The narratives surrounding the television series ‘Downton Abbey’ and the musical film ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ are about change and more specifically, how the daughters within both families represent the small, but important contributions that these characters make to modern feminist narratives. … In both ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ each trio of sisters takes a step in determining her own fate.
This guest post written by Adina Bernstein appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.
Progression, especially for women, is often a slow march toward equality. It’s easy for this generation of women to take for granted some of the rights we have: K-12 education, the opportunities for a fulfilling career, and — for cis straight people — the right to marry or not marry and choose a spouse.Although we still have a long way to go as we still contend with barriers to justice, such as abortion restrictions, wage inequality, police brutality, lack of healthcare for trans people, and only last year did the government pass nationwide marriage equality for same-sex couples.
While many modern women don’t think twice about some of these rights, there was a time in history, not too long ago, when these questions coming from women were unthinkable. Women were supposed to marry by a certain age, bring children (and by children, I mean boys) into the world, take care of the home, and ensure that their husband was happy; that was the extent of a woman’s life (except for poor women and women of color who worked outside the home).
Modern feminism often refers to the term “glass ceiling,” which represents the barriers and boundaries that have prohibited women (as well as people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities) from advancing in their careers the same as men have. It’s sometimes easier to see the larger cracks in the glass ceiling (represented by Hillary Clinton accepting the Democratic nomination for President, for example). But while we cheer on the larger victories, we must also pay attention to the smaller achievements as well.
In the early 20th century, some women may have been content to live out the lives pre-planned for them, fulfilling the traditional roles of marriage and motherhood. But some women did question if it was right or fair that a woman was forced to live a life with rigid parameters while her husband or brother was given freedoms that seemed out of reach.
The storylines and themes in the television series Downton Abbey and the musical film Fiddler on the Roof are about change and more specifically, how the daughters within both families represent the small, but important contributions that these characters make to modern feminist narratives.
Downton Abbey starts in 1912 in an aristocratic estate in Yorkshire, England. Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), the Earl of Grantham and his American-born wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), the Countess of Grantham, have three daughters: Mary, Edith, and Sybil. As they have no son, this poses a problem as the title and Robert’s fortune will not pass to his daughters. An unbreakable entail was set up years ago. Without a son, the title of the Earl of Grantham and the money tied to the estate must go to the closest male relative. Robert’s cousin and heir is dead, he is among those who did not survive the sinking of the Titanic. The closest living male relative is a distant cousin, Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), a middle-class lawyer who is shocked to find out that he will one day be a member of the aristocracy.
Adapted from the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof is set in 1905 during the Russian Empire. Tevye (Chaim Topol), a poor Jewish milkman and his wife, Golde (Norma Crane), have five daughters — three of whom push the narrative forward: Tzeitel, Hodel, and Chava — and no sons. In that community at that time, young people did not choose their spouse. A match was arranged by the town matchmaker and if the marriage was agreeable to the parents (and the father, specifically), then the couple would wed. Tevye agreed to betroth his eldest daughter, Tzeitel (Rosalind Harris) to the town butcher, Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann). But there is a major hitch to the plan: Tzeitel wants to marry her childhood sweetheart, Motel (Leonard Frey), the tailor.
In both Downton Abbey and Fiddler on the Roof, each trio of sisters takes a step in determining her own fate. While the decisions these girls make may seem innocuous, these steps represent the larger cultural and societal fate that will impact future generations of women.
Mary/Tzeitel: At the outset of both stories, the eldest of the sisters know what their lives will look like: marry, have children, and generally live out the same lives that their mothers and grandmothers lived. Mary (Michelle Dockery) understands her status and value as an earl’s daughter, but as she’s stubborn and opinionated, she will not take the first man that comes her way. Mary initially rejects Matthew as an interloper when he is announced as her father’s new heir; it’s not the greatest start to what would become one of the great TV relationships of this era. But over time, Mary Crawley will prove herself to be much more capable than just being an earl’s daughter, as she eventually becomes a widow, a single mother, and a savvy agent of the estate.
Tzeitel is very much her mother’s daughter. Strong, outspoken, and very smart, she makes the world-shattering decision to ask her father for permission to marry Motel; not an easy feat in that community and time period. Her father balks, knowing that not only does her request break with tradition, but also fractures the verbal contract he already made with the much older butcher. Tevye finally agrees, putting his daughter’s happiness above the accepted practice of allowing the matchmaker to present a future spouse to the young person’s parents. Not only do Tzeitel’s actions pave the way for her sister’s choices, but they also encourage her future husband to achieve his goals.
Edith/Hodel: Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) is the classic middle child and creator Julian Fellowes’ answer to Jan Brady. Caught in between her beautiful elder sister and her independent younger sister, Edith starts out the series as a mean spirited, angry young woman, especially towards Mary as the two share a rivalry. She begins to find her purpose at the beginning of season two during the changes that World War I brings. After Edith is dumped at the alter by her fiancé, she finds her purpose in life in unconventional ways that would have been unthinkable for the daughter of the aristocracy a generation before. She becomes a journalist and a magazine editor. She starts a romantic relationship with her editor Michael Gregson (Charles Edwards), becoming pregnant. After finding out that Michael is dead and after many emotional hurdles, she eventually makes the decision to openly raise her child. Edith finally finds marital happiness with Bertie Pelham (Harry Hadden-Paton), the newly titled Marquess of Hexham. Surprising everyone, including herself, Edith now ranks above her father and her entire family in terms of aristocratic rank and social standing.
While Hodel (Michele Marsh) is not writer Sholem Aleichem’s answer to Jan Brady, Hodel experiences a similarly unconventional story arc to Edith. Like her older sister, Hodel knows that she must marry. Her choice of husband in the beginning of the film, if she had one, is the rabbi’s son. But like any society, there is a social hierarchy. The daughter of a poor milkman is unlikely to marry the rabbi’s son. Hodel will marry Perchik (Michael Glaser), a traveling teacher with radical ideas that do not sit well with the denizens of Anatevka. When Perchik is arrested in Kiev at a protest and sent to Siberia, Hodel makes the unconventional decision to follow her fiancé to Sibera. Traveling alone to meet up with her fiancé, Hodel makes the brave choice to leave her family and everything she knows behind, not knowing when she will see them again.
Sybil/Chava: If one were to look the definition of rebellious in the dictionary, one might see a picture of Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown Findlay). The youngest of Robert and Cora’s three daughters, Sybil not only gets along with her two older sisters due to her kind spirit, but she’s also unafraid to step away from a traditional life. Whether she attends dinner wearing blue harem pants or her passionate political activism, she charts her own course. While attending a political rally, Sybil is knocked unconscious during a riot. Finally, she shocks her family with her marriage to Irish socialist chauffeur, Tom Branson (Allen Leech). Sybil dies in season three, leaving a grieving husband, a newborn daughter who would never know her mother, and a devastated family. In the end, Sybil’s legacy of love, independence, and acceptance that change was a good thing would forever leave a mark on her family.
