SPOILER ALERT: conjecture
on the season 4 plot appears in the last paragraph of this post. (Not
that most of us probably couldn’t see it coming…)
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| Anna and Mrs. Hughes in episode 3 |
Last night’s episode of Downton Abbey was even darker and more
troubling than the previous week’s violence. And that’s because, in this latest
installment, action tantamount to rape is advocated by those we have taken to
be “the good guys.” That we are beguiled into viewing it as justified only makes
us complicit, bringing us one step lower on the slippery descent into situational
ethics.
Episode 2 featured two major skirmishes in the battle
between the sexes: Green’s rape of Anna, and Edna’s “seduction” of Tom. The
contrasts between these acts are multiple, from the genders of the perpetrator/victim,
through location of the event, and the style of depiction: man vs. woman, downstairs
vs. upstairs, explicit violence vs. implied non-violence. And the reactions Sir
Julian Fellowes cultivates within us, the viewers, when faced with each of
these despicable acts, are also very different: fear, horror, and tears vs. vague
unease.
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| Tom Branson |
Both victims are among the most attractive and sympathetic members
of the cast, haling from among the virtuous lower classes. There is also the
aspect of their relative blamelessness: though Anna had no reason to believe
ill of Green (beyond the tingling of Bates’ spidey sense), it’s hard to avoid
the impression Tom should have known he was playing with fire in rekindling a
relationship with Edna. The two attackers also issue from among the poor,
albeit the undeserving, non-virtuous kind (they’re also clearly the less
attractive member of each doomed couple).
In both sexual attacks, the sympathetic natures of the
victims are taken advantage of in order to gratify the perpetrators’s needs--for
sex, power, and, in Edna’s case, as a gambit to improve her social situation.
Can a man be raped? Episode 2 makes a clear case for the affirmative.
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| Edna Braithwaite |
But it is episode 3 that I find more alarming, and
specifically the scene where Mrs. Hughes confronts Edna on Tom’s behalf. But
first, let’s backtrack a smidge: having plied Tom with whiskey and slipping
into his room, Edna approaches Tom the next day, demanding he commit to
marrying her if their encounter results in a pregnancy. Tom refuses to accept
the premise of the question (a neat lesson also stressed in West Wing, Season 7, which I’ve been
watching recently). Conception, Tom tells Edna, isn’t that simple. Edna challenges
Tom: so he regrets their encounter?
Tom, in his sad sappiness nearly a fit heir for the dopey Lord
himself, responds: “I am already full of regret. There is nothing but regret in
me” (though I’m guessing it was something quite other than regret that issued
from him on the night in question).
Later, in London,
Lady Mary recognizes Tom is in difficulty. When he refuses to open up about his
problem, she advises to find some way of unburdening himself. Which sends Tom
to Mrs. Hughes, the one person in whom Anna has also confided.
The stalwart Mrs. Hughes, believing herself partly to blames
for Tom’s situation—for having she assisted in, albeit grudgingly, Edna’s
return to Downton as a ladies maid. She subsequently confronts Edna on Tom’s
behalf, but not until she’s discovered the Mary Stopes book Married Love, a sensation at the time,
in Edna’s room.
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| Dr. Mary Stopes |
According to Mrs. Hughes, possession of the book means Edna had
planned the whole thing, and that she must have known all about preventing
pregnancy. Unfortunately, Fellowes—and, by extension, Mrs. Hughes, are mistaken
on this. The version of Married Love
available online only hints at methods of contraception—primarily douching,
presumably, and possibly condoms:
It should be realized that all the
proper, medical methods of preventing undesired pregnancy consists, not in
destroying an already growing embryo, but in preventing the male semen from
reaching the unfertilized egg cell. This may be done either by shutting the
semen away from the opening of the womb, or by securing the death of all
(instead of the natural death of all but one) of the two or three
hundred million spermatozoa which enter the woman…To render inert the
ejaculated spermatozoa which would otherwise die and decompose naturally, is a
simple matter, now familiar to every intelligent physician and layman.2
How to do this, Stopes writes, is “knowledge…easily
obtainable” elsewhere. Apparently, one of the commonly used fertility
regulators of the time was “half a lemon, partially squeezed out and then
inserted in the vagina to cover the cervix like a cap.”3
But I digress.
My point, finally, concerns the lengths to which Mrs. Hughes
appears prepared to go in her attempts to foil Edna’s plan:
Edna: What proof have you got?
Mrs. Hughes: None, at the moment.
But if you persist in your lie, I’ll summon the doctor and have him examine
you.
Edna: You can’t force me.
Mrs. Hughes: Oh yes, I can. First,
I’ll lock you in this room. Then, when he’s arrived, I’ll tear the clothes from
your body and hold you down, if that’s what it takes.
A forcible gynaecologic examination? Does that sound far
from rape to you?
In the face of Mrs. Hughes’s determination, Edna folds. And
we, let’s face it, are stoked. Because a devil, for once, has got her comeuppance.
Edna: He still seduced me. You
can’t change that.
Mrs. Hughes: You made a man drunk
and climbed into his bed. You call that seduction? Because I don’t.
Edna rushes out. To Tom, Mrs. Hughes allows she was
bluffing, that a doctor’s examination at that point would have found nothing.
But haven’t we, too, been seduced? Seduced into accepting the threat of a near-rape as a justified response to Edna’s aggression.
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| Ethel Parks |
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| Lady Edith |
Notes
1This is not a summary of the episode. For an
excellent recap of episode 3, please see Robin Kawakami’s Wall Street Journal
blog piece, here http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/19/downton-abbey-season-4-episode-3-tv-recap/
2 Stopes, Mary Carmichael. Married love or love in marriage. New York, NY:
The Critic and Guide Company, 1918. Available online at
3 Short, R.V. “New ways of preventing HIV
infection: thinking simply, simply thinking.”
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B
Biol Sci. 2006 May 29; 361(1469): 811–820. Published
online 2006 February 3. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2005.1781
