Often, certain words or phrases from literature or cinema simply become a part of our everyday vocabulary. Harry Potter's cupboard under the stairs is one such phrase — believe it or not it’s actually an address in the Potterverse — that has entered the annals of history in the context of popular children’s literature.
Harry Potter lived in a cupboard under the stairs until he was almost 11 years old. A scrawny little boy, Potter is introduced when Aunt Petunia bangs on the door to this cupboard — more like a closet really — in a bid to jerk Harry out of his sleep. Although the Dursleys had to give in eventually and move Harry to Dudley’s second bedroom, the cupboard under the stairs has become an indelible part of the canon. Let’s look at some details that might have escaped us in the process.
10 The Cupboard Was Spider-infested
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone threw audiences headlong into the magical world of Harry, with wands and owls who brought in the post, disapparating wizards, three-headed dogs, and brilliant little witches with bushy hair and big teeth.
As viewers got sucked into the magical universe of this knobbly kneed wizard, some might have overlooked the little details about the cupboard under the staircase where our hero lived for the better part of his childhood. Among other things, how many remember that Harry’s closet was infested with spiders? This was not very surprising since, in any other house, this cupboard would have been a natural choice for a broom closet.
9 The Cupboard Was Not Well-Lit
Art by Jim Kay.
The impression given by the films is that Harry’s cupboard was perhaps not that bad. For instance, apart from the junk surrounding his bed, it could, in fact, be a cozy little den for a little boy.
However, the books confirm that the cupboard was dark. It’s not hard to imagine that it was very badly lit, perhaps with a single dimly lit bulb flickering away, and very little light coming in from outside. After all, who builds windows inside a cupboard under the stairs?
8 Sawdust Would Fall On Harry, Thanks To Dudley!
Life with the Dursleys was by no means easy! Harry’s huge brutish cousin would jump on the stairs at the exact spot above Harry’s cupboard and cover the latter with sawdust.
It seems strange to think of ‘the boy who lived’ being tortured by his spoilt, lumbering oaf of a cousin in his growing up days. Hopefully, some strange things happened during their childhoods; perhaps, Dudley suddenly started tap dancing in the air each time he tried to jump or simply found himself standing at the bottom of the stairs every time he tried to run up and down the staircase. Maybe Rowling simply hasn’t revealed that yet.
7 Harry’s Cupboard Had Electrical Wires & Whatnots
The cupboard under the stairs was, for all intents and purposes, hazardous to health and safety. It had, naturally, not been designed with the idea of someone, especially a child, living inside it.
In The Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry wakes up in his little closet with a bunch of electrical lines, wires, boxes and boards on the wall beside him. Odious as they were, did the Dursleys seriously plan to blow up their little nephew and possibly the entire house, knowing very well he could have magical powers over which he had no control?
6 Little Harry Had Some Friends Inside The Cupboard
No, we don’t mean the spiders, although more on that later. The friends Harry had were, sadly, inanimate. They were the toy soldiers and horses that he played with while hanging out all alone in his unhealthy, unsafe, pathetic little closet.
There is the unlikely possibility that the Dursleys gifted the soldiers to Harry at some point in time. But what seems more likely is that Harry pilfered through some of Dudley’s old stuff and brought them to his cupboard to keep himself engaged. It was this same toy army that Harry gets a wee bit nostalgic about when he visits the cupboard for one last time in the final book.
5 It Was A Tiny Cupboard
Since Harry lived in it while he was still quite small himself, he doesn’t quite realize the grievous lack of space in the cupboard, and neither does the reader, until the very last book. When the boy wizard is first introduced, he seems to fit inside the little closet. But it was, in fact, tiny.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, before saying goodbye to 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey, Harry gave Hedwig a tour of the house, taking a trip down memory lane, or at least the few memories of the house that were worth remembering.
At this time, he bangs his head on the low door frame of the closet as he tries to stand straight inside it. It goes without saying that the Dursleys would have had to offer him a bedroom anyway as he grew bigger and taller. Let's not forget they moved him out primarily because they were terrified of the letters from Hogwarts which were addressed to Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the stairs.
4 The Cupboard Was Stacked With Shoes & Umbrellas
The cupboard, long forgotten by the time the final book rolls around, is revisited by Harry in The Deathly Hallows as he bids the house goodbye. Harry had moved into the smallest bedroom in the house in the very first book but the cupboard was where he spent 10 years of his life.
By the time Harry revisits it, the cupboard is stacked with shoes and umbrellas. Clearly, once Harry moved out, it went back to being a normal cupboard instead of one that housed a little boy.
3 Meet Alastair, The Spider
Art by Jim Kay.
Okay, this is where things get a little dark. Screenwriter Steve Kloves, who adapted most of the Potter novels into movies, had given little Harry a friend called Alastair. Alastair was a spider and was not in the original stories.
Alastair hung out with Harry in the cupboard under the stairs, and the latter would talk to him. It was Kloves’ vision to make Harry seem a little crazy on top of being friendless so that the fantasy in the rest of the story would get an added layer. Alastair was cut out from the final script but it’s definitely one of the little known details about the cupboard.
2 The Cupboard Might Have Driven Harry Crazy
This is purely conjecture but a rather depressing fan-theory that draws on the previous point suggesting that Harry might have actually lost his mind in the cupboard. If not quite driven to that point, he would have been at least desperately sad and lonely that he could have made up the entire saga that followed in his head.
Of course, this is simply a theory and while the idea is crushing to any Potter fan, Rowling herself apparently never quite rebuffed it completely, although she never endorsed it either. For everyone's sanity, let's hope that the bespectacled little boy really did leave the cupboard and plunge himself into a magical universe.
1 The Cupboard Symbolized Abuse
This is again rather dark but it seems relevant to stress here that the cupboard under the stairs represented a form of child abuse. Harry Potter, before he knew the truth about his existence, was a victim of trauma and abuse at the hands of his aunt and uncle.
While the cupboard might have become iconic like so many other concepts in the Potterverse, the fact is that it symbolized a very dark childhood for the boy wizard. Harry was emotionally abused and had he not discovered his true identity, he might indeed have been stuck in the cupboard for a very long time.
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