If Tzeitel and Hodel made small steps outside of a traditional life, Chava (Neva Small) jumped across the boundary of tradition. Her marriage to Fyedka (Raymond Lovelock), a Christian boy, breaks all the rules. By marrying out of her faith and converting to her husband’s religion, she does not even think twice about asking for permission the way her elder sisters had; she just goes for it by eloping. Her parents and her father especially, are extremely upset and Tevye disowns her. In the end, Chava and Fyedka receive a reluctant blessing from Tevye as the Jewish denizens of Anatevka are forced out of their homes.
Looking back, the cracks in the glass ceiling that these women made may seem small and insignificant, but in the long run, the cracks are substantial. This generation, the great-granddaughters of the young women who lived in that era, owe a huge debt to our great-grandmothers who lived in the early 1900s. Without the bold and unconventional choices they made, we would not have the rights and opportunities that many of us take for granted today.
People of color are often omitted from historical dramas (except to play slaves or servants), with the rationale that it’s not “realistic” to have them in the cast. We can see through this excuse in historical dramas in which casting people of color would match the story being told, but white people still have the biggest roles in–and sometimes even make up the entire cast of–the film, as in the recently released ‘Noah.’ Historical “realism” is not always what we think it is: literature and visual art through the ages confirm that people of color who weren’t slaves, like Alexandre Dumas the author of ‘The Three Musketeers,’ have been in Europe for as long as people have lived there. We need to see more of their stories onscreen.
People of color are often omitted from historical dramas (except to play slaves or servants) with the rationale that it’s not “realistic” to have them in the cast. We can see through this excuse in the historical dramas in which casting people of color would match the story being told, but white people still have the biggest roles in–and sometimes even make up the entire cast of–the film, as in the recently released Noah. Historical “realism” is also not always what we think it is: literature and visual art through the ages confirm that people of color who weren’t slaves, like Alexandre Dumas the author of The Three Musketeers, have been in Europe for as long as people have lived there. We need to see more of their stories onscreen.
Director Amma Asante, in her second feature, Belle tells the based-on-fact story (the script is by Misan Sagay) of a young biracial girl, whose Royal Navy Admiral father (Matthew Goode) takes her to the family estate just outside of London, so his great-uncle’s family and servants can raise her in late-18th-century, upper-class luxury her father says is “due to her.”
The girl, Dido, grows into a beautiful young woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a star-making turn), wearing the finest dresses, often the same cut (with the outrageously low necklines and the upward thrust of breasts typical of the period–like a Maxim cover gone out of control) but in a different shade from those of her blonde, white cousin and companion Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). Dido carries her father’s last name, and, when he dies, inherits a £2,000 annuity which, as Elizabeth points out, makes her an heiress. But Dido is not allowed to eat dinner with the family–or the servants, because, as her great-uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) tells her, neither situation would be “correct” for a woman of her color and social standing.
Dido’s isolation increases when her aunts take the initiative in finding a rich husband for her cousin who, because her father has remarried, has no dowry. Lord Mansfield hands the house keys to Dido and explains that since no gentleman will marry her (because of the color of her skin) and because of her social standing she cannot marry a man who isn’t a gentleman, she can soon replace her “spinster” Aunt Mary (Penelope Wilton) as the caretaker of the house.
Elizabeth and Dido
During the family’s stay in London, Dido does attract suitors, for her beauty, charm and for her money. Fans of Jane Austen may see some parallels with her work, especially in Dido’s initial fraught interactions with John (Sam Reid), the vicar’s abolitionist son. Belle fails to give the same sense, as the best adaptations of Austen do (like 1995’s Persuasion) of the death grip manners and custom combined with the mores and opinions of their families and social circle had on women, especially young women, at that time (and the film takes place some decades before the works of Austen do). The film pays little attention to the necessity of a young man and a young woman of courting age to always have a chaperone present, a tradition that survives today in some strict religious communities in which the prospective bride and groom spend hardly any time alone together before they are married.
We see the reason for chaperones when Dido is alone with the loathsome older brother of the penniless gentleman who wishes to marry her. The brother manhandles her as he tells her how disgusting he finds her, and then, out of the camera’s range, seems to sexually assault her. This scene is the only part of the film that, at that time of strict sex segregation among unmarried, unrelated gentry, shows how privileged, white men felt free to sexually prey on women of color. Although the film makes clear that Dido’s father loved her mother, the implications of his meeting her on a Spanish slave ship are disturbing: the mother is never called a slave, so we can infer Dido’s father never owned her (unlike Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, the mother of his children who were born into slavery) but the relationship (while not rape, as it would be between a slave and owner no matter how much one “loved” the other) would still be an abuse of power if Dido’s mother worked for her father as a paid servant, as Mabel (Bethan Mary-James), the Black maid at the family’s London house, does.
Dido and John
The customs and mores of the present day always corrupt the “realism” of costume dramas: the well-scrubbed faces and bodies of the actors belying the fact that daily bathing is a relatively recent innovation, their clothes, in the days before dry-cleaning are spotless (in very early silent films we see stained clothes–over a hundred years after the events of Belle take place–were the norm), their accents in 18th century England are an anachronism. We suspend our disbelief to ooh and ahh over the pretty dresses, grand mansions and drawing room antics.
The problem with Belle is: we have to suspend our disbelief about the rampant racism, and to some degree the sexism (Dido, at one point, is the only woman in a court full of men and not one of them tries to throw her out) of the time as well. We see plenty of racist sentiment directed toward Dido (especially from Miranda Richardson, who plays the gossipy, sharp-tongued mother of Dido’s gentleman suitor), but the “good” people like Dido’s great-uncle and John end up espousing beliefs about racial equality very much like those the “good” white people of today might. Even though one character wrote a court decision that (spoiler alert) laid the framework for the eventual abolition of slavery in England, and the other (spoiler alert) married a Black woman, giving these 18th century characters (especially those based on real people who lived at the time) the mindset of the 21st century has the effect, as in Downton Abbey and to a lesser degree in Mad Men, of downplaying the racism of the past, the legacy of which we still see in the present.
The real Dido and Elizabeth
Americans don’t have to go back nearly 250 years and over an ocean to find overt racism about the “mixing” of the races from “good” white people. Abraham Lincoln, who signed the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation about 80 years after the events of the film take place, espoused racist beliefs in historical documents. Film and television producers avoided showing white and Black people together in any relationship other than as master and servant (even on talk shows) well into the 1960s. In the 1970s, when my family lived next door to an interracial couple, the children in the neighborhood called their son and daughter “zebras.”
