The main thing that strikes me about this chapter is how *awful* Aunt Marge really is.
It also explains a lot about why the Dursley household is as dreadful as it is. Marge is Vernon's sister, and that poisonous virulousness towards anything that doesn't form part of their own little world would seem to be a family trait. Which, when they're together, reinforces itself as they gang up on their target.
Petunia, on the other hand, as we're beginning to discover more and more as the books go on - and particularly in OotP - isn't quite as vicious and condemnatory, even if she generally supports their viewpoint. She's Lily's sister, after all, and while we don't yet know what mix of fear of the unknown/different, jealousy, repugnance, rejection and social climbing have prompted her to so wholly deny her sister and her sister's family for what they are, we do know that she has occasional moments of weakness that Vernon does not. He leads; she takes her cues from him.*
I'm reasonably sure that she married Vernon because he was so vehemently against everything in her life that made her feel uncomfortable and/or that she wanted to turn her back on, that she felt he was the safe option. I can't see even Vernon at 20 being particularly loveable!
* Does she follow his lead a little too much? She doesn't seem to have much of a life of her own, beyond Vernon's wife, Dudley's mother. I still wonder whether one of the big reveals of book seven will be that the Evanses were a family of squibs living incognito in the Muggle world, and that Lily's big crime against Petunia was to break out of that.
(Also: I spent all of yesterday evening scanning PoA so that I can convert it to ebook format to read on the train over the next month. This is clearly All. Your. Fault. *g*)
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It also explains a lot about why the Dursley household is as dreadful as it is. Marge is Vernon's sister, and that poisonous virulousness towards anything that doesn't form part of their own little world would seem to be a family trait. Which, when they're together, reinforces itself as they gang up on their target.
Petunia, on the other hand, as we're beginning to discover more and more as the books go on - and particularly in OotP - isn't quite as vicious and condemnatory, even if she generally supports their viewpoint. She's Lily's sister, after all, and while we don't yet know what mix of fear of the unknown/different, jealousy, repugnance, rejection and social climbing have prompted her to so wholly deny her sister and her sister's family for what they are, we do know that she has occasional moments of weakness that Vernon does not. He leads; she takes her cues from him.*
I'm reasonably sure that she married Vernon because he was so vehemently against everything in her life that made her feel uncomfortable and/or that she wanted to turn her back on, that she felt he was the safe option. I can't see even Vernon at 20 being particularly loveable!
* Does she follow his lead a little too much? She doesn't seem to have much of a life of her own, beyond Vernon's wife, Dudley's mother. I still wonder whether one of the big reveals of book seven will be that the Evanses were a family of squibs living incognito in the Muggle world, and that Lily's big crime against Petunia was to break out of that.
(Also: I spent all of yesterday evening scanning PoA so that I can convert it to ebook format to read on the train over the next month. This is clearly All. Your. Fault. *g*)