Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] This, our last post of the season, was brought to you by an enthusiastic reader in honour of her sister Dr. J’s birthday this Friday.
This is a history column, and I’m not an entertainment critic, but it must be said: the season finale (the Christmas special, in the UK) of Downton Abbey was pretty weak. The verbal sparring between Cousin Violet and Cora’s mother was catty and unconvincing; the Barrow-Branson intrigue was simply bizarre (clenched fists?); and the stolen letter plot made very little sense and didn’t even redeem Bates.
Things were equally grim in the realm of historical detail. Foreshadowing is also a tricky thing when you’re dealing with real historical figures; it’s good to know, though, that Lady Mary absolutely won’t be surprised, in a dozen years, when the Prince of Wales takes up with the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Aunt Rosamund might have a touch of clairvoyance, too, when regretting the lack of binding legal documents around the adoption of Lady Edith’s daughter: adoption would not be formally recognized under English law until 1927. Finally, this is a matter of opinion, but I found it impossible to believe that Lord Grantham would be so puritanical when it came to Tom Branson’s sex life. A wink, a nudge, and a word to the wise about keeping village girls out of the sight of nosy servants would have been much more in line with the masculine sexual ethics of the day.
So why did I enjoy watching the show this season, and why am I glad that there will be a fifth season (besides the chance to read your excellent comments)? There’s no denying Downton’s popularity: season four’s debut was watched by some nine million in the UK and over ten million in the US. Obviously, there’s a potent pleasure to be found in the combination of nostalgia, class tourism, and sheer visual luxury offered by Downton. (Hardly an episode goes by when my friends and I don’t exclaim over some wardrobe item or other—Branson’s driving gloves or Harold’s two-tone shoes, for the masculine-of-center among us; Daisy’s pink seaside dress or the presentation gowns for the feminine.) But what, exactly, is underpinning this pleasure?
Touring country houses has been a staple of respectable recreation at least since Elizabeth Bennet fortuitously encounters Mr. Darcy while touring his estate at Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. As Peter Mandler has demonstrated, country houses were increasingly opened to visitors during the Victorian era: perhaps 100 houses were publicly advertised as open to visitors by the 1860s, and they attracted thousands of visitors. Yet by the era of Downton few of them were still open; anti-landlord sentiment and economic hard times combined to turn the mood against this kind of tourism. After World War II, interest returned, and this time the government and the National Trust (founded in 1895) worked together to use tourism, planning, and tax concessions to save country houses.
Some critics of the ‘heritage industry’, as it’s been dubbed, find it inherently, insidiously conservative. Touring country houses upholds the oppressive class hierarchies of the past, this argument runs, and tends to emphasize a small-c conservatism as well: valuing the preservation of what once was, rather than seeking innovation or change. Downton is often criticized on these grounds, with some justification. The show asks viewers to sympathize with a family openly clinging to hereditary privilege and disproportionate wealth without any particular display of talent or aptitude. We are invited to side with Mr. Carson when he puts Molesley in his place, and with Mrs. Hughes when she shames Edna Braithwaite. Lady Mary’s business acumen is in the service of her son, and Lady Edith’s rebellion is in the service of bearing her baby and raising her, if at a distance.
I think that’s all true, as far as it goes, but also that it fails to get at the heart of the show’s appeal. PBS viewers, after all, are not known for their enthusiasm to reinstate Victorian values, à la Margaret Thatcher. Rather, I think that Downton also appeals because of its ability to challenge the neo-Victorian values of our own time with a vision of a romanticized communal past.
Take Tom Branson, for example. On arrival at Downton, he was a radical socialist, borrowing Ruskin and Mill from Lord Grantham’s library and espousing the ideas of more advanced theorists, in addition, of course, to initiating a romantic relationship with Lady Sybil. But his sharp edges are smoothed by Downton. His effort to be a conscientious objector is thwarted by a minor medical defect. There’s a brief moment when he looks like he might be a dangerous Irish terrorist ready to kill a visiting general, but even that turns out to be a domesticated, pastoral threat: he was only going to throw some mud and motor oil. By season four, he’s become the estate agent, still interested in moderate Liberalism (or perhaps Labourism) but no longer the fire-breather he once was.
