In their chapter, “Were the Malfoys Aristocrats?: The Decline and Fall of the Pure-Blooded”, Laura Loiacono and Grace Loiacono propose the idea that despite the fact that the world of Harry Potter does not have actual aristocratic titles, there are still certain families who can be seen as aristocratic by definition. The main example used is the Malfoy family. The Malfoy family portray themselves as cold, uncaring upper-class individuals who fight to maintain a hold onto their own class privilege.

One of the points that the authors makes is about the home that the Malfoy’s live in. Malfoy Manor is the only residence mentioned in the series that has reference to being a manor house. “Manor houses are a holdover from the medieval period, when feudalism (also called the “manorial” system) assigned legal and economic power over an area to the lord of the manor; centuries after the end of feudalism, there are very few buildings left in Britain today that can legally lay claim to being a manor (Page 177).” The authors further claim that the Malfoy’s ownership of a manor home is one of their biggest claims to being considered “aristocratic” in the wizarding world.

Another point that the authors make points out the use of servants. “Muggle aristocrats in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries employed servants, although they did not exert quite the level of control over the servants in their employ that wizards exert over their house-elves (page 177-178).” Muggle aristocrats, as well as other wealthy employers, would use servants to do whatever work they deemed unworthy of their status. The wizarding community used house-elves as their servants, and though not all of them were as torturous to their house elves as the Malfoys were to their previous house-elf, Dobby, muggle aristocrats were in return not always nice to their servants.

Marriage is another resemblance that the Malfoy’s have in comparison to muggle aristocrats. “Because a “pure” ancestry underlay both groups’ claims to superiority, marriage outside the group would shame the whole family and “contaminate” their line of descent (page 178).” The examples that the authors give from the Harry Potter universe, is Andromeda Black, who married muggle born Ted Tonks and had a daughter, Nymphadora Tonks, and her family burned her off of the family tree and disowned her for it. In real life, Vita Sackville-West married Harold Nicholson, a man with no title, her family was upset due to the fact that she decided to marry beneath her station. Marrying the right person was very key to maintain station and to disregard that to the Malfoy’s and aristocrats is beyond imagination.

Overall, it is very interesting to see the comparisons between the Malfoy’s and the aristocrats we have experienced in the real world. The author’s ideas are very convincing and despite the fact that the wizarding world does not give such titles, I believe that the idea that the Malfoy’s are as close to aristocracy as the Harry Potter universe gets. They feel entitled, have money, power, servants, and believe that their beliefs are the superior way of life, like many aristocrats are portrayed in the muggle world.