Dissecting Downton — A few words before the series disappears forever
Patricia Bradley
The Downton denizens are quick stepping to the final episode with such alacrity that commentators will have to get in their final words right now, since the end of a television series, unlike films, deep-sixes any later examination. No matter how many millions watched Twin Peaks, or Mad Men or The Sopranos, and no matter how well written, all that later exists is a slight vapor of nostalgia. Thus, some bullet points.
What was the series all about, really?
Yes, indeed, adapting to change, but just enough. Even the privileged have to adjust, at least somewhat.
Really?
I look at Downton Abbey not as the story of the ultimate insiders, but as a story about outliers, outsiders; that is, the most of us who generally want to be somewhere different from where life, or ourselves, has put us? Outliers are everywhere, even in an abbey, which is the first clue, since they are not monks, that the Downton clan is not exactly placed. In fact, they could just be passing through as we learn, during a tour villagers are allowed to take, they don’t even know the pictures on the wall.
And they live in Yorkshire
But what really clinches outside status for them is that they live in Yorkshire. What was Julian Fellowes thinking by putting his aristocratic family in the country’s industrial North, Bronte Country, where it storms and rains and walks are on heaths, not lovely grasslands?
It is this geography that most accounts for the Crawley’s outsider status. Despite Lady Mary’s supposed quick trips “up” to London, quite impossible given the distance, it is the miles and the general disregard for the region that separates the family from the power and prestige of London and even marks the family as a kind of lower-end aristocracy. At a time when country weekends were routine for King George V and his circle, involving much prowling of bedrooms, Downton is not on the list (and perhaps explains why Countess Grantham is quick to offer overnight accommodation to anyone who pops in). Their circle of aristocratic friends is quite small, the closest is the “Shrimpie” clan in Scotland, an outlier region if there ever was one.
Then there is the family
No boys here. The series begins with Lady Mary’s efforts to be named her father’s successor (as occurred in the Fellowes’ household). Even the redoubtable Dowager Countess cannot change primogeniture laws. Mary’s suitability might be questioned anyway as she endangers the narrow ledge of family respectability after a Downton visitor dies in the wrong bed. (Escape to the U.S. is her backup plan.) And then there is Lady Grantham, who has bought the rank with her American inheritance, not so unusual for the time, but not so welcomed when it is offered by a Jewish American heiress. Anti-Semitism is one of Downton’s themes, and properly so considering that in 1905 Parliament passed the Alien Act act aimed at preventing the arrival of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe (who came to the U.S. instead). The theme is re-visited when another family outlier, Rose, whose outsider position is already in play by an imminent divorce of her parents, marries into a wealthy Jewish family. Wisely, the pair resettles the U.S. Sweet Sybil, of course, marries the chauffeur, who, in the later episodes certainly appears to have thoroughly recovered from his outlier status but still provides saucy gossip in London circles. Which brings us to poor Edith, dramatically left at the altar and now an unmarried mother. All this family fumbling is headed by Lord Grantham, who is rather like the father in Pride and Prejudice, quite unable to grasp the realities of his situation. Matthew Crawley rescues him from financial disaster, and in wartime, Robert Crawley can barely muster a uniform and serves the war effort from the trenches of his house, where all others, including the women, reign.
The women who really reign of course, are Cousin Isobel, who is unapologetic and unworried about her class, even when scorned, and the Dowager Countess, the traditionalist. Isobel might be something of an outsider, considered a minor relative, but nonetheless represents middle-class authority derived from her absolute sense that she is no outsider at all. Meanwhile, the Dowager Countess, an insider in her world, struggles with the angst of maintaining position. No wonder she is queen of the withering remark, the last of her arsenal.
The servants, outliers too?
In the first years of the series, utilizing various versions of Yorkshire accents that might be called “Yorkshire lite” (adopted so viewers could understand the dialogue), the servants are hardly eaten up with class anxiety. But the creeping appearance of small opportunity comes with its handmaiden, yearning, as in Moseley’s small dream to teach in the village schools. These are warm vignettes for the American audience, as we generally come from the serving classes and can still believe that upward mobility will occur. But here’s the rub. The script calls for periodic references to Ripon and York, real places, but never do we hear about Manchester and Leeds, home of the industrial might of the North and also to the worst of factory abuses, including child labor. There’s not much mobility here, unless, as in my family, it is immigration to the U.S. While the Crawleys may accept, the slight improvements in their servants’ lot, even Cousin Isobel cannot acknowledge this ominous behemoth hovering over the next hill. It is a little Marxist lesson perhaps, a little class anxiety can be handled, but what happens when the great unwashed realize they do not want to be where they are?
What about Barrow?
As a gay man in his time, Thomas Barrow (the name of a pirate incidentally) is cast as the ultimate outsider. He removes himself to its farthest reaches by his wartime cowardice and his in-house machinations, engendering distrust just about everywhere. Even the family pushes him out, forgetting his once-courageous rescue in a Downton fire.
Gay Barrow represents as much the archetype of gay evil as those depictions of gay men and women in early film renderings. Even more to stereotype, Barrow looks to suicide for release, the way movies used to deal with gay characters. (Think of Shirley Maclaine in The Children’s Hour). What are we to make of this representation that even disallows Barrow to go “up” to London to have a look at the busy club life of a big city? Poor Barrow imprisons himself in a capsule, seeking acceptance from others when it should be from himself.
And the point is?
It is another question: Can we expect anything revolutionary from a writer who is himself a solid member of aristocratic circles, as is Fellowes, accompanied by a well-born wife (who was story editor of the series), and now, as Baron Kitchener-Fellowes serves in the House of Lords on the Conservative side? Well, he wrote an English best-seller called Snobs, about the nuances of aristocratic life, and Downton certainly brings to life those eccentricities and prejudices. He also wrote a film script based on Vanity Fair, William Macepace Thackeray’s satire of upperclass life. Indeed, the Downton Crawleys even carry the same surname as Thackeray’s self-obsessed and striving family, including the titular head, the clueless “Raudon Crawley.” In Downton, Fellowes offers the Thackeray interest in the aristocratic class, but the Fellowes satire is muted. And Fellowes, also like Thackeray, makes no broad judgement. We can quite end up liking, even envying, the certainty of place held by our Crawleys, whatever it means for the rest of us.
And yet and yet, how we want to take more from Downton than an ending to an entertaining immersion in another time. If there is a larger scope, in this time of fleeing refugees, is it to understand how the world is composed of outsiders and the enormity of managing that fact?
Patricia Bradley is emerita professor at Temple University whose last book was The Making of American Culture, 1900–1920 (Harper Collins, 2010).
