“There is much in the world which is monstrous” — Graham’s Ross on the beach, Demelza
“I am finding it very hard to live with myself” — Francis to Elizabeth, Christmas, Wheeler’s script, invented scene …
“Have a care for the law. Tis a cranky and twisty old thing. And you may flout it half a dozen times. But let it once come to grips with you, and you find it harder to be loose from than a great black squid.” — Captain MacNeil to Ross, Horsfield’s script, a darker variant on Graham’s utterance
On the beach carrying the burdens of life’s necessities, leading those who will come with him back (Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark, 2015)
Dear friends and readers,
So we are come to the end of this year’s first season: Poldark re-booted, 40 years on. Though I’ve not titled this blog to include Graham’s Demelza nor the 8th episode of the 1975 Poldark, as in all previous this is another comparative blog which assumes previous knowledge. Once again we have the old familiar pictures from the 1970s for those who loved them as I did. And once again, the distance as well as similarities between Ross Poldark and Demelza and the two disparate kinds of film art.
Our theme though is a bit different. I have been able to profit from watching one of Debbie Horsfield’s previous mini-series, the astonishing, riveting All the Small Things (directed by Metin Huysein, whose corpus includes the 1997 Tom Jones) and read about a couple of others. All the Small Things differs strongly in its dramaturgy from this new Poldark: Like Sex, Chips & Rock-n-roll, its scenes are not short, the characters use precise interesting complicated language, and its strength derives from what the characters say to one another. In neither is there this continual back-and-forth switching of montage and repetition of archetypes and simple ideas. This dramaturgy was therefore deliberate, and British ratings say it’s been widely watched. Thanks to Anibundel I’ve also been comparing costumes, hats, hairdos, wigs. If these be not costume drama, costume drama is nowhere to be found.
My suggestion tonight: while the 1970s film-makers were content to produce a sufficiently historically accurate and novelistic series reproducing the spirit of the original books (4 of them, post WW2 milieu), Horsfield’s cinematic archetypal approach is an attempt to make a new mythic matter. The 1975 films are Cornish regional romance, an adaptation of 4 historical fictions set carefully in the later 18th century, low-keyed enough for comedy. The 2015 films are not localized in the same way at all; they reach out to function the way recent films do, aware of themselves as in an intertexual film universe. This is not as hubristic as it may seem, as Graham says in the early 1970s when filming the first four books was broached to him, the idea was to make a British kind of Gone with the Wind, I half-regret to admit US mythic matter because so pro-Southern, so racist.
This is not to say that both don’t differ from the original book and try to appeal to the mainstream politics of the era. So in Demelza where it is acceptable and understood from centuries of custom, that the flotsam and jetsam of wreckage on a beach is fair game for the people living around both films takes into account this seems to our capitalist private-property obsessions crime of the first order. There was also a deep resentment against the excise tax, the imposed soldiers of the British army who were there to stop any reform movements lest they turn into a 1790s English style French revolution. In Graham’s Demelza Ross arouses Jud to waken the community, he is half-mad with grief and rage and needs to strike out against an implacable universe which has taken his child, his business, still threatens his wife, and he is gladdened to see the local people gain food and furniture for the coming year, and he participates, but he does not lead; he encourages, represses, orders where needed; only when a riot ensues when other groups of people come does he intervene to save the captain and his men and look to see if anyone needs saving on the ship.
Looking from on high over the beach, distraught (many close-ups), taking action, first a line to go into the ship and then stumbling on soldiers urging them back to Nampara (Robin Ellis as Ross Poldark, 1975)
Paul Wheeler departs from this by having Robin Ellis go to Jud to find help for the men on the ship, and only realize that scavenging will result when he looks into Jud’s eyes, and then exult; Ellis spends his night trying to stop the riot, and save people. We see the British soldiers as in an earlier corn riot killing the people. By contrast, Debbie Horsfield has Ross not only rouse Jud deliberately, but himself organize the scavenging so as to be deeply useful to all, alert throughout, a figure of controlled stern anger, taking on managerial functions; like Ellis and Graham’s Ross himself violent to stop others’ violence, as a last thought inviting the Captain and his men back to the house but if they do not trust him they need not come. We see the lead British soldier taking a bribe from Warleggan to lie about what Ross did on the beach.
