A Short Ponder on Downton Abbey

 

Really, Downton Abbey is just an example for discussing new works set in the past (various Downton spoils ahead.)  When writers today pen period pieces, antiquated socially-unjust beliefs are a big consideration.  There’s a pull to align the heroes with modern thinking: early-19^th-century good guys are abolitionists, early-20^th-century good guys support women’s suffrage, and so on.  Understandable; many aren’t straight, white, able-bodied, land-owning Christian males, and people in general don’t root for bigots.  But go too far, and historical credibility is lost. 

 

Downton Abbey is inconsistent on this issue, tending to fall on the anachronistic side.  In the end, none of the Crawley girls acquiesce to their parents’ marital plans.  Each forges her own path, sometimes extreme (Sybil eloping with the socialist chauffeur, Edith cavorting with a married man) sometimes less so (though Mary eventually marries Matthew, it’s because she loves him, not because he’s the heir to Downton.)  And despite unhappiness or disapproval, Lord and Lady Grantham always ultimately accept matters.  Plus, Sybil is a huge supporter of women’s rights – following the suffragette movement, helping a housemaid find better employment, even small things like wearing harem pants – and Edith learns to drive and writes a newspaper column.

 

Being gay puts more than Thomas’s job at stake – homosexual acts were illegal in the U.K. until the ‘60s, so his outing is a potential police matter.  However, nearly everyone is on his side.  Mrs. Hughes is her usual wonderful self, Bates and Anna reach out to help, and Lord Grantham, one of the least open-minded on the show, says it’s nothing he didn’t see at Eton.  Furthermore, it’s widely agreed that Thomas didn’t choose to be gay.  Even Carson, whose reaction is the harshest, admits that Thomas can’t help his orientation.  My LGBT history is incomplete, but I’d have thought it was much later before average people believed sexuality isn’t a choice.

 

Downton didn’t really explore race until black jazz singer Jack appeared in series 4.  Very light steps here – all the Crawleys double-take when they first see him and tend to talk stiffly around his color, but they’re not openly rude to or dismissive of him.  There’s a sense that they’re at least mildly racist but careful not to be seen as such, which seems wildly inaccurate for 1920.  When Jack gets engaged to Rose, Mary cites societal disapproval and Rose’s own murky motivations in her argument against it.  The two speak cordially to one another about “if [they] lived in a better world,” focusing on the larger idea of social acceptance rather than what Mary thinks of a black man being romantically involved with her cousin, which feels like a copout.

 

All historically sketchy, but that’s the catch 22; do I want to see Mary be racist?  Of course not.  Lord Grantham’s popularity has nosedived as his less-enlightened attitudes have been revealed – while he’s tepidly tolerant of homosexuality and mostly keeps mum on race, his “Father Knows Best” approach to women is uncomfortable, and his blatantly anti-Catholic statements are just gross.  And it’s true that Thomas probably would’ve fared much worse in real life, but how could I have handled open rejection?  Carson “sympathetically” admitting it’s not Thomas’s fault he’s been “twisted by nature into something foul” is horrible.  If Anna or Mrs. Hughes had similarly denigrated him (not out of the question at that time,) I might’ve been done with the show.

 

All this is a long, rambling way to say I don’t know the answer.  What’s appropriate?  What’s true to history?  What will audiences accept?  It’ll take someone savvier than me to figure it out.