Julian Fellowes Takes the "Feel Good" Out of Downton Abbey

By Editor |

Sunday, January 12, 2014

With the deaths of Lady Sybil and Matthew Crawley in season three, and then the rape of Anna Bates in season four, creator Julian Fellowes has taken the good feelings out of Downton Abbey.  One can understand that he had to kill off those two characters because the actors wanted to leave the series; but having done that, he didn't need to subject us to the rape of Anna.

We all -- or perhaps most of us -- know how wrong rape is, and what a violation it is.  Did he really need to teach us a lesson we already knew?

Whether Fellowes meant to write it like this or not, Downton Abbey has been, until now, a "feel good" television series.  He has written most of the characters to be extraordinarily sensitive, kind and tolerant of each other, not at all the way a house full of aristocrats and servants would have acted in Georgian England.  The master, Lord Grantham, is concerned about the welfare of his tenant farmers, not about the money he gets from them.  The Crawleys are consistently kind to all their servants.  The Crawley women become friends with their ladies' maids, and Lord Grantham becomes friends with his valet.  Bates, instead of being dismissed when he gets involved with the police, is defended by the Crawleys' lawyer.  Mrs. Patmore, instead of being dismissed when her eyesight fails, is given an expensive operation in London.  Mrs. Hughes, when she suspects she has cancer, is assured by Lady Grantham that she will be taken care of until she dies.  Ethel is dismissed for having sex with a soldier, but is eventually saved by Isobel Crawley.  Bates saves Thomas' ass even though Bates hates Thomas.  Up to now, Fellowes has pulled all his punches -- and that's precisely why the series has been so popular:  It portrays an idealized version of human behavior, and it allows the viewers to feel good about the world.

Imagine a Nazi empire in which the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals are treated with respect instead of being slaughtered, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

With the rape of Anna, you may say that Fellowes is simply doing what he has always done, which is to take characters to the brink and then bring them back.  But like murder, rape is forever -- there is no "coming back" from it.  It is a violation of the spirit on the same level that murder is a violation of the body.  There's no way for Fellowes to fix this violation; and if he actually shows Anna coming back to the living and being a happy person again, then he'll really be taking Downton Abbey to fantasy land.  He will lose credibility.  (He is already losing credibility with Thomas, who has been shown one kindness after another, but never learns anything from it.)

Fellowes has been receiving praise for putting Anna's rape off-camera in order to prevent it from being too shocking.  But even so, the way he does it is again unrealistic.  He segues from the rape to the unrealistic scene of Edith's boyfriend winning back Lord Grantham's IOU from a card-shark.  Fellowes expects the viewer to continue to be soothed by the feel-good scenes while a horror unfolds in the basement to one of our favorite characters.  Fellowes expects too much from his viewers.  It's like hitting a cat and then expecting the cat to sit still while it's petted.

For me, the bottom line is this:  I was watching Downton Abbey because it made me feel good.  If it shocks me instead of entertaining me, I may not continue to watch.

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Later:  I did a search on the internet, and I found out that the rapist dies in a subsequent episode, possibly at the hands of Mr. Bates, so I'm feeling a little better.  I still say, however, that rape is too raw for a "feel good" series like Downton Abbey.

A writer by the name of June Thomas has published an article on Slate entitled "Why Is Downton Abbey So Horrible to Its Female Characters?"  I tried to leave my comments there, but my browser kept crashing, so I'll leave them here.

June Thomas starts out by saying that Downton Abbey has a long tradition of punishing women who dare to challenge convention, but that's consistent with the time period that the drama is set in -- women WERE punished for challenging convention in the early 1900's.  On the other hand, starting in the first episode of the fourth season, Mary inherits half of Downton Abbey -- not bad for an English woman during that period.  In general, the women of Downton Abbey have a good deal more power and influence than women probably had during those years.

But June Thomas's overall premise is that the women on the show are being treated worse than the men, and I don't think that's true.  Consider these things:

-- The servant William dies in battle;

-- Matthew is injured in battle and is crippled for an extended period of time;

-- The servant Thomas loses all his money when trying to go into business for himself;

-- Bates is wrongly arrested and convicted of murder;

-- Lord Grantham loses the family's fortune in a bad investment;

-- Thomas is ostracized and almost loses everything for being gay;

-- Lord Grantham gradually loses authority within the family, and loses half the estate to his daughter.

Of the deaths in the series, two are women (Lavinia, Sybil) and two are men (William, Matthew).  (Two of those deaths, one man and one woman, were necessary because the actors left the series.)

All in all, I think that the series treats both men and women equally.