Dowager: ‘Now that it’s over try to get some rest …’
Cora: ‘Is it over? when one loses a child is it ever really over?’Cora to Robert: ‘You’re always flabbergasted by the unconventional’
Cora at Robert: ‘Not everyone chooses their religion to satisfy Debret’s’
and then there was:
Lord Grantham: ‘We’re going right now …’
Cora: ‘What are you talking about …’ [emphasis hers]
After the salmon mousse (Going round in clock-order, Penelope Wilton, Elizabeth McGovern, Amy Nuttal, Laura Carmichael, Michelle Dockery and Maggie Smith, POV: Hugh Bonneville)
Cora, Lady Grantham turning to look at Lord Grantham
Dear friends and readers,
I don’t say that Elizabeth McGovern in this episode came up to when I first saw her, as Beatrice-Joanna in Middleton’s Changeling (with Hugh Grant and Bob Hoskins), but, alas, you can only see that if you’ve a working VHS player and buy this cassette; the old PBS (Channel 13, Play of the Week) performance is not even listed on IMDB. Go look. Nor when I saw her in Shelley Duval’s Faery Tale Theater; (where I’ll swear she was in a tale with David Hemmings, and held her own as Snow White against an evil queen — though she’s not listed there either). The material in Downton Abbey is not up to Middleton at any rate; but then Maggie Smith has not shown us what she can do either.
But she was great and (as middle-aged women who demand to be taken seriously) again overlooked, and if half-crazed pathos was her end note last week, steely- or suppressed rage was at moments this. I wished she could have given some of it to Ethel who also had a child now dead to her and given her subaltern position can only manage: “But you know how it is when you bury someone young …When you lose your child there’s nothing worse under the sun.” By contrast, Cora says: “I am here [still].” (Not as good as “I am Duchess of Malfi still” but going in that direction.)
Early shot in 3:6
The major thread of this hour was coping with Sybil’s death: the fallout. In context, the usual suffering of Bates and Anna functions in place of the comic relief, but such little time is given over to it, that it’s hard to say just why Bates’s use of a pointed instrument (nail file?) and menacing threat of his cellmate’s throat, and the spiteful oppressive guard terrorized them into successfully urging Mrs Barnett to tell how Vera probably poisoned herself with a pie.
See I told you it was what we had as comic relief. Mary, ever the sage, while taking her jewels off her fingers, tells Anna standing by with hairbrush more than once “we need this, it’s good news.”
Anna (Joanne Froggart) and Lady Mary
Though I fear not for Thomas who is also being set up for a rejection by Jimmy (who complains of Thomas’s gingerly gestures towards Jimmy’s shoulder).
One cannot say the other thread which contrasted to the major story was comic, as it partly reinforced the realities Lord Grantham is having to face. When Daisy (Sophie McShera) visits her loving father-in-law, he tells her he would like her to learn to take over his farm, to become its manager.
Daisy: But I always thought I’d spend my life in service
Mr Mason (Paul Copley) ‘You have forty years of work ahead of ya do you think these great houses like Downton Abbey are going to go on just as they are for 40 years, because I don’t …
Lord Grantham is not going to lose just the battle over whether his new grandchild will be Catholic Mary: “You’re going to lose this one.”
We saw Daisy trying to teach an ungrateful Alfred (Matt Milne) to foxtrot
But he hankers after Ivy (actress’s name?), of whose rouge Mrs Patmore (Leslie Nicol) does not approve, mostly because she’s been irritated out of all patience by the obdurate cruelty of Mr Carson (Jim Carter) against Ethel. Mr Carson scolds her and she is not allowed to answer back. Nor does Mrs Hughes. In fact no one (not even Cora) tells any of the men they have no right to judge Ethel’s life — not when they are men (with all the gender’s advantages).
In Fellowes’s world, the women can identify and sympathize with Ethel, most of the men (Dan Stevens I assume would take on his role as noble exception) scorn.
Otherwise, we are coping with something impossible to cope with. The death of a young woman. Mrs Crawley in her usual anxiety to help (“Is there something I can do, anything, anything at all?”)
Well, no, now that you mention it.
But she persists, and Mary supports her in the invitation to luncheon for “the girls” (“Does that include me,” asks the Dowager unseen on the couch), which leads to what I think is Mrs Crawley’s first ungenerous moment in 3 years: when Ethel voices her intense desire to do something too — in the form of a delicious luncheon: “I’d like to make a bit of an effort to show our sympathies,” Mrs Crawley in effect threatens her with loss of job: “I’ll hold you responsible.”
For those paying attention to the art and structure of these parts, the luncheon occurs at precisely the same place as the humiliation at the wedding. When Cora refuses to leave, defying Robert and supporting Ethel, that was climax. Maybe that’s why most blogs sees to quote the Dowager’s unusually semi-feeble (all the funnier) support of Cora by way of apology to her son: “It seems a pity to miss such a good pudding.”
