Come On Eileen

COME ON EILEEN

By JoTwo

What happens to you in childhood probably influences personality in later life. I think the same idea can be applied JKR's fictional characters, as she makes up backgrounds for them. I am interested in learning more about what drives Severus Snape. Therefore his childhood is something I want to know more about. In your formative years a huge influence is your parents. In HBP we found out that Snape's mother was a witch called Eileen Prince. As his mother, Eileen must have had some impact on him, so I thought it would be useful to look at what evidence we have about her characterisation. Therefore in this essay I am going to list what we actually know about Snape's mother, even if some is stating the obvious, and what conjectures we can make from canon.

Canon facts about Eileen Prince

"The picture showed a skinny girl of around fifteen. She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face."

On Hermione later telling them she was Snape's mother, Ron comments, 'I thought she wasn't much of a looker.'

Hermione says:

"'It's just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the book. You see ... she was Snape's mother!'"

In reality there is no way she could know this for a fact and it could just have been bought second hand. But because JKR has Hermione stating this, it implies that the author is using this reliable, intelligent character as a mouthpiece for exposition, and that Hermione is therefore correct in her interpretation, rather than trying to score a point.

Also because it was second-hand and Severus had it in his possession before sixth year, when it isn't the set text until NEWT level Potions, I think it's fair to assume that it was his mother's, rather than it being bought for him, as he didn't need it then.

We can work this out because she had a half-blood son. In canon half-bloods are either the offspring of a pure-blood and a Muggle-born e.g. Harry himself, Tonks or one magical, one Muggle parent e.g. Tom Riddle, Seamus Finnigan. As Severus Snape is a half-blood and his father was a Muggle, then Eileen has to be a pure-blood.

I know Harry can misinterpret things, but until we learn otherwise, I am working on the assumption that this was Tobias and Eileen.

Name meanings

This may have another significance apart from the surname Prince allowing Severus/JKR to make up the punning nickname/title of book 6. To state the obvious, Prince suggests royalty and aristocracy. It fits with Eileen being a pureblood. It implies she possibly originated from a distinguished, wealthy family i.e. one like James Potter's parents rather than the Weasleys.

(Compare JKR's description of the Blacks. The House of Black's motto was Toujours Pur and the family tapestry was entitled The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Sirius said that in their minds being a Black and therefore a pure-blood made you practically royal. Also while clearing out 12 Grimmauld Place they find a book called Nature's Nobility: a Wizarding Genealogy. It seems to be a common equation among the wizarding population that magic equals nobility.)

Eileen is often considered the Gaelic/Celtic version of the name Helen.

Helen means "light" or alternatively "the shining one", "bright one", or "torchlight".

(It also means "corposant". This is phenomenon now also known as St Elmo's Fire. It is an electro-luminescent discharge that occurs when gas becomes ionised during a storm. In pre-Christian times this was called Helen, after Helen of Troy. The other name, corposant, derives from the Latin "corpus sanctum", meaning holy body or holy moon.)

Given the way JKR names characters to reflect their character or plot function, all these associations with light could imply that Eileen was on the side of Light in the sense of good.

It suggests that Eileen was the opposite of dark, in the sense of being connected to evil i.e. the Dark Arts and/or the prejudices of Dark pure-bloods.

Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world, over whom the Trojan War was fought. She was later described in a play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson, in the immortal line, 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?'

However JKR makes Eileen plain. JKR does not bestow ironic names on her characters. Therefore this could imply that JKR is using the name for its deeper meaning.

Extrapolation from Eileen's Gobstones Captaincy

Whether Eileen would have been considered a nerd, a geek, an anorak etc as she was still interested in it in her mid teens, I don't know.

However, gobstones is mainstream enough in wizarding society for there to be an Official Gobstones Club incorporated within the Department of Magical Games and Sports at the Ministry of Magic.

However this may just be because JKR doesn't mention gobstones that often rather than being meant to imply that it's a boy's pursuit and that Eileen was unusual. Possibly as girls grow up and usually get more concerned about their appearance they might lose interest in a game where they are liable to get squirted in the face with gunge, but there is nothing in canon either way.

From this you could argue that she had some leadership and organisational skills as a teenager. Playing any game requires practice and can lead to competitiveness, and a desire to win. Any of these traits could be applicable to Eileen.

It proves that Eileen was considered suitable for representing her school, even if it was in a minority sport, which implies she was felt to be a responsible, sensible student who wouldn't show Hogwarts up. While it was hardly the Triwizard Tournament, she was competing with foreign school teams in an event that was prestigious enough to feature in the Daily Prophet.

Conjectures about Eileen Prince at Hogwarts

As Mrs Eileen Snape

They may have accepted the marriage as there was an announcement in the Prophet. However they probably weren't very keen on Muggles and accepted it grudgingly. The fact that the announcement was tiny suggests that they put it in the newspaper because it was socially expected, but they weren't exactly drawing attention to it, which implies they were not really happy.

She may have been isolated from her family if she lived in the Muggle world and they had not been thrilled with her choice of husband. Possibly their attitude was she'd made her bed and now she could lie in it.

I calculated this from the following conjectures. Eileen's age when she started NEWT level Potions was 16 years plus approximately 50 years for when the book was published, which equals 66. Severus turns 38 in January of the HBP academic year. 66 minus 38 equals 28.

Severus could have learned curses from getting hold of books as a child rather than his mother teaching him. Also I don't think a powerful witch who knew lots of Dark magic would let a Muggle dominate her. As stated previously, the meaning of Eileen being light suggests she wasn't Dark.

JKR said Snape has been loved (Mugglenet/TLC interview).

She didn't say by whom, but presumably at least one person who loved him was his own mother.

Also in canon even mothers with unpleasant sides to their personalities still love their children e.g. Petunia, Narcissa (the exception to the rule being Mrs Black, and even she may only have hated Sirius, as she thought Regulus was the better son).

Conclusion

I originally was only interested in Eileen Prince because she was the mother of Severus Snape. However, as I've looked into her, I've become interested in her as a character in her own right. Considering that she hardly appears in canon we know quite a lot about her. At the minimum we know that she was a plain, sulky pure-blood teenager who liked Gobstones and represented her school in competition and studied NEWT Potions. We also know about her as a wife and mother. She married a Muggle but in my interpretation of canon the marriage does not seem to have worked out and she may have been a victim of abuse, at least verbally. In fact for essentially a character that is little more than a walk-on, she is quite well developed. I pity her while finding her a convincingly flawed but fundamentally decent person.