The second of Dido’s suitors, John, is radically forward-thinking for the time. Much religious rhetoric in those days supported slavery, the way a lot of religious rhetoric today supports homophobia, so John would have had to be something of an apostate too: an unusual position for the son of a clergyman. He also would have been considered a crank and an outcast (like many forward-thinking people throughout history) in most social circles of the time. Instead, he suffers from Perfect Man Syndrome, a disease that also afflicts the romantic leads in Short Term 12 and the upcoming releases Obvious Child and Dear White People: men who are so ceaselessly caring, who never say the wrong thing no matter how aggrieved they are, that they might as well sprout wings and fly into the clouds as angels. Sam Reid’s relative lack of skill as an actor doesn’t help: I had to suppress a giggle when he shouts, “I love her,” in a scene that isn’t supposed to be humorous. The flawless Mbatha-Raw, in particular, shows him up, as does the presence of Wilkinson, Richardson, Wilton and Emily Watson (who plays Wilkinson’s wife) in the film who all give the type of serviceable performances that will neither diminish nor enhance their reputations as great actors. The film score by Rachel Portman (one of the few women who regularly composes music for movies) is also uninspired: cuing the audience to feel emotions the film doesn’t quite earn.
That said, Belle has a great lead performance from a Black actress in a Black woman director’s film of a Black woman’s script about a Black woman in European history (who wasn’t a slave): an opportunity that doesn’t come very often for audiences, so you shouldn’t miss it. If the long line for the women’s restroom after the film is any indication (women are the main audience for costume dramas in film and on TV) Belle will probably be a big art house success. Still, we see glimmers of a better, deeper movie in too few moments of Belle: in Dido’s own initial snobbishness, the trappings of which have left her in a lonely, untenable position. Later, we see her two identities, as an upper class woman and a Black woman, at odds with each other, captured most poignantly when Dido is asked to sit for a family portrait. At first we don’t understand why she’s upset at the request, until she points out that in the paintings on the walls of the mansion, Black people are always positioned at the feet of white people (as pet dogs, cats and birds were often painted with children at the time: in the otherwise excellent A Royal Affair–which takes place during the same general period–a Black child is also portrayed as a “pet” for the white upper class). At the end of the movie the director unveils the real portrait that inspired the film and in the original Dido’s face we see an expression hinting at the more complex and nuanced conduit to the past Belle might have been.
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane, and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.
Continually insisting that rapists can only be unfathomably monstrous Others and virtual strangers who physically brutalize their victims serves to hide who the real rapists are: brothers, sons, fathers, husbands, friends, and colleagues. Anna’s bruises serve to delegitimize the experiences of survivors who don’t bear a physical mark of the absence of their consent. We need a wider representation of the range of survivor experiences when it comes to rape and sexual assault so that we can begin to dismantle rape culture and develop a system that is capable of identifying rapists and that values the stories of survivors.
Building off my recent critique Rape Culture, Trigger Warnings, and Bates Motel, I have a bone to pick with Downton Abbey‘s infamous rape of its beloved character, the lady’s maid Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt). I’m not alone in my sentiments that Downton Abbey handled the rape scene poorly. However, where most simply question the use of rape as a plot device, I think that showing rape is an important, underrepresented part of the human experience (particularly the female experience), but I question the value of the way in which the show depicted Anna’s rape as well as its aftermath. Not only that, but Anna’s rape was not the first on Downton Abbey (more on that later).
For context, Mr. Green temporarily enters the Downton household as the valet of Lord Gillingham, a guest of the estate. He and Anna immediately have an easy, flirtatious friendship of which Mr. Bates, her husband, is wary because he’s suspicious of the quality of Green’s character. While the household is occupied by an opera performance, Green corners Anna, beats her, and rapes her. Anna keeps it a secret for much of the season due to her fear of what her husband will do in retaliation, and she even lies about the circumstances of the incident once the rape comes to light, claiming it was an anonymous burglar.
Anna pleads with Mrs. Hughes to keep her rape a secret to protect her husband, Mr. Bates
Like my critique of Bates Motel, I feel strongly that Downton Abbeyshould have included an explicit trigger warning prior to the episode. Though Downton warned that there would be “violent” content, that’s not really illustrative enough to let rape and sexual assault survivors know what they’re in for. Even though friends had warned me that there was a rape in Season 4, I was taken off-guard by the scene. Like with Bates Motel, my PTSD was triggered, and I had to turn off the show. After a couple of weeks, I forced myself to finish the season because I’m a Downton fan, and I really hoped that the writers would develop the aftermath of Anna’s brutalization in an honest way that would add to the conversation about sexual assault and give a voice to the experience of survivors. That said, our culture needs to start showing a bit more sensitivity towards survivors by notcasually re-traumatizing us or putting us in danger of being triggered. Even though I’m the most vocal protestor of spoilers, I still say, “Fuck the surprise of drama; give me the choice of whether or not I want to watch triggering media. Give me the choice of peace of mind.”
Anna, bruised and beaten, after she was raped
Anna’s rape is excessively, unrealistically violent. Mr. Green cuts, bruises, and bloodies the face of a highly visible lady’s maid. How does he think she will explain away those bruises? The bruises act as a symbol to the viewer that Anna did not give consent; they are a testament to the truthfulness of her claims, a mark on her body that reflects the horrors that were done to her. Many women don’t have those kinds of marks, but their claims are no less truthful. Anti-rape campaigner Bidisha ShonarKoli Mamata says, “You can’t just insert a scene like this into a cosy drama. You have to treat rape sensitively, rather than use it as a plot device…Instead of focusing on the impact of the violence on Mrs Bates, it repeated basic rape myths, such as the idea rapists are always creepy guys. In fact, they are normal people and are often related to the victim.”
Mr. Green dragging Anna by the hair
Continually insisting that rapists can only be unfathomably monstrous Others and virtual strangers who physically brutalize their victims serves to hide who the real rapists are: brothers, sons, fathers, husbands, friends, and colleagues. Anna’s bruises serve to delegitimize the experiences of survivors who don’t bear a physical mark of the absence of their consent. We need a wider representation of the range of survivor experiences when it comes to rape and sexual assault so that we can begin to dismantle rape culture and develop a system that is capable of identifying rapists and that values the stories of survivors.
The writers selected Anna to be raped because her character is beyond reproach, and no one would doubt the authenticity of her claims. The Telegraph describes Anna as “a model of respectability, stoicism and goodness.” There still exists the niggling subtext that she was “asking for it” because of her flirtatious relationship with Mr. Green despite Mr. Bates’ spider senses tingling about how Green was a bad dude.
