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Harry Potter's Privet Drive is unequivocally a suburb. While they are at "Number Four", the houses are all blandly similar, perhaps a cookie-cutter housing development. Vernon Dursley is in industrial drill sales and Petunia Dursley is a stay-at-home "mother" of two, though she spends most of the effort on Dudley. These couple of chapters every book, where Harry lies low and gets abused at Privet Drive, are tales of suburban doldrum and wasted life. Vernon lives for the capitalist dream of fancy cars and vacations, Petunia lives on gossip and spying on the neighbors, Dudley lives for food, bullying, and quick thrills. All the Dursleys are about conformism and consumerism, sign-posts for the suburban life. By being "neglected" of these things, Dumbledore says Harry has "escaped the appalling damage" done to Dudley (Book 6, Chapter 3). Harry is much more comfortable at the "rural" Hogwarts Castle, though admittedly that's got hundreds of friends, jinxes for any craving, mad drug potions, and who knows what else. It's really not a fair comparison, 9/10 would prefer Hogwarts' hybrid urban/rural feel. Also, side note, my HN name is a combination of HP + Windows/Linux humor. I have no idea if many people got that over the years. |