion of truth and accuracy. It's entirely possible that he does not tell us the truthful use of said stick, only the use that bullies have adopted for said stick.
 
I've seen them described as riding crops/baton, basically a stick carried to denote status (and mostly a military thing)

Although the use of them by kids to hit each other sounds exactly like what I would expect from kids given them
 
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