Tediously, the show rehearses Branson’s sense of not ‘belonging’ to Downton’s elite social world. But really, he’s almost entirely incorporated, to the point of turning in Rose for her socially inappropriate affair apparently without irony. There’s certainly a conservative arc here. But it’s equally striking that Lord Grantham and his family are portrayed as capable of absorbing Tom Branson despite national, ideological, religious, and class differences. It’s a vision of multi-cultural harmony, in a sense, very much at odds with the harsh rhetoric on immigrants currently in ascendency in Britain (and, of course, in the United States as well).
Downton functions like a utopian community in other respects, too. The characters, upstairs and downstairs, are tightly bound through gestures of reciprocal care. Lord Grantham helped Mr. Drewe hold onto his father’s tenancy on the estate; in turn, Mr. Drewe will keep Lady Edith’s secret and raise her child. Mr. Bates forges and steals to help Lord Grantham recover the purloined royal letter; Lady Mary, recognizing his loyalty to their family, burns the evidence that might point to Mr. Bates’s having murdered his wife’s attacker. Isobel unbends enough to attend the festivities in London, recognizing that her role in the family outweighs her disinclination toward such events. Visually, two couples anchor the season’s end. Tom Branson dancing with Cousin Violet signals the transcendence of difference; Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes holding hands wading into the sea provides reassurance of stability and continuity.
Much of the work of this column has been to measure Downton Abbey against our understanding of historical realities in the 1920s. But in the end, of course, the show is much more meaningful in its present context: it is not a time capsule but an antique mirror, reflecting current anxieties and aspirations in the fancy dress of another era. It conveys a certain conservatism, and even more, a certain lack of imagination in challenging some of the tropes, especially about women and violence, that dominate modern culture. But it also provides a deeply appealing vision of a communal way of life, one built adaptation and flexibility as well as tradition and structure. The wealthy, at Downton, accept their privileges, but they accept social obligations towards the lower classes, too, without rancor. Difference may rankle, but it is ultimately absorbed and reconciled. Downton Abbey’s pleasures may be simple, but the comfort of the world it portrays says much, I think, about the inadequacies of punitive discourses about poverty and immigration in our own world. And so despite its failings, this historian will keep on watching.
***
Sources
Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen London, 1987)
Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)
Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory Vol. I: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994)
Tags: downton abbey, history, see you next season!, television, watching downton abbey with an historian
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That’s all well and good, but you failed to give us a screen shot of Lizzie Bennet looking at the portait of Fitzwilliam Darcy hanging in Pemberley’s gallery. It’s so close, but just not there. I mean, I understand that doesn’t fit your story as well, but still.
OMG look they made it a stamp! http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65977000/jp…
THEY MADE IT A STAMP
The fact that Tom’s character did such a dramatic change in interest and personality is one of the more troubling versions of the show. I mean, I get that becoming a father, losing your wife, and not being allowed back into your country (although, wouldn’t he be allowed back to Ireland now?) will substantially alter your life, but I still find it hard to believe that he’s bought into the the symbolism and importance of Downton the estate as much as he has.
Also, one of Mary’s beaux is heir to a substantial estate in Ulster. I find it completely implausible that Tom will not have any issues with that when he finds out.
He would definitely be allowed back in Ireland! It’s the Irish Free State by 1922, and to be fair there’s a Civil War on, but since Branson didn’t take any particularly controversial stances on any of the issues that led to the Civil War there would be no problem at all with his returning. It’s true, though, that lots of Irish people in England decided to stay, usually for work reasons, so he’s not a historical anomaly in that sense.
Interesting point about Blake being an heir to an estate in Ulster. Not all of the historical province of Ulster became part of the new Northern Ireland (the six counties of Ireland that stayed within the UK after 1921). But Northern Ireland saw terrible violence and a systematic marginalization and disenfranchisement of Catholics in the early 1920s, so they could definitely make it a method by which to re-radicalize Tom. I mean, they probably won’t, because that would be too interesting, but they could.
Ugh, yes, I heard that Blake was a heir to an estate in Ulster, and red flags for “interesting” went off. But, nope, just evolved into a method for Mary to talk about him “being on our side.”
I get so frustrated with what they do with Tom: he could be such an interesting character and he’s just … not written that way.
Like, he could take little Sybie to visit his mother, and that could be an interesting plot line. He could engage Blake in discussions as to the future of landed estates. They could spend more time talking about challenges he faces as land steward. Seriously. Just give him something to do.
