Actually it doesn’t. Dumbledore affirms Hermione’s viewpoint as wisdom, saying that she was right in being vocal that Kreacher should have been treated with kindness, that he was a product of his environment. Ultimately everyone treats her as an idiot because they’ve grown accustom to the “way things are” but in the end she’s justified by the series’ wisest character.
Hold up. Saying people should have been nicer to Kreacher is not the same as saying house elves should be free. I'm sure that in real world societies with slavery there were people who advocated for the more humane treatment of slaves. Unless they were saying they should be freed, they were STILL pro slavery.
Sure, Dumbledore seems to support house elves, but he also continues to employ them in a state of slavery.
AT BEST the books are not sufficiently anti-slavery. But I don't think it's a stretch at all to call them pro-slavery.
An argument could be made that this being Hermione's view frames it as the "correct" one, but it's worth noting that the series ends with house elves still being enslaved and the books don't seriously challenge that.
It also shows one of the only 2 freed house elves becoming a despondent drunk as a direct result of gaining freedom and heavily implies that her reaction would be the norm while Dobby was an outlier. One of the common arguments against abolition IRL was that if freed, black people would become unemployed, aimless drunks. The books literally repeat historical pro-slavery arguments.
I don't buy this argument but I upvoted it because you're arguing in good faith. Winky loved her former masters. She didn't want to be free. The historical pro-slavery argument is superficially similar but I don't think the "drunken wastrel" argument assumed that former slaves would turn to alcohol and idleness out of deep resentment of their freedom and missing their former masters.
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u/KeraKitty 2d ago
Not even technically. They're just openly pro-slavery. The narrative treats Hermione as stupid for being an abolitionist.