I’ll give Lord Grantham this: although he’d see Ethel starve, he’s not into marital rape (Cora has relegated him to his dressing room), and so the Dowager engineers a scene of catharsis, to bring Cora back to face what she cannot:
Dr Clarkson (David Robb) realizing the Dowager wants him to lie: in this part we see someone coming between a woman and her doctor
The core of the final scene is that it was probably in the cards for Sybil to die. Eclampsia is still a major cause of “complications” (as things going fatally wrong are euphemistically called), and in 1920 although there had been sufficient advances in understanding sepsis as well as how to stem the horrific bleeding that comes with the major surgery of Cesarean section (through increased knowledge of the flesh walls of the uterus), still it was a highly risky procedure.
I take Cora’s shudder and hysterical crying as the final scene shuts after Clarkson’s shading of the truth (we could also call it) to be this realization because I want to be charitable to Downton Abbey. I know there is another interpretation: we are encouraged to believe that under pressure from the Dowager, Dr Clarkson lied.
As we all recall, in the previous episode, Dr Clarkson said there was “a chance” Lady Sybil could survive if she was rushed to the hospital for a Cesarean. And we recall that Dr Tapsell pooh-poohed this, and said he saw nothing to demand such strong measures and Lord Grantham went with Dr Tapsell and Cora acquiesced. (Some commentators have said this complicity of hers was the result of instilled obedience to her husband, and we might say her rage at her husband is rage at herself but I think that’s giving psychological depth to these characters that’s not there (It’s not a George Eliot novel but more like a staged play.) The Dowager persuades Dr Clarkson to move from “small chance” to an “infinitesimal chance.” And in the event, facing the pair, he actually says she would have died anyway. Upon which Cora collapses into Lord Grantham’s arms.
Why? was it that she really blamed her husband and now that she believes it was not his fault, she is not angry. That turns her into a mechanical doll, a stupid woman whose emotions can be turned through words. I take it (as I say) she finally faced that Lady Sybil was going to die and there was nothing to be done.
But there is a problem here ethically: Fellowes encourages us to feel that she was led to this realization by a lie. The moment may be seen as a not simply a justification of lying as sometimes needed, called for, but even a kind of validation. The hour at that point recalled Ann Patchett’s Patron St of Liars, which novel rather boomerangs on her as a thoroughly disingenuous novelist. It also validates a doctor imposing a false truth on a woman.
As it happens last night I watched another movie, this one based on an under-rated fine novel, The Walking Stick, where the heroine finds her sense of reality so undermined by the lying of her partner, that to keep her sanity and trust, and stability she has to give up the relationship. We can only base ourselves on the stability of truth. This is of course not the only time I’ve seen Fellowes urge a distorted coarse understanding of life’s experiences, but it did grate, possibly because I took the character Cora too seriously. I have known several women now whose children pre-deceased them. One of them told me it’s like having a knife put in your heart ever after.
But if you don’t take this mini-series or its character seriously (and it’s not great art and Fellowes’s vision is often falsifying), you are invited to find it amusing that Ethel had to plead with Mrs Patmore to get Mrs Patmore to help her and accept such dismissively wry statement when Ethel finds herself remembering how often she has failed as a cook, that “Anyone who has the use of their limbs can make a salmon mousse:”
Can they now? I can’t.
Mrs Patmore, like Mrs Hughes, quietly defies Mr Carson (patriarchy is having a hard time in this episode) and the two help Ethel, but they do not do so graciously, bringing to mind the Latin saying: “To give quickly is to give twice.” Mrs Hughes has ever been grudging, and now Patmore has to be argued into helping Ethel on the grounds her Ladyship will be there:
.
That’s not good enough. The first scene between Ethel and Mrs Patmore was for me the most painful because (as I said when I started) Cora stands up for herself. I wish she had held out longer against Lord Grantham, but it was inevitable that she let things go back to whatever they were and live with Sybil’s death.
There was a rare touching scene between Matthew and Mary in bed together. It too related to Sybil’s death, but for those who watch the mini-series as a mini-series, you know this is ominous foreshadowing:
He: When Sybil was talking about the baby being a Catholic do you get the sense that she knew?
She: I’m not sure, not at the time but of course I’ve asked myself since.
He: You’d think we’d be used to young death after four years of war.
She: That’s why we must never take anything for granted.
He: That’s what I’m trying to get Robert to see. He wasn’t given Downton by God’s decree. We have to work if we want to keep it.
She: And not only Downton, us. We must never take us for granted. Who knows what’s coming.
He: I have to take one thing for granted. That I will love you until the last breath leaves my body.
She: Oh my darling, me too. Me too,
She lays on him and he kisses her hair
To sum up: It’s about the fallout after a hard death and Elizabeth McGovern comes into her own in this role. I wished Amy Nuttal had been able (but her position precluded it so we must make do with Cora) to react as frankly and truly. I like that it may be in the cards Sophie McShera may yet end up in charge.
The important history in these two episodes is the way women are treated in childbirth as a mirror of the way they are still sidelined today.