The changes are telling. In 1975 we have a deeply psychological take on a man in distress and acting half-insanely, innocent of scavenging himself; in 2015 we have a hero caring for his people by scavenging with them. Wheeler’s is closer to the book where Ross means to allow others to scavenge, but then tries to stop the riot, but in neither film is there a willingness to dramatize one of Graham’s paradoxical themes: the self fighting society’s deep corruptions, refusing to be coopted except on its own definition of what is virtue.
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Graham’s Demelza, the last quarter
Chapter 1: Verity’s letter to Demelza: her happiness and gratitude, Verity now has the life to live she wanted to and could. Family and business, politics and gender are utterly intertwined in the world (seen in Graham’s Forgotten Story and Cordelia. Demelza did it. Chapter 2: a bleak Christmas — at Nampara and Trenwith. Francis despairing, alcoholic, Elizabeth turning away. Demelza and Ross and Enys carrying on with carols; he going over books, ending company; the two struggling through to be decent to one another and restore relationship; she visits Sir Hugh Bodrugan, Ross’s angery: he will not ask for loan; he will see Pascoe.
Chapter 3: The desperate illness at Trenwith brings Choake and then Enys; Ross’s meeting with Tonkin and then George’s offer to buy him out at inn; narrator insists on spite as strong motive in George. So Demelza’s (to Ross and the Poldark family) loyalty to her gender and sister-friend has destroyed Ross’s company. As in Ross Poldark where Ross’s humane rescue of the child Demelza brought down the community on him, so her humane rescue allows others’s exploitation. Chapter 4: News of illness at Trenwith: another decision of hers, to be a nurse to Francis, Elizabeth and Geoffrey Charles, partly because she feels she took from them Verity — this will lead to her sickness, the death of Julia. This is interwoven with Ross and Sir John, Ross and Pascoe where Ross will not sell his mine.
Chapter 5 Ross to Pearce. Pearce lives with his sister; he will arrange 1000 pound loan if he can; Ross home to Demelza who tells Ross where she’s been and what done: at Trenwith with the dying helping to save them. His intense business for a year is useless and he is thrown back on farming. He refuses still to sell his shares to Warleggan and takes out a new loan to pay through Pearce — refusing to bend to the monopoly. It is his choice to do this (which will lead to smuggling in the next book), but it was Demelza’s interference interacting with the family that inadvertently led to the failure.
Chapter 6: New Year’s Day, 1790, a gale, snow flurries, Demelza takes to her bed; Enys: both wife and daughter have it. Chapter 7: Northerly gale for another 3 days: Demelza’s nightmares; her father’s crazed religion about being saved: she dreams of Ross saying “let him die in the mud;” memories of Keren and Mark, she calls to her dog, “He takes things so much to heart, Verity had said” (of Ross); choaking someone’s hand there (Enys). The cold, the thaw, the weather, Demelza wakes and Ross lies to her that she can see Julia in morning; Julia has died
Chapter 8: The burial of the child; Ross’s rage; Julia will be lonely in the cold, she hated wind. Now deep in Ross’s mind (as we went back and forth between them just before and after marriage in first book); the wreck reported, how he rouses the people, Grambler miners to come, Jud says she never saw Ross looking so much like his father
Chapter 9: A scene Ross remembered for years afterwards: the men on the beach, women taking needed food; he gets inside ship and sees hopelessness (Sanson’s body) the fires, the wreck happening, and more men streaming on. Rose’s mind half-crazed but he does join in, advising, encouraging, repressing, ordering. There is a second ship and the wreckage is more ambiguous; it seems with help the wreck might have been avoided. But Ross’s despair and then identifying with the working classes utterly does lead to the high conflagration food riot: unintended consequences (rather like Demelza’s act for Verity). Chapter 10: Drunken fights and mayhem on the beach; men of ship come and Ross there invites them back to his house although his wife has been sick. Ross: “much in the world is monstrous”.
(A sub plot-design is Ross’s perpetual kicking against the laws and customs of his world directly while Demelza works against them indirectly — both are pro-family, pro-friend. This is by the end seen to be attached to his male friendships and companions whom he is loyal to: lower class, Jim and Mark, then upper for bank loans, and then at the end Captain MacNeil who warns him he must not get caught disobeying the law nor push it too far. MacNeil chases down smugglers on the beach and at the same time, Mark Daniels so knows Ross has been instrumental in freeing Mark. MacNeil and Ross identify as ex-solder who fought in North America, but their allegiance is to in McNeil’scase the state and law (MacNeil on the twisty nature of the law which will swallow Ross); in the Ross’s to friends, love, family, principles.)