Anna gives Mr. Green a defiant kiss in front of Mr. Bates
Though Downton Abbey punishes Anna for being flirtatious and for not listening to the wisdom of her husband’s judgement, the show wanted to depict an uncomplicated rape where Green was an outsider and villain while Anna was without a doubt the victim of a heinous crime. Now that, my friends, is lazy storytelling. If Downton Abbey wanted to be true to its time (and our time, for that matter), it would’ve created a scenario in which the the victim was generally not believed and in which the perpetrator was someone she knew and would have to encounter on a regular basis. In the Express article, “Brutal truth behind that shocking Downton rape scene,” Dr. Pamela Cox observes: “A maid who complained of rape displayed knowledge of things she was not supposed to know about and was liable to be thought partly to blame.” It would’ve been better storytelling that reflected more realism if another servant or one of the house’s lords had attacked Anna. Though Green comes back a few times, this is a device solely to torment Anna and ramp up the drama rather than give a realistic depiction of a woman being forced to interact with her rapist on a regular basis, which happened all too often back then and continues to happen all too often now.
Mr. Bates comforts his wife after learning that she was raped
Season 4 of Downton Abbey actually has a couple of character interactions that could have more realistically ended in sexual assault. The relationship between Mrs. Braithwaite and Branson could have been fruitful territory for exploration of themes of rape, victim blaming, and the sheer unlikelihood of false accusations of rape. Branson’s new lord-like status makes it harder for a servant to say “no” to him without facing repercussions. What if Braithwaite changed her mind about her scheming, and a drunken Branson took advantage of her? I thought he behaved disgustingly after the incident, without a sense of his own responsibility in the affair, and he is only “redeemed” because Braithwaite was manipulating him all along. What if she hadn’t been, though? In the end, the fact that she’s a social climber doesn’t make a difference when it comes to consent, but perhaps Downton could have shined a light on its audience’s internalized prejudices and victim-blaming propensities with a nuance-rich storyline.
Braithwaite and Branson
Another relationship that nearly ends in rape is that of Jimmy and Ivy. He tries to force himself on her at the end of a date, claiming that she owes him for how well he’s treated her and for the things that he’s bought for her. Having Jimmy be a rapist and a relatively well-liked part of the household, whom Ivy would be forced to interact with daily would be a more compelling, realistic scenario than that of Anna’s rape.
Jimmy and Ivy’s romance sours when he tries to rape her
The aftermath of Anna’s rape was full of painful truth in the way in which the violation haunts her. In an agonizing, heartbreaking scene, Anna says to Mr. Bates, “I’m spoiled for you, and I can never be unspoiled.” I was, however, disappointed by Bates’ obsession with his own revenge as if Anna is his property and he must exact justice. In fact, the aftermath of the rape is almost entirely about Mr. Bates. Anna seeks to protect him from the knowledge for fear of what he will do. Once he finds out, Bates ignores her wishes and kills Green, ostensibly to avenge his wife’s “honor”, but doesn’t it matter that Anna explicitly asked him to leave it alone? The rape happened to her; she should be the one who decides how she wants to deal with it. Only Season 5 will tell, but it seems like Anna’s distress completely dissipates with Green’s death, which is a ridiculous simplification of the arduous road to recovery from PTSD that Anna must face. If Season 5 does not continue to chart Anna’s struggles with PTSD, Downton will have failed to bring to light an important and timeless point about the psychology of human beings, in particular survivors of traumatic events.
Anna and Bates trying to forget about her rape for an evening
Now, earlier I mentioned another rape, and it’s probably been killing you trying to figure out what I’m talking about, which is a problem in and of itself. Mary Crawley’s (Michelle Dockery) “illicit affair” with Mr. Pamuk was also a rape, but it slides under the radar because she’s not violently attacked and she takes responsibility, as many victims do, for what has happened to her. Mary actively and repeatedly denies consent to the man who forces a kiss on her and later steals into her bedroom determined to get what he wants regardless of her protestations.
The rape of Lady Mary is actually a type of rape that I think mainstream media should show more often: a rape in which there is no hitting or screaming, the victim says “no,” and because of her initial attraction to him, feels as if she’s led him on or that it is somehow her fault. Points for Downton then? Um, no. Though Mary is the victim of sexual assault, the show itself doesn’t read her as such. Though the audience is led to recognize the inequality women face and the cruelty inherent in a woman’s single indiscretion perhaps ruining her future and good name, Downton Abbey does not focus on the fact that a man broke into her room and didn’t listen to her when she repeatedly said, “no.” Also, what a missed opportunity to show Mary and Anna share survivor stories and comfort, forming their own healing community together.
Mary is horrified when Mr. Pamuk comes into her room
Downton Abbey and its writers are guilty of a gross negligence that is all too common. If someone says “no” to sex, then it is rape. Period. There is no nuance when it comes to consent. This is what Hollywood has such a hard time with and why they insist on only showing shockingly violent rapes that virtual strangers perpetrate. Why? Because if we acknowledge that rape occurs within many contexts needing only the criteria that the victim say “no”, how many men would then be rapists? How many women and others would then be survivors of sexual assault or rape? How many people would we have to now believe when they claim they were raped? A shocking number. A staggeringly, shocking number. In the US alone, 1 in 5 women will be raped. Three percent of men will be raped. An estimated 1.3 million women will be raped each year, and 97 percent of rapists will never see the inside of a jail cell. Pretending there’s not a problem doesn’t make the problem go away. Instead, it becomes more ubiquitous and insidious until it’s a pandemic. I don’t want to live in a world where rape is the norm and survivors are liars who were asking for it, and I mean, really, do you? We’ve got a long battle ahead of us, but each of us can start by acknowledging that rape culture exists, accepting that survivors are never asking for it, and believing that survivors are telling the truth.
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
These 18 Lionhearted Heroines in literature, television, and film echo Bullet’s spirit in their own unique ways–possessing faith, valuing friendship, and experiencing unrequited love or loving and expecting nothing in return–as portrayed by the “perfectly imperfect” actresses who embody them.
In the spirit of Bullet, the quintessential Lionhearted Girl, these 18 Lionhearted Heroines each embody the same steadfast strength and selflessness that Bullet possessed.
Part 2 in a series about “Lionhearted Heroines” inspired by The Killing’s Bullet; see Part 1 here
These 18 Lionhearted Heroines in literature, television, and film echo Bullet’s spirit in their own unique ways–possessing faith, valuing friendship, and experiencing unrequited love or loving and expecting nothing in return–as portrayed by the “perfectly imperfect” actresses who embody them.
In the spirit of Bullet, the quintessential Lionhearted Girl, these 18 Lionhearted Heroines each embody the same steadfast strength and selflessness that Bullet possessed.
