Gosford Park and Downton Abbey
Jul. 29th, 2012 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOne of the criticisms I've heard leveled against Downton Abbey is that it presents too rosy a view of the British class system: that the Crawleys are far too nice and the servants far too content with their places at the Abbey. I think this is an oversimplification, which I will explain by comparing Downton Abbey to one of its creator's earlier works, the country house murder mystery Gosford Park.
One thing you cannot possibly say about Gosford Park is that it has too rosy a view of the British class system. The aristocrats are bitter, brittle, bickering phonies, whose thin veneer of civility barely covers their selfishness. The impetus for the plot is the fact that one of them had a habit of impregnating the girls who worked in his factories, then dumping their babies in a hellish orphanage.
And the misery doesn't stop with the aristocrats. Their poor tempers and incessant demands trickle down to the servants, who take out their frustrations with their employers on each other. Moreover, the atmosphere of constant surveillance creates a feeling of pervasive distrust. Gosford Park is a miserable, miserable place.
This rotten atmosphere makes Gosford Park the perfect setting for a murder mystery - indeed, country house murders are a genre unto themselves, presumably in part because country houses could act as a hothouse for anger and suspicion. But it would make Gosford Park a very bad setting for a television series. Two hours of pervasive distrust and spite make a good murder mystery movie. Hour upon hour of it would make a soul-sucking TV series.
Thus, Downton Abbey is inhabited by a much nicer set of folks than Gosford Park. Rather than taking every opportunity to behave badly, the aristocrats strive (with varying levels of success) to fulfill their duty of being honorable, generous, and responsible - in short, to behave with noblesse oblige. The tone belowstairs is therefore much less distrustful and acrimonious than at Gosford Park; because the atmosphere is relatively open and trusting, Thomas and O'Brien's scheming can basically be contained without too much damage.
So: Downton Abbey, model of the British class system as it was meant to be. How well does it work? When the system is running as it should, does it make the people living in it happy?
Mary and Edith are both very, very angry. Sybil is less angry, but that's because she's been planning her escape from day one and has no intention of remaining trapped in this web. I wonder how much her activism was affected by watching Mary and Edith go away for the London Season and come back each year more brittle, angry, and - in Edith's case - despairing.
Belowstairs, many of the servants are similarly hungry for escape. I really don't know why people feel that the servants in Downton Abbey are too content being servants. Carson, it is true, has clearly found his vocation in the position of butler, and sees the Crawleys as a surrogate family - in particular, he sees Mary as a surrogate daughter. But he has an unusually prestigious, powerful job: of course he, as well as Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Patmore, identify more closely with their high-ranking positions than the lower-ranked workers do.
And most of those lower-ranked workers would clearly rather be elsewhere. William, though he never complains - because who complains about a position as plum as footman? - would really rather be working with horses somewhere. Thomas would clearly be gone in a heartbeat in the unlikely event that an easier, higher-paying, higher status job than footman fell in his lap.
Ethel, Gwen, and Branson all say upfront that they mean to leave Downton for better things, a goal that they all have difficulty completing because of society's rigidity. Ethel, of course, gets destroyed by the system. She breaks the rules, and society gives no second chances.
Gwen probably couldn't have gotten a job as a secretary without Sybil's patronage - she has hardly any time off when she could give interviews. Her despair over whether she'll ever be able to leave Downton is moving - a belowstairs mirror of Edith's similar fear.
And Anna and Bates, the two servant characters with the most extensive storyline? When they plan their glorious future together, they mean to leave Downton and start their own pub. Downton is just a way for them to save up enough money to make that happen. For them, as for most of the characters, service is a job. They aren't overjoyed to be there, but at the same time, there are much worse jobs they could be stuck with.
And then, of course, the vagaries of divorce law wreck their dreams.
It's not just the failure mode of the early twentieth-century British class system that ruins lives. Even when the class system runs as it's ideally supposed to, it leaves lots of its inmates miserable.
One thing you cannot possibly say about Gosford Park is that it has too rosy a view of the British class system. The aristocrats are bitter, brittle, bickering phonies, whose thin veneer of civility barely covers their selfishness. The impetus for the plot is the fact that one of them had a habit of impregnating the girls who worked in his factories, then dumping their babies in a hellish orphanage.
And the misery doesn't stop with the aristocrats. Their poor tempers and incessant demands trickle down to the servants, who take out their frustrations with their employers on each other. Moreover, the atmosphere of constant surveillance creates a feeling of pervasive distrust. Gosford Park is a miserable, miserable place.
This rotten atmosphere makes Gosford Park the perfect setting for a murder mystery - indeed, country house murders are a genre unto themselves, presumably in part because country houses could act as a hothouse for anger and suspicion. But it would make Gosford Park a very bad setting for a television series. Two hours of pervasive distrust and spite make a good murder mystery movie. Hour upon hour of it would make a soul-sucking TV series.
Thus, Downton Abbey is inhabited by a much nicer set of folks than Gosford Park. Rather than taking every opportunity to behave badly, the aristocrats strive (with varying levels of success) to fulfill their duty of being honorable, generous, and responsible - in short, to behave with noblesse oblige. The tone belowstairs is therefore much less distrustful and acrimonious than at Gosford Park; because the atmosphere is relatively open and trusting, Thomas and O'Brien's scheming can basically be contained without too much damage.
So: Downton Abbey, model of the British class system as it was meant to be. How well does it work? When the system is running as it should, does it make the people living in it happy?
Mary and Edith are both very, very angry. Sybil is less angry, but that's because she's been planning her escape from day one and has no intention of remaining trapped in this web. I wonder how much her activism was affected by watching Mary and Edith go away for the London Season and come back each year more brittle, angry, and - in Edith's case - despairing.
Belowstairs, many of the servants are similarly hungry for escape. I really don't know why people feel that the servants in Downton Abbey are too content being servants. Carson, it is true, has clearly found his vocation in the position of butler, and sees the Crawleys as a surrogate family - in particular, he sees Mary as a surrogate daughter. But he has an unusually prestigious, powerful job: of course he, as well as Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Patmore, identify more closely with their high-ranking positions than the lower-ranked workers do.
And most of those lower-ranked workers would clearly rather be elsewhere. William, though he never complains - because who complains about a position as plum as footman? - would really rather be working with horses somewhere. Thomas would clearly be gone in a heartbeat in the unlikely event that an easier, higher-paying, higher status job than footman fell in his lap.
Ethel, Gwen, and Branson all say upfront that they mean to leave Downton for better things, a goal that they all have difficulty completing because of society's rigidity. Ethel, of course, gets destroyed by the system. She breaks the rules, and society gives no second chances.
Gwen probably couldn't have gotten a job as a secretary without Sybil's patronage - she has hardly any time off when she could give interviews. Her despair over whether she'll ever be able to leave Downton is moving - a belowstairs mirror of Edith's similar fear.
And Anna and Bates, the two servant characters with the most extensive storyline? When they plan their glorious future together, they mean to leave Downton and start their own pub. Downton is just a way for them to save up enough money to make that happen. For them, as for most of the characters, service is a job. They aren't overjoyed to be there, but at the same time, there are much worse jobs they could be stuck with.
And then, of course, the vagaries of divorce law wreck their dreams.
It's not just the failure mode of the early twentieth-century British class system that ruins lives. Even when the class system runs as it's ideally supposed to, it leaves lots of its inmates miserable.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-29 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 04:08 am (UTC)But I'll add it to my list of things to try.