Chapter 11: Morning after; tranquil now: he had planned so much for Julia; normative life returning to him; she so thin and weak; he takes her to window to look out, she asks that he let her stay in the sun. Book ends quietly, wrap my shoulders, let me have the light a little longer please.
For a more detailed exposition with themes worked out see Demelza, A Cornish world mirroring our own.
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1975, Episode 8: it’s been rearranged but just about all the original events and characters are there. The only loss is it ends more melodramatically than the book: the soldiers come to arrest Ross. A cliff-hanger and final anguish for Demelza (which is the way 2015 ends). As throughout the film opts for theatric while the mood is naturalistic, melodramatic romance, sudden action, or wry comedy. I’ve come to realize that Francis is made considerably more appealing by Wheeler’s script: Graham’s Francis is witty, but his open self-berating and guilt are from Wheeler; also his generosity of spirit now and again.
MacNeil (Donald Douglas) issues his warning …
Opens as a continuation of Episode 7. There we saw Ross helping Mark Daniels to escape from Cornwall and a murder charge from his own boat into the sea across to France, and running up the high cliff be shot at by MacNeil and his men. Episode 8 begins with him running down the hill and across the fields to Nampara. A delicious scene for someone totally on their side ensues. Ross runs into the house where Demelza awaits him at the window; she frantically pulls off his boots and he says since MacNeil has no evidence, MacNeil cannot jail him and he must go upstairs to bed. Jinny is there, quick with an alibi — he’s been in bed all night with “the headache.” There is a comic feel to the scene as all three know Ross, Demelza and Jinny are lying.
MacNeil bursts in and Demelza is there to greet him, with Ross upstairs and coming down in a robe. We see them outwit MacNeil while his eyes glitter and he issues a warning to Ross that the law will entangle him if he does not watch out. One visible motif of this episode is those stairs: Ross running up at the opening, coming down, from the last one Mark Daniels running past to the library; MacNeil coming in and out of the hall.
The Christmas scenes are ironic — they remind me of Trollope’s Christmas scenes as they show Christmas to be an extra fraught time (not the complacent joy of stereotypes). After Ross and Demelza first escape the clutches of MacNeil we switch to Demelza and Ross hosting Enys, Sir Hugh and Lady Brodugan — in book they are alone first Christmas Eve night and visit Brodrugan the next day and her desire to ask for loans is not enacted, just discussed. At first all seemed high cheer, until Demelza not being able to contain herself asks the knight and lady for a loan to help them out. They speedily leave and Ross is indignant at her.
Francis filled with self-loathing, the cool Elizabeth, the puzzled child
Switch to Trenwith and we see Elizabeth and Geoffrey Charles at table waiting for Francis. He comes to the table drunk, filled with self-hatred over his betrayal of the names of Ross’s contributors to George; Clive Francis again delivers a powerful performance, until he collapses. Elizabeth sends for Enys then at Nampara who returns with Demelza.
Ross’s first reaction to the news of Francis’s illness is indifference; Demelza’s determination to go over to Trenwith elicit an “I forbid it,” but when she insists this is family (the great sacred cow which is not invoked in Graham’s book) and says she will go anyway, relents.
The scene where Ross is driven from wanting to behave with high integrity, to moving again to try to outwit someone, this time it’s George he wants not to sell his property too. There is a self-destructiveness here we see.
Jill Townsend as an at first cool, regal Elizabeth
Elizabeth at first wants to turn Demelza out of the house for her low rank (and because Ross married her) but in her terrible need, allows Demelza in, and Francis in his terrible sickness sees and acknowledges. One night Elizabeth and Demelza sit and makes frends. Elizabeth confesses how she broke off her engagement with Ross, how she meant to marry for money and prestige and thought she could do without love (this reminds me closely the TV mini-series version of Trollope’s Lady Laura Kennedy by Simon Raven — made a year before this series). The scene is too inhibited in its mode of acting (as are a number of the scenes of this episode), but Graham’s material comes through enough and realization gives this film an intense edge of the books. Demelza saves Francis, wins over Francis and Elizabeth, only to return herself very sick.
Demelza sick unto death, Ross nursing
As she comes in Ross scoops her up and carries her up the stairs. She is very ill and the baby Julia catches it. Enys there throughout. As in the book, it’s the death of Julia and the destruction of Ross’s hope for a successful mining venture that intertwine behind his despair which precipitates his inciting the men to their violence. Film removes Jacobin arguments and moral preferences of book for friends, high ideals, independence, integrity.