Stephanie from Rust and Bone
Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) from Rust and Bone, directed by Jacques Audiard (2012)
“What am I for you? A friend? A pal? If we continue, we have to do it right.”
As the trailer (included below) suggests, this remarkable French film centers around a vagrant boxer, his young son, and a gorgeous woman who enters their lives under the most unlikely circumstances. The magnificent Marion Cotillard was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Stephanie, a tough, assertive orca trainer who courageously struggles to rebuild her life after a horrific accident.
Like Bullet, Stephanie’s tough shell cocoons a sensitive soul, one that is gravely tested after her accident. What is so touching about Stephanie–like Bullet–is her spirited strength and resilience in the face of a reality that most people could not survive. Even as she deals with her own daunting demons and defies overwhelming odds, she is selfless in her availability to others–in her willingness to share her heart and spirit with those around her. She forges a beautiful bond with Alain and his son and, like her devotion to the orcas, loves them unconditionally even though Alain rejects, marginalizes, and uses her. When the bond she feels toward Alain matures into romantic love, she fearlessly reveals her feelings honestly, telling him: “If we continue, we have to do this right.” Just as she asserts herself to Alain, she regains her desire to resume orca training–and in a silent scene (below), recites her training routine for the first time on the balcony of her apartment. Here, Marion Cotillard invests Stephanie with the outward demeanor of a woman completely at peace with her fate and effortlessly exudes an inner spiritual strength that is heightened all the more by Katy Perry’s inspired song, “Firework”:
Rust and Bone and Marion Cotillard’s performance as Stephanie take on an added resonance with the release of this year’s incomparable documentary, Blackfish, which chronicles the appalling treatment of orcas and their trainers at SeaWorld:
“I can’t just stand by while others give their lives.”
In this sprawling and superb beloved BBC series, young actress Jessica Brown-Findlay (a former trained ballet dancer who began acting after a career-ending knee injury) shines as the vivaciously independent, strong-minded, and free-spirited Sybil, who fights with fervor for women’s suffrage and offers her services as a nurse when World War I breaks out in England. Her passion for political causes is equaled only by her slow-burning love for Tom Branson, a young Irish chauffeur who introduces her to a more complicated world beyond the gilded gates of her family’s estate. Once she enters this world, she cannot go back to the way things were before, and her strength of character holds firm despite difficult social and familial circumstances.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltRIQcTMAy8″] Jessica B. Findlay speaks about Sybil
Sybil is a great “soul-sister” to Bullet in her innate desire to help and protect others, despite what it costs her. Sybil’s fate is also akin to the unjust tragedy that befalls Bullet when her powers of protection reach their limit. Like Bullet, Sybil can no longer protect herself–but the legacy of her life is preserved in all she leaves behind.
“When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I’m a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they’re gonna find it all…they’re gonna know: Once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her Daddy in the Bathtub.”
During a pivotal scene in Beasts of the Southern Wild, a spiritual journey of survival, Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy summons her entire miniature being to shout: “I’M THE MAN!” when her father challenges her in a dual-like shouting match. Only six years old at the time of filming, tiny Quvenzhane is much more than her claim to “man-hood”–she is a force of nature who packs a punch that won’t soon be forgotten. She embodies a little firecracker of a girl with a big desire to see and understand the world around her.
Hushpuppy lives a destitute, virtually parentless existence in the Louisiana bayou, a place called “the Bathtub,” with an alcoholic and, at times, abusive father and an assortment of local wild pets. Like Bullet, she is a “street-kid”–inhabiting the “streets” of the bayou and taking shelter in dilapidated shacks–who, despite seemingly hopeless circumstances, embraces the world as a beautiful place and makes a home amongst the animals and plants that afford her shelter and comfort. Even with the threat of a massive storm closing in on them, she never loses sight of the shoreline toward a bright future where people will “find it all” and “know” that she lived there.
Tiffany from Silver Linings Playbook
Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) from Silver Linings Playbook, directed by David O. Russell (2012)
“…There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself. I can forgive. Can you say the same for yourself, Fucker? Can you forgive? Are you capable of that?”
The naturally aloof, mysterious, yet generous Jennifer Lawrence hit it out of the ball-park with her Academy Award-winning turn as Tiffany, a recently widowed young woman on a quest for human connection and belonging. When Tiffany literally “runs into” Pat (Bradley Cooper), a mentally-unstable man obsessed with reclaiming his former marriage, she falls head-over-heals for him instantly and offers to coach him in a new endeavor. Despite her somewhat hard and brash exterior, she thinks about and feels things acutely–and her determination to “read the signs” and bring Pat out of his shell is at once funny, frustrating, and, for her, heartbreaking as her feelings for him deepen.
While neither a street-kid nor a lesbian (well, apart from several trysts with female office co-workers as she recounts in this clip), Tiffany shares Bullet’s scrappy resolve to survive in a world that doesn’t appreciate or accept difference. Also like Bullet, despite her insecurities, she embraces her flaws and stalwartly refuses to apologize for them. She’s not afraid to put herself out there, make a fool of herself, or fail. In this sense, like Bullet, she’s the epitome of courage and heroism.
Jane from Jane Eyre
Jane (Mia Wasikowska) from Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga (2011)
“Am I a machine without feelings? Do you think that because I am poor, plain, obscure, and little – that I am soulless and heartless? I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart.”
In this bold new vision of Charlotte Brontë’s timeless classic about an orphan girl starved for love and in search of a family, Mia Wasikowska, who–like Bex–was 18 years old at the time of filming, brings a youthful, intelligent, and heroic sensibility to the role of the plain, saintly Jane Eyre. Opposite Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester, Mia naturally holds her own during intensely kinetic moments when this brooding older man made bitter by the misfortunes of life and love, challenges her steadfast moral convictions and sense of self-worth. Having only read the novel for the first time several months prior to the start of shooting, Mia’s love for the character manifests itself in how much she respects the role which shines through her indelible performance.
Jane Eyre is arguably one of the most beautifully conceived characters ever written. What makes her so special and rare is her innate sense of self-worth and self-respect despite a succession of physically and verbally abusive situations in which she is told repeatedly by the people who are supposed to love her the most that she is not worthy or deserving of being loved. It is this inherent bravery and heart that tie her with Bullet in a profound and almost identical manner. She is also a strong soul-sister to Bullet in her long-suffering, seemingly unrequited love for a man who is forbidden to her because of a described “mere conventional impediment.” And, as soon as that love is finally realized in a brief period of pure bliss for Jane, it is just as abruptly and brutally taken away–as it is so cruelly for Bullet when Lyric rejects her. Still, sharing Bullet’s faith, Jane never gives up the hope that she will one day be free to love and be loved as she always dreamed.