Guys, I’m so sorry, this is so annoying and self-centered but: the fact that FASCinating has become a Toast-ism (and by that I mean it has been used on AT LEAST 2 or 3 occasions after my post) brings me untold pleasures and warm-fuzzies. Okay off to read the article now; these have been an excellent way to revisit the season since I was naughty and watched it all during the fall before it aired on PBS (whoops!)
Okay now I read it and I can say this was my favorite installment yet. Mo, I hope you’ll continue to provide perspective on other media throughout the year until we are reunited with the Downton gang.
Thank you! I’m generally more of a book person than a TV person (shocking, I know)–are there any other historically-themed (British) shows I should be checking out? Please don’t say Selfridge’s, I can’t stand the ads…
Call the Midwife!! It starts March 30, and is a little after your time (East End London in the 1950s-1960s) but there’s rich material in the creation of public housing, the development of the NHS, immigration and racism and more!
Call of the Midwife! Also BBC.
Ugh, I felt this season missed the mark with its focus. All sorts of things that were potentially interesting were shelved as side-plots. I wish they would have moved the focus from Mary to Edith – lord knows she deserves it. Mary’s issues with mourning and deciding that she’s not ready for another potential husband are important for her character, but not nearly as interesting as possibly becoming a real lady-journalist, editor, and maybe losing your lover to baby future Nazis. They should have let Tom also come to the front, really dealing with his “not fitting in” and toying with going back to Ireland. Mary could have come up as a compliment to Tom’s storyline.
Has anyone else noticed how 1-dimensional Cora has become since the beginning? All she does now is smile pretty and present her 1st cousin-once-removed-in-law to the King ( and why, exactly, were Rose’s parents not present for one of the most important days in the life of their only daughter? I know they’ve have frosty relations all around, but seriously – no wonder Rose is acting out).
Team Edith! At this point she really is more interesting than Mary.
Oh man, when Thomas like appeared out of the shadows like an opera villain, I DIED. (Although they really have no fucking idea what to do with Thomas anymore, which is a shame.)
One of many reasons why I no longer watch the show. I miss when Thomas secretly makes out with gay Dukes and has back alley cigarette schemes with Ms O’Brien and cries because dead soldiers make him sad.
Also I JUST FOUND OUT MS O’BRIEN IS NO LONGER ON THE SHOW??? okay so now no one I like does anything in it anymore except Edith and there is not enough Edith to justify watching
NO, SHE’S NOT EVEN THERE, WHICH IS PART OF THE REASON WHY THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THOMAS.
But like, he doesn’t even have secret makeouts with at least one of Mary’s new suitors? COME ON. Season 5 needs to be thoroughly committed to Thomas getting his groove back.
Right??? What made Thomas so compelling was his dynamic WITH O’BRIEN. They balanced each other out and challenged each other. Now he’s just kind of floundering, and they didn’t give us enough reason to care or wonder about why he’s manipulating Baxter.
Giving the spotlight to Edith might have been enough to breathe new life into the show. Maybe next season?
I feel somehow duty-bound to point out that haters of ‘an historian’ should really go to the right, since most right-thinking people who prefer ‘an historian’ are already on the left [side of the road].
GUYZ! Does it not point to Bates having murdered Vera if he’s both an accomplished forger and pickpocket?! Isn’t stealing the crime Vera supposedly committed which Bates took the rap for? DARK BATES ASCENDANT!
On the other hand, how dumb to leave that ticket. There’s really no need. DarkBates is much smarter than that.
Yes! Thank you! Halfway through the episode my roommate and I started calculating whether he now technically counts as a serial killer.
I took it as him possibly not remembering if he did leave the ticket in the coat, since his beef was that he wanted to “check the pockets” and not “I left something in the pockets.” But oh well.
I don’t think Bates murdered Vera – that would undermine his intense-martyr-ness (one of the qualities he shares with Anna) and undermine how twisted Vera was. The fact that he’s an accomplished forger and pickpocket probably means he has a big fat dark past during which he got with Vera. As it stands I think it tells us that Bates really was Vera’s equal in a lot of ways, except he decided to turn over a new leaf and she hated him for it. There’s nothing either of them wouldn’t do to get what they want. Bates is just using his dark powers for good…ish.
Also, happy birthday, Dr. J., and thanks, kind reader-sponsor!