The scene on the beach occurs. Very effective and unlike today done with no computers so literally for real in front of cameras, including ships brought in, really felt underproduced violence.
Ross brings home the crew and they return to their boat in the dawn. He hears her ill, goes up and find her hysterical over the empty cradle, down those stairs again to talk in front of the fire with captain and crew.
They are in the front room the next day or so dressed as from a funeral, her comments about the small coffin and the MacNeil’s entrance and arrest. In the book the funeral occurred first and Ross’s guilt over not providing food another motive for his wanting to see people fed.
Here they talk and in film she says now there is no Julia, he must be very bitter for he married her because she was pregnant with Julia. She stood in the way of his marrying Elizabeth. He loved Elizabeth when he married her. Of course this is not in the book as in the book he married her well before she got pregnant. He acknowledges this but says that was then and now he has learned to love her. He and she speak of their two years together since. It’s at this point the book Demelza ends with a beautiful dialogue between them (re-spoke here). Book does not emphasie rivalry between women at all; book interested in social and economic pressures
Eight, though, closes with MacNeil again rushing the house. This time Ross was not expecting to be arrested, and this time MacNeil has a warrant for his arrest. The episode ends with Demelza running out of the house crying frantically for Ross. A wild thrust.
Crying after him
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Cont’d in comments: 2105 Episode 8; concluding remarks.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Episode 8: The strength of this inheres in the shots, the pictorial moments. If you follow these, most hours emerge as a serious or dark romance with male and female figures at the center. When George warns Ross that unless Ross cooperates with others (meaning him) he will be leave alone, bankrupt in despair, that could be ironic as after all it is George who is causing this, but the narrative seems to justify George. This kind of probable unintended inference plagues the series throughout. OTOH, rereading Demelza recently I’ve come to see that Horsfield’s Demelza is closer to Graham’s than Wheeler’s, and that there is much justification in Demelza for seeing Francis as a narrow-minded egoist. I regret to say the mini-series remains weak because of the script choices, too quick and abrupt juxtapositions; that’s why one can mock it.
Once again the hour opens on the mine. Ross still hard at work, on her way and then helping; they are unaware Warleggans have closed in entirely. Return to Nampara, come upon Jud and Prudie. Switch to scene between Cary and George Warleggan; as before Horsfield adds remorse on George’s part. He asserts things did not have to come to this; he and Ross are alike. Cary snorts.
At home deep anger and despair emerge from Ross; Jinny brings in letter from Verity, and Ross reads. He has to admit that Demelza did right by Verity, with implication that it was not she who destroyed the Carnemore Copper Company. An effective scene.
Juxtaposed to Trenwith, dinner, Elizabeth, Francis, Agatha and Geoffrey Charles who asks when is Verity coming home. Francis peevish and nastily says Verity has disgraced and shamed herself and family and will never return. Quite a contrast to Graham and Paul Wheeler’s Francis. He imposed misery on all, but inward sense of self-hatred there.
(Good bourgeois family — can’t resist a little mockery here)
A strong contrast in next scene there is Demelza telling Ross all will be well, and Ross going off — if they can bid for the copper high enough they can carry on. Ross and Enys on horseback where we get pep talk about how one must not give up. Of course they lose. Several moving scenes of Ross with Henshawe and men, Ross with Pascoe offering to sell his shares; next scene George (like a squid — Horsfield’s term) following Ross, and telling how he can buy the shares, Ross walks away. Scene at Warleggan mansion where we see Margaret dressed to the nine; why she is there we are not told Ae we to assume she is owned by George; the contrast is with all the decency and natural passion of Demelza and Ross
Margaret
Owned by George
Cary exulting because Treneglos will no longer let Ross use land to smelt in any case. Back to Pascoe who has buyer when Ross hears price, he knows it’s Warleggan and refuses (speaks against monopolies once again) and wanting a loan of 1000 at high interest.
Ross and Pascoe stand against the water
Meanwhile Francis, Elizabeth, Geoffrey Charles all sickened, Demelza has turned up, welcomed, nurses them — it seems it takes but one night – and on way home Ross picks her up.
He is magnificent on a horse, she a mythic girl in a hood
Now she will keep nothing from and says where she has been.
Again how surprizing that the long powerful episode of 1975 is so compressed as if there is no time for it.
Home to Ross and Demelza, and he tells her the grim future. Her sickness and bad dreams. This is effective: they come straight from the book. Julia dies, a funeral held — very moving. He comes back and Demelza not at all recovered; finally she is coming back to health and told. I feel that the actress was not permitted to grieve enough (I know Tomlinson can do better as I’ve seen her do better).