Hermione from Harry Potter
Hermione (Emma Watson) from Harry Potter Parts 1-8 (2001-2011)
“Actually, I’m highly logical which allows me to look past extraneous detail and perceive clearly that which others overlook.”
Emma Watson, who won the coveted role of Hermione Granger in J.K. Rowling’s beloved series at the tender age of 9 and continued in the role until the series concluded when she was 19–Bex’s age–is perfect to play Hermione because she is Hermione. She embodies Hermione’s keen intelligence, studious nature, wit, logic, and foresight. She is so naturally Hermione that many Harry Potter fans see her as the wonderful character in real life. Emma’s success in the role also stems from her ease at befriending the boys who are Hermione’s best friends while, in the same breath, holding her own opposite them. Using her signature intelligence and foresight, she is quick to call out her male mates whenever she witnesses them doing, or about to do, something idiotic. This no-nonsense strength in her performance is akin to how Bex portrays the tough, no-nonsense Bullet. Both are unforgettable and able to keep those close to them “under their thumb,” to evocate Bullet’s expression.
However, while Hermione can wittily outsmart her male comrades during critical situations and events, she is unable to outsmart her own heart, which is nearly broken from her painful, seeming unrequited love for Ron. Being the clueless fool he sometimes is, Ron has no notion of Hermione’s affections and insensitively flaunts his relationship with another Hogwarts classmate in front of her until he tires of that relationship and that girl. During a poignant scene in The Half-Blood Prince, Hermione confides her broken heart to Harry who, as her best friend, is a prime witness to her silent suffering over Ron’s obvious lack of interest in her. Hermione’s suffering recalls Bullet’s nearly identical silent suffering over her unrequited love for Lyric, which she, too, confides to her best friend, Kallie.
Amy from Little Dorrit
Amy (Claire Foy) from PBS Masterpiece’s Little Dorrit (2008)
“Near the palace was a cottage in which lived a poor, little, tiny woman–all alone. She realized that for all of her gold and silver and diamonds and rubies, she had nothing so precious to her as that shadow was to that tiny woman.”
Charles Dickens gave us a precious gift with his lesser known, yet eerily foreseeing novel Little Dorrit, which was adapted into an award-winning 15-part BBC miniseries by Andrew Davies in 2008. The novel, and its sprawling adaptation, tells the story of the incandescent “little” Amy Dorrit, a tiny 18-year-old girl who has come of age devotedly caring for her widowed father, a 20-year inmate at the Marshalsea Prison for Debt. Although nearly 10 years older than Amy when she won the role, Claire Foy’s performance cannot at all be described as “little” by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, she seems to understand and empathize so profoundly with Amy that it is as if she and her character are one in the same. In a press interview during the miniseries release, Claire describes in vivid terms just how highly she regards Amy: “Nobody is or can be as selfless as Amy is at all–people give to charity and people do all these noble things, but they don’t possess the pureness of heart in the doing of these actions that Amy demonstrates in the numerous sacrifices of her everyday life.” Would that Amy could have known Bullet…
Just as Bullet devotes herself to protecting her vulnerable and abused street family, Amy Dorrit sacrifices her entire life for her unjustly imprisoned father and his family. While being hounded by an escaped murderer who threatens to reveal potentially devastating family secrets, she contracts herself as a seamstress to an elderly, wheelchair-confined woman named Mrs. Clenham, through whom she is introduced to Arthur Clenham–the employer’s generous and benevolent son. It is this meeting that opens Amy’s eyes to a world beyond the barred prison gates where she dreams of winning Arthur’s affections. And even though she forms a close friendship with him, all hopes she has for a shared future with him are dashed when she discovers–as Bullet does–that he has feelings for someone else. Indeed, the entire story itself can be seen as a web of unrequited affections: Amy’s unreturned and unappreciated devotion to her abusive father and her unrequited infatuation with Arthur Clenham; Arthur’s spurned love for his mother and for a wealthy village girl who is engaged to a reckless and vain chap; the heartbreaking love and loyalty of Amy’s childhood friend who dreams of marrying her himself. It isn’t until she is forced to leave the confines of the prison where she grew up that she gathers the courage to stand up for her heart and refute the perception that she is simply a “little woman” with no voice of her own.
The character of Amy Dorrit was based upon and inspired by Charles Dickens’s real-life muse Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, an 18-year-old stage actress with whom Dickens fell in love during his later years. Their little-known affair is chronicled in a new Sony Classics feature film entitled The Invisible Woman starring another rising young actress (yet 11 years older than the girl she is portraying), Felicity Jones opposite Ralph Fiennes as Charles Dickens. The film is due to be released in December 2013.
Ashley from Junebug
Ashley (Amy Adams) from Junebug, directed by Phil Morrison (2005)
“God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.”
In this independent feature depicting a dysfunctional Southern church-going family living in an provincial and isolated Southern church-going community in North Carolina, Amy Adams is a ray of sunshine as Ashley, a seemingly naïve, bright-eyed, bubbly yet sensitive young woman on the verge of motherhood. Like Bex as Bullet, Amy delivers a bravura performance that infiltrates hearts and minds, stealing the limelight from more known and seasoned actors. She was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award, although her incandescent portrayal transcends the simple “Supporting” Actress category. Indeed, from the first scene to the last, she casts a spell that makes us believe Ashley is the central character just as Bex’s onscreen presence as Bullet becomes the heart of The Killing.
The pivotal scene of the film comes when Ashley breaks down in the hospital — and Amy’s powerful gift as an actress is laid bare. In this heart-wrenching moment, she makes a young mother’s grief so naturally palpable and devastating. The inexplicable bond she shares with Alessandro Nivola, who plays her brother-in-law, recalls the cosmic connection Bullet shares with Holder, particularly echoing the moment he comforts her as she accepts that Kallie is most likely dead. Here, too, Ashley–with the help of her friend–must accept news of a devastating death. And, while she is overcome by intense grief and anger, she does not let it take root in her heart–and, like Bullet, ultimately demonstrates unwavering faith, positivity, and unconditional love and selflessness toward others. In a largely cynical world where most would succumb to despair rather than embrace hope, Ashley–like Bullet–demonstrates a rare, precious, and admirable resilience of spirit.
June from Walk the Line
June (Reese Witherspoon) from Walk the Line, directed by James Mangold (2005)
“No, I’m not an angel. I had a friend who needed help. You’re my friend. You’re not nothin’. You’re a good man, and God has given you a second chance to make things right, John. This is your chance, honey.”
