With almost everything worth watching (with the exception of Brooklyn Nine Nine) on hiatus in the US right now, viewers are even more riveted to Downton Abbey than usual. As Julian Fellowes furthers his slow indoctrination of the US masses with this upper crust-worshipping drama, the show has featured not one but two storylines in the last few weeks that have raised my eyebrows—and I’m not the only one. Writer and pop culture critic Sady Doyle recently criticised the show’s handling of rape and I’m not too pleased with how it chose to deal with abortion.
First, the now-infamous and highly controversial rape episode, in which Anna was raped belowstairs by a visiting valet while the rest of the servants crowded upstairs (by special permission) to listen to Nellie Melba sing live. Doyle saw the show as framing this as a ‘punishment’ for Anna, noting that when Anna flirted and joked around with the valet earlier, her husband screamed at her and instructed her to stay away…and by the end of the episode, there Anna was, in a horrific and traumatic scene (one that garnered some 200 viewer complaints in the UK).
Lesson learned, Downton viewers: when your hubby tells you to stay away from a boy, you should do it, because otherwise, you might get raped.
But the handling of the rape grew worse over the coming episodes, as Anna desperately tried to keep it a secret—not just because she was experiencing emotions common to rape victims, like feeling dirty or soiled, but because she feared her husband. Yes, aren’t Anna and Bates such a model of married love! Meanwhile, Bates stalked Anna about, repeatedly forced himself on her, and insisted that she tell him what was going wrong. We as viewers were supposed to read this, I believe, as loving behavior. He just wanted to help, you know, and she is his wife, after all, so she owes him this much.
The handling of the rape and the aftermath left me with a decidedly bad taste in my mouth, as it reminded me yet again that women with agency are often punished for it in pop culture, and that men who stalk and pressure women are often framed as romantic or sexually appealing. We are supposed to view Bates as protective and loving instead of creepy and troubling in these scenes where he repeatedly corners Anna, at times actively pinning her into small rooms, ignoring her obvious panic and distress. Methinks Fellowes has been reading too many Twilight novels.
While Downton was fumbling on rape, it was also bumbling on abortion. Unsurprisingly, Lady Edith’s affair de coeur with Mr. Gregson resulted in a pregnancy. The entire relationship with Mr. Gregson is already strange enough, and Downton’s decision to punish Edith for having sex by sticking her with a foetus was, perhaps, predictable, given how much backward moralising the show seems to enjoy engaging in. Naturally, it wasn’t enough for us to get the collective vapors over her premarital sex; clearly, we needed something worse.
So and thus, Edith boldly heads to London for an illegal abortion, and to her surprise, she’s supported (sort of) by Aunt Rosamund. By ‘supported,’ of course, I mean she’s lectured about how terrible this all is and how she might die (well, yes, that’s true, given the risks of illegal abortion) and how obviously there’s simply no happy way out of this situation so they’ll have to settle for abortion. Ultimately, Rosamund volunteers to accompany Edith to the abortion clinic, which is suitably dour, grim, and miserable, in keeping with Downton’s general theme of punishing women who show any kind of spirit or initiative.
‘Okay, Edith, you can have an abortion, but only if you get it at the crappy clinic.’
Yet, lo and behold, Edith changes her mind at the last minute, moved by thoughts of ‘killing a wanted child’ and the tears of another woman echoing through the halls of the practice. (This is why we needed HIPAA, people.) So she flees, overnight bag in hand, followed by good old Rosamund, who assures the doctor and nurse that apparently this was all a mistake.
Score one for anti-choice people, who delight in seeing women punished on screen for having sex by being forced to have children. They absolutely adore storylines like this one, where women consider abortion and reject it, especially if women change their minds at the last possible instant. Such plots are essentially catnip to the anti-abortion movement, which uses them as an argument that women dither up to the last second over whether they should get abortions…and, of course, regret them immediately after having them.
This leaves Edith facing a baby on her own while her runaway lover romps through Germany. As she points out, being an unwed mother comes with some significant social hardships given her era and social class (bad, bad Edith, naughty girl!). Will Fellowes solve her dilemma with a miscarriage, thereby punishing her just a bit but ultimately letting up so she can go back to mooning about the house?
It would appear that this season of Downton Abbey is all about the punishing of the women. Anna’s been punished for interacting with a man outside her marriage, Edith has been punished for having sex before marriage, and Rose is riding hard for a fall with Jack and their illicit interracial affair. Good work, Julian!