Then Ross’s rage, his rousing Jud and the community, his central role in scavenging until a riot ensues. Swifch to George Warleggan telling the soldier this is against the law; the solder hesitates as he knows it’s custom, but a bribe does the business. Back to the beach where Ross trying to stop all violence; the British soldiers come, and start to ravage worse; Ross offers to take back anyone the captain after he sees Sanson washed up on beach.
George seen walking to Trenwith, finding Elizabeth and through euphemisms telling her he wants her; she picks this up right away (as Jill Townsend’s Elizabeth did not, nor was the 1975 George anywhere near as open). It’s awkward, abrupt and needed far more introduction. It seems this is Horsfield’s way of introducing how in the next season George will chase Elizabeth sexually. In the 1975 George pretended to care for the boy, to be tenderly friendly, brotherly.
Cut to Ross and Demelza standing high on the shore, looking out over the waters, vowing to live on. It’s supposed to be vatic and mythic – here Horsfield’s refusal to write more articulate lines robs her final scene of any precise meaning.
The soldiers are suddenly there, they arrest Ross on false charges (violence for example). MacNeil not among them: this is a loss as in the book and 1975 that MacNeil and Ross had evolved a companionship gives the final scene more depth (plus MacNeil not bribed; MacNeil would not take bribes).
Demelza left in hysteria.
Graham’s books are quite different in overall effect: quiet psychological realism, accurate historical realization are what makes them fine. The 1975 world of the Poldarks is a desperate but frequently kindly one, and the progressivism and proto-feminism of the mid-1970s BBC films with their fine art made a good fit for the books. A more reactionary desperate harder era, the Thatcherized BBC industry with its incessant monitoring of ratings does not allow for a return to a genuinely held conviction of a social contract in the 2015 film. An attempt at grand myth seems to be what is being done: I take Johnson’s view in the opening of his preface to Shakespeare, we must evaluate someone’s art also in terms of her high aims, so let us see what Horsfield and her film-makers, crew, actors do next year.
Someone asked on Poldark Place (a face-book page):
I just finished watching the last episode of Poldark last night and the whole conversation between George and Elizabeth went right over my head. I didn’t understand what he meant about taking sides and what, besides his tone and eyes, made Elizabeth tell him to watch himself. Can someone please help me out on making sense of that conversation?
My reply: Absurdly late Horsfield is suddenly introducing the plot line where George tries to seduce Elizabeth away from Francis. In the book and 1975 mini-series George had been quietly insinuating himself between Eiizabeth and Francis by buying toys for her son, offering advice that seemed good and of course money; it was slowly evolving into sexual desire openly expressed. Horsfield has left that out completely and now absurdly and abruptly has him say he doesn’t want to take sides (against Francis, for her) and she super-insightful all of a sudden tells him “to lay off,” she does not want a lover is the idea, or to be loyal to George against Francis. The new series just does not leave time for these sub-stories but unless she drops major plot-lines of the later books she’s got to get them in. She wants to show us remance (Demelza and Ross, Verity and Blamey) and mining stories (anti-capitalist only in part).
Ellen – I’ve only just discovered your blog and I see it goes back a few years. My interest lies with the Poldark novels I’ve read (1-7) and the two BBC film series I’ve seen. It was the ’70’s series that brought me to the books. I was a young, teenage American male back then and I was NOT supposed to be into this sort of thing, but it just hooked me.
I moved on from Poldark in growing up; college, becoming a Commissioned Army Officer, wife, career and raising three children. But Poldark was always back there in the recesses of my mind. Now I move into my fifties and I hear about a re-make by the BBC. I watched it this summer on PBS and it just re-awakened all those great Sunday nights from 40 years ago and summer afternoons of reading. I’ve re-read books 1-3 last month and now I’m moving to book four.
Winston Graham’s writings and these films are absolutely wonderful diversions from the stresses of life and I was just looking for an internet place to discuss them with others who feel similar to me. Would you mind if I joined in on some discussions? I found one board, but it seems that people there post about once every year or two. Maybe I’m just too “rev’ved” up with the 2015 series having just run, but I was hoping for more interaction.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of your blog so far. I believe I;m picking up a vibe that you liked the ’70’s series better than this new one. I ordered both versions from PBS on DVD and binged watched them again over the last few weeks. I didn’t think the BBC could re-do what I considered the perfection from the ’70’s but (maybe I’m a creature of the latest production values) but I have to say I believe I like the latest version better.