Marking a career that has flourished since early childhood, Reese Witherspoon finally garnered a well-deserved Academy Award for her embodiment of June Carter-Cash opposite Joaquin Phoenix in the title role of Johnny Cash. Together, the two create a “ring of fire” as an on-screen couple–so blazing that it often seems as though they were made for each in real life, too. Reese channels June’s well-crafted sense of humor and vivaciousness that masks the disappointment and heartache she feels from being “left like a dutch boy with his finger in the damn” by a chain of unworthy men. She naturally exudes June’s “angelic” generosity of spirit–even during dark moments in her own life–and her no-nonsense strength and resilience, most notably demonstrated in her repeated rejections of Johnny’s disrespectful and self-destructive “stunts.” All this Reese accomplishes while also learning how to sing and play musical instruments to convincingly re-enact the musical performances and shows that June shares with Johnny.
Akin to Bullet, June Carter is a woman “on fire”–admirable for every aspect of herself. She is the very epitome of “a friend”–selfless, loyal, loving, honest, and completely devoted to Johnny’s addiction recovery–freely forgiving the many times he hurts or neglects her in return. Her patience and fortitude is unmatched as she bears the cross of the tumultuous, unsanctioned, yet unbreakable bond she possesses with her tour-mate in a saintly manner.
Giorgia from The Best of Youth
Giorgia (Jasmine Trinca) from The Best of Youth (Italian: La Meglio Gioventu), directed by Marco Tullio Giordana (2005)
In this multi-generational, epic Italian miniseries, Jasmine Trinca–a Natalie Wood-esque Roman actress–delivers a sensitive, stand-out performance as Giorgia, a young girl struggling with mental illness and the neglect that comes from the stigma of her condition, especially in 1960s Italy. Since Giorgia is a girl who cannot speak, or who speaks very little because she lives inside of herself, Jasmine–like Bex==reveals much of the girl’s vulnerable and heartbroken inner life simply through the haunting expressiveness and penetrating beauty of her intelligent, sad eyes – as in this pivotal scene:
Giorgia’s largely tragic journey in this miniseries mirrors the trials Bullet endures in The Killing. Like Bullet, Georgia is an outcast from society, alienated from her family and left to the merciless, unloving environment of a home for wayward and discarded youths. When Matteo, a handsome, young medical student volunteers at the home and is assigned to care for her, she is awakened for a time to the possibility of being loved and accepted by another human being who seeks to understand her. She falls for him, but when circumstances separate them, she sinks into the darkest time in her young life.
Ivy from The Village
Ivy (Bryce Dallas-Howard) from The Village, directed by M. Night Shyamalan (2004)
“Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others will not know we want to do them.”
Bryce Dallas Howard carries a serene beauty and tomboyish self-confidence as Ivy Walker, the blind yet insightful daughter of the town “elder” played by William Hurt in M. Night Shyamalan’s spiritual thriller. Akin to Bex, Bryce makes an indelible mark in her debut role through the power of her onscreen presence and the expressiveness of her unforgettable face. She invests Ivy with a rare appreciation for life, for those who are outcasts within the isolated town that is all she’s ever seen of the world, and for the people she cares for the most. Juxtaposed with her uninhibited serenity, Bryce also manages to emanate Ivy’s overwhelming curiosity to explore the world beyond the confines of the town where she has grown up. She constantly seeks the truth and doesn’t allow her blindness to prevent her from seeking complete illumination. When a senseless crime grips the utopian community and endangers the life of Ivy’s beloved, she embarks on a harrowing journey to conquer “those we don’t speak of” once and for all. In portraying her heroine’s journey, Bryce balances the opposing traits of fear and bravery, revenge and forgiveness, despair and hope–all the while never losing sight of Ivy’s abiding faith, echoing the way Bullet describes her faith to Sarah Linden in The Killing.
Like Bullet, Ivy–a girl who “longs to do boy things” is left to pick up the pieces after her best friend, a village boy named Lucius Hunt who loves her, is brutally harmed. Before the attack, Lucius is painfully reticent to articulate his true feelings to Ivy–and he won’t even touch her for fear it might reveal his infatuation. She immediately picks up on this, and in her wonderfully bold and straightforward manner, confronts him about his suppressed love. What spurs the confrontation, however, is an event that tests the courage of the heroine and her fellow townspeople, most especially Lucius who, at last, confesses to her that “The only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm.” At the peak of the danger, when everyone else is hiding safe in basements, Ivy bravely stands at the entrance of the cabin with her hand outstretched, holding onto the faith that Lucius will finally take her hand in his at the perfect moment.
“You asked me to explain myself. I just wonder what needs to be explained? Look into your own heart. I swear to you, mine’s no different. You want a place in the trades and professions where you can earn your own bread? So do I. You want some means of self-expression? Some way of satisfying your own personal ambitions? So do I. You want a voice in the government in which you live? So do I. What is there to explain?”
Hilary Swank is outstanding as Alice Paul, the Pennsylvania-raised, Swarthmore-educated Quaker who leads the movement to secure suffrage for women in the early 1900s. The actress bares all, both physically and emotionally, with a striking authenticity as the bold, brave, selfless, and almost-martyred woman who becomes the willing scapegoat for all of the hatred and abuse thrown at the women during their cause for suffrage. Hilary’s intelligent eyes and eager yet patient smile, as shown in the above photo, are captivating even in the midst of the heroine’s great suffering, mistreatment, and adversity.
Alice, like Bullet, lives up to her name–she is every bit the “Iron-Jawed Angel” the public dubs her to be: a Christ-like figure who possesses an unflinching determination to see her cause through without resorting to violent or illegal, unethical means. She knowingly sacrifices an opportunity for a happy romantic relationship in the service of her cause, and when she is thrown in prison for picketing the office of the president during wartime, she remains undeterred in her conviction that women deserve to be treated equally before the law. She solicits the solidarity of her sisters-in-arms, including a prominent senator’s wife, to embark on a hunger strike, modeled after an old Irish tradition, until restitution is made and her goal is achieved. It is during this hunger strike that the women endure unconstitutional and unthinkable abuse which almost results in her death–along with countless others dedicated to the cause.
Paikea from Whale Rider
Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes) from Whale Rider, directed by Niki Caro (2002)
“My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the whale rider. I’m not a prophet, but I know that our people will keep going forward, all together, with all of our strength.”
Keisha Castle-Hughes, 13 years old at the time of filming, is one of the youngest actresses to ever have earned an Academy Award nomination for her breathtaking performance as Paikea, the sensitive yet determined Maori girl who shares a special connection with and understanding of the whales that figure so prominently in the ancient legends of her tribe’s ancestors in New Zealand. Keisha’s soulful eyes and calm, spiritual presence juxtaposed with her portrayal of Paikea’s fiery resolve against seemingly insurmountable family and cultural obstacles make viewers long to adopt this precious child–just as many fans of The Killing dreamed of adopting Bex as a daughter, sister, or best friend. Keisha’s onscreen relationship with the actor who plays her grandfather recalls Bex’s onscreen relationship with Joel Kinnaman in the sense that it is at once loving, intense, tumultuous, and heartbreaking as the two wrestle with each other over their character’s conflicting desires.
