What is the meaning of rights when a house-elf is afraid of heights? That’s something Hermione asks first at the Quidditch World Cup and later through her school life.
Winky is irreparably afraid of heights, and yet she is “forced to” drag an invisible Barty Crouch, the Younger, to the top stand to watch the Cup. And oh Winky is probably least interested in Quidditch.
Should Winky have a right to say no to something she does not like to do? Where does duty end and where does a house-elf’s will begin? And if there is a duty, where is the correlative right?
Suppression, suppression, Hermione dubs it. You wizards treat them like they are not humans!
But they are not humans!, Ron claims.
Doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings, Ron!, Hermione fights back.
Fighting back. The significance of rights is the power they give a person or a community to fight back. So Winky should have the power to say “No!” when everyone wants her to climb the top stand when she is afraid of heights. The power to protest when the wizarding community forces her to obey the orders of her “Master.”
That is what, according to Ronald Dworkin, is the most important aspect of the nature of rights. That rights empower the less powerful, with a different inclinaton, to assert their will against the more powerful. And that is how, Dworkin justifies even civil disobedience—because if rights are to live, they must be able to do the following two things.
- Be able to back the will of the less powerful against the more powerful.
- Be able to back the will of the less powerful against the more powerful when there is a conflict of interests between the two.
So for Hermione, like Dworkin, rights embody the power of an individual to say no to the society/State when the society/State wants him to do something which he does not want to do. (And here it is specifically the State- The Ministry of Magic maintains that all elves obey their masters or be taken to task by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.)
An individual. Because something becomes an individual when it sets itself apart from the rest. Individuality=Difference=Uniqueness. And this always makes the individual less in number=Not majority=Less powerful, until backed by rights.
But wizards don’t seem to see Winky as Winky. Winky is not an individual who is supposed to be different from the rest of the house-elves (who by their very communal nature are supposed to obey wizards.) Winky is no unique soul. Hermione, on the other hand, does see Winky as an individual. An individual, different from other elves…one who is afraid of heights. Hence SPEW to assert Winky’s rights.
It’s amazing how all this stuff rhymes!
Noodles and Prose 
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