Ellen
P.S. Why didn’t I react to the break up of Edith’s wedding as so many women on line did or seem to have. I never for a moment imagine myself marrying any of these male characters in this series. These women viewers judged Sir Anthony as a partner for themselves. This is astonishing to me. All I can respond is, Well duh. Never for a moment. To me it was whether Edith wanted to marry him, nothing to do with me. Edith is a character in a serial drama set in 1920. Who would want to marry Tom Bransom. Not me. Sybil did. No more than any of the male servants. Dan Stevens as an acting personality and as seen in other films I have found very appealing (Nick in Line of Beauty, Edward Ferrars in S&S) but in DA he gives in all the time; what is best about him is continually lost. So, no.
Not that I don’t do this for some of these movies. I could imagine marrying Ross Poldark as he exists in all 12 of Graham’s books & in the first mini-series. But I know this is fantasy and when the character rapes another character (Elizabeth) I am reminded of that.
["I’ll give Lord Grantham this: although he’d see Ethel starve, he’s not into marital rape (Cora has relegated him to his dressing room), and so the Dowager engineers a scene of catharsis, to bring Cora back to face what she cannot: the core of the final scene is that it was probably in the cards for Sybil to die. Eclampsia is still a major cause of “complications” (as things going fatally wrong are euphemistically called), and in 1920 although there had been sufficient advances in understanding sepsis as well as how to stem the horrific bleeding that comes with the major surgery of Cesarean section (through increased knowledge of the flesh walls of the uterus), still it was a highly risky procedure."]
And in the end, the male aristocratic Robert Crawley is given a break, thanks to Fellowes. How cowardly. If he was really a first-rate writer, he would have Cora’s anger over her daughter’s death for all its worth. People do not recover that quickly over a loved one’s death. It would have been more realistic and more dramatic if Cora’s anger had lasted. And honestly? I’m getting a little weary of people making excuses for Robert’s decision to stick with his choice of physician for Sybil. I feel that the previous episode was trying to make it clear that Clarkson could have saved her.
My complaint was Fellowes took out time to justify lying. You bring out how much in bad taste this was too. Thank you.
What troubles me about the sociological event that DA has become is when the hour has something worth while (and often they do – Fellowes has a genius for hitting sore spots), the viewership ignores precisely what’s best about the hour or directly inveighs against it. This week the mother’s insistent grief was stupidly dismissed by most bloggers; that the doctor was pressured into telling her a lie (and so the society got between her and her doctor). No concern for the underdog but mockery of her (Ethel and her salmon mousse — which prestigious dish there was a hiliarous Monty Python skit years ago).
Here’s a key to what happens when this program airs: when viewers respond derisively or with indifference to a film’s intended sentiments, feelings and thoughts hostile to those hoped for have been activated — and while I’d like to say it’s egregiously obvious we are to care about the middle-aged mother, it might be that Fellowes is hostile to her and brings this hostility out through justifying the lying doctor.
Curious ironic element: in order for the older woman figure to be paid attention to, she has to refuse successfully to go to bed with the top male, and he respect that refusal.
Ellen
Ellen — I find your analysis of soap opera vs Victorian novels fascinating. Indeed I was talking about it at a dinner party last night, sparking an interesting conversation about DA (of which there were two addicts present) and European crime series (The Killing, Spiral, The Bridge).
I have become less tolerant of British television drama. The domestic comrade and I were wont to make ironic comments of the type “We do these things so awfully well, don’t we?”, whereas these days we are more likely to groan in embarrassment at the sacrifice of plot and character development to sentimental indulgence of the audence’s fondness for one of the stars (Maggie Smith leaps, nay vaults, to mind), or whatever… You might like further examples of these, but my mind has gone blank.
Susan
I’m enjoying doing it. I wrote about film adaptations for the Palliser novels for months and months. It took me a long time and I had a hiatus of a year but I eventually finished them all, and then someone asked me to write an essay for publication. Right now I’m also interested in the 1967 and 2002 Forsyte Saga mini-series but I’ve no enough time to put them on my website.
One of the things I don’t talk directly about is comparative. I do love the Poldark novels and learned to like very much the two mini-series. Now that one is leftist, strongly so, and there I do have characters I bond with. My own theory is you don’t see a revival of it because of its political slant; the only film-maker to go for this is Andrew Davies and I don’t see him doing these more active-adventure type historical fictions. There’s also a fierce fan club for the original actors. If you watch the film adaptations of the 1980s you also find a far more humane socialist stance (the Dickens ones are obvious, a writer of many of these was Alexander Baron).
But nonetheless (so to speak) they all “work” the same ways. They all show the same kinds of characteristics. Different character types somewhat because of the politics but the characters still function similarly. Robert Allen who wrote the long essay defending soap opera aesthetics which I really base many of my ideas on also wrote an essay saying film studies don’t pay enough attention to audiences. It’s an old essay and people do nowadays.
These past days Ive been watching some powerful Indian films. Guru is great; Bombay, Roja. Some are available on Netflix, you just have to be lucky with subtitles. I mean to present a paper at a conference in April on Austen’s S&S as I have Found It (2000 Tamil film).
I can’t bring too much onto Victoria. Patrick has told me people complain.
E.M.
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