Both series depart from Graham’swords but I think the new version is truer. It’s probably my maleness but I view Demelza as a true hero in what’s been portrayed thus far and even in my recollections of the books. The TV watcher in me is sad that the new version has spun this incredible love story between Ross and Demelza because, given that, there’s NO WAY what is coming (which MUST happen) would come. I have no idea how the screenwriters are going to come up with that! I mean . . . “Pray to God I do not lose the love of my life!” . . spoken to Elizabeth at Demelza’s beside!?!? Huh? Oh, and followed up with a . . . “No, my love, she will never take me.” When the ailing Demelza asks Ross if Elizabeth had come to take him!
How are they going to weave that next part after Francis’s death?
Well, thank you for letting me chime in. I hope I can write back again.
Dear Greg, I too fell in love with the novels and from another angle, these were not supposed to be the sort of books I should like, much less make a study of, but I did. They have meant a lot to me since reading them: I bonded with several of the heroines, including (a character many of the fans profess to dislike and to resent) Elizabeth Chynoweth Poldark Warleggan. She is a complex believable characters as is Demelza Carne Poldark. I agree with you they provide solace and comfort. I’ve been on that Poldark board and indeed was thrown off: for saying too much or saying what at least one of the anonymous moderators didn’t approve of. One reason for the silence is an intimidating group of rules which make for censorship. If you get onto facebook, you will find a Poldark appreciation page and a page called A passion for Poldark and Cornwall where there is a lot of talk. Alas, more about the films than the books. One good result of the new film adaptation is the older worship of Ellis and Rees has ceased. Effective as these two were, theirs was just one excellent interpretation. So this leads me to acknowledge yes I prefer the older adaptation. While not only can a film not be literally faithful, it must depart and become a work of art in its own right, it need not veer off so that it makes nonsense of what was central to the original story or set of characters unless these are dropped or so altered as to become something quite different. The latter has happened in the new Poldark at the same time as there is a refusal to acknowledge this.
I tried to get a good discussion going on the books and/or films on two of my small Yahoo list-servs but it petered out. Luckily I’ve been able to teach Ross Poldark twice to undergraduates and since then at a non-traditional (so to speak) college for retired people: Oscher Institute of lifelong learning. I also have simply written about the books to reach people on the Net. Once I gave a paper about the concept of liberty in the books. I put that on my Poldark page too — which I assume you found. I welcome all comments. Yours enrichen our experience.
Ellen
I like both the 1970s series and this new one. Neither version is faithful to Graham’s novels and quite honestly, I never expected them to be. I’ve never heard of a theatrical or television adaptation of a novel being completely faithful. More importantly, I prefer this new version of Elizabeth Poldark. I have always found her interesting, which means I never liked the old version of her as this cold bitch rather unpleasant and disturbing.
Except that some deviations are more interesting and some erase or glide over important issues .The new Elizabeth is a sentimentalization that reinforces all sorts of conservative values; like the portrait of Keren it’s so antifeminist it’s worse than a laugh. Graham was a feminist. The old portrait was too hard but it’s much closer to reality: women are ambitious and amoral, and they make bad mistakes. I feel for Elizabeth in the book and Wheeler’s creation (a central writer).
The old portrait was too hard but it’s much closer to reality: women are ambitious and amoral, and they make bad mistakes.
I don’t agree. I don’t believe that Graham’s portrait of Elizabeth, the 1970s portrait or even Horsfield’s portrait is “closer to reality”. I believe that all three versions are merely different takes on one fictional character.
women are ambitious and amoral, and they make bad mistakes.
Anyone else reading this comment would assume that this is some general opinion on the nature of all women.
You don’t think that Graham’s character has precedence over the other two? I don’t know where you pulled that quotation from but I’d amend it only by saying men and women are speaking generally ambitious, amoral and make bad mistakes. I don’t know why you keep this up.
It’s up to the individual reader or television view to decide which version of Elizabeth that they prefer. These same people cannot dictate how Graham, the producers of the 70s series or Debbie Horsfield will portray Elizabeth, even if they seemed to have this attitude that they can dictate the writing of a work of fiction. But they can make the decision on which version they are willing to accept . . . whether we like it or not.
Why do you keep writing here? I’ve offered to send you a considered paper if you want to talk seriously. Who cares what you think of what I think. I don’t. This will be my last message to you and after this if you keep it up, you’ll find yourself blocked. Learn about another topic perhaps and then find someone else to harass.