Nowhere is the power of this onscreen relationship more palpable than in the film’s most emotional scene where Paikea delivers a heart-wrenching tribute to her absent grandfather who doesn’t approve of girls displaying themselves in public arenas. Stuck in the old ways of his tribe and married to ancient traditions and customs, Paikea’s grandfather deeply resents the fact that the Gods saw fit to give him a female grandchild, while his grandson–Paikea’s twin brother–died shortly after his birth. In her speech dedicated to him, Paikea acknowledges and explains her grandfather’s traditional views and offers her full and free forgiveness to him, even though he she is devastated by the fact that he deliberately and humiliatingly does not show up for her performance. It isn’t until the tribe’s entire future is threatened that the grandfather begins to recognize and accept Paikea’s special gifts. As in Bullet’s case, Paikea is alienated by the one person whom she puts her trust and faith in, and just as soon as that faith has a hope of being recovered, Paikea’s life is endangered in an act of bravery and sacrifice.
Jamie from A Walk to Remember
Jamie (Mandy Moore) from A Walk to Remember, directed by Adam Shankman (2002)
“It’s like the wind…I can’t see it, but I feel it.”
Although not reaching the award-worthy caliber of performance that Bex brings to Bullet, nor the caliber of many of the actresses portraying the other 18 Lionhearted Heroines, singer-actress Mandy Moore is impressively understated, natural, and sensitive as Jamie Sullivan, a high school senior who is, according to Landon Carter (the film’s protagonist), “self-exiled” from the popular crowd and bullied by them. That is, until Landon, played intelligently and memorably by Shane West, recognizes her inner beauty and publicly declares his faith in her. Mandy’s performance is made more impactful through her pairing with West–the two are perfect together and play off one another with ease and genuine affection. Mandy is herself in the role–a caring, giving girl with a big heart and a gentle countenance. She embodies what we all strive to be: selfless, unpretentious, honest, strong, loyal, invested with integrity and that ever-elusive faith that Bex’s Bullet defines for Sarah Linden in The Killing.
Since the film effectively places us – the audience – in the perspective of Landon as he comes to know Jamie, we witness first-hand and intimately how he comes to fall in love with her. By extension, we fall in love with her, too. And we fall in love with Landon who transforms from a bully/tormentor into a troubled young man searching for his own identity and recognizing in her everything he would like to be. Despite his cruelty towards her, Jamie forgives him and willingly offers her friendship which, at first, he takes for granted. When he succumbs to peer pressure and dismisses her in public, she swiftly and courageously puts him in his place saying, “Landon, look, I thought I saw something in you — something good, but I was very wrong.” This instance of tough love which she steadfastly carries through until he admits his failing motivates him to want to “be better” and shows him that, despite her cold words, she “has faith in him [me] too.”
Danielle from Ever After
Danielle (Drew Barrymore) from Ever After, directed by Andy Tennant (1998)
“You have everything, and still the world holds no joy — and yet you insist on making fun of those who would see it for its possibilities.”
Drew Barrymore is a splendid ray of sunshine as Danielle De Barbarac, an intelligent and strong-willed girl in 16th century France whose world is turned upside down after her father dies suddenly of a heart attack when she is eight years old. Forced to relinquish all traces of her aristocratic heritage to an evil stepmother (Angelic Houston) and her two materialistic and envious daughters (although one of the sisters is actually a kind, giving soul) when she is orphaned, Danielle suffers years of hardship and mistreatment with no light at the end of the dark tunnel until she unintentionally meets the Prince of France, Henry, played by Scottish actor Dougray Scott. Despite being American, Drew Barrymore manages to make herself convincing in the role opposite a mostly British cast through her nearly flawless diction and delivery of Danielle’s often stinging, clever lines. As an actress who endured deep family strife in her youth, it is evident in how she captures Danielle’s indomitable spirit that Barrymore innately understands the emotional depths of her character. Her most impressive moments in the portrayal occur when she is depicting Danielle’s tumultuous and heart wrenching interactions with her tormenting stepmother. And then when she transitions to sharing her passionate vision of the world, and her place in it, with the Prince.
Although we know that, unlike Bullet’s story, Danielle’s story will have a “happily ever after” ending since it is the “Cinderella” fairytale, when this ending does finally manifest, it is as sweet and fulfilling as if we didn’t know how it would end at all. This is because, as we did with Bullet through her unjust trials, we come to regard Danielle as if she were our own sister, best friend, or close family member. We witness first-hand how much it costs Danielle to bear the unloving, abusive environment that she is thrust into, and how through it all–just as with Bullet–Danielle retains her innocence, purity of spirit, and her love for and faith in human kind.
Ellie from Contact
Ellie (Jodie Foster) from Contact, directed by Robert Zemekis (1997)
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been searching for something…some reason why we’re here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out even just a little part of that answer, then I think it’s worth a human life. Don’t you?”
In one of the most emotionally brave and nuanced performances of her career, Jodie Foster is transcendent as Ellie Arroway, a driven scientist who, haunted by her father’s sudden death when she was eight, faces an existential crisis that sends her on a spiritual journey beyond the realm of normal human experience. Foster’s complete command of her character’s physicality, voice, countenance, and vast knowledge about the make-up of the universe makes Ellie a formidable force to be reckoned with as she vies with scientific pundits and religious scholars about the potential for other life forms in the solar system. Foster is adept at balancing Ellie’s skepticism about religious notions of the existence of God with her unwavering conviction that life inhabits other planets besides our own. As she tells some school children in a science class: “If it is just us in the universe that would be an awful waste of space.”
What ultimately endears us to Ellie, much like Bullet, is her stubborn insistence to always question and seek answers, despite the staunch discouragement of others and her own self-doubts. Her insatiable quest for enlightenment overcomes her skepticism and, during a near-death experience, she is forced to reckon with her own spirituality and faith. When called before a scientific committee to give her testimony about the enigmatic experience and challenged to admit that “all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one,” she is humble and self-effacing in her assertion that “none of us are alone.”
“What do you know of my heart? For weeks, Marianne, I’ve had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exaltations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence, I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart even for you.”
Emma Thompson deservedly received double critical praise for writing this intelligent adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel in which she simultaneously portrays the eldest Dashwood sister, Elinor, who endures months of heartache at the loss of her father and her suitor, Edward, with an almost saint-like poise and dignity. Apart from her formidable acting history and training, Thompson’s brilliance in this role stems from her striking ability to balance comedy and tragedy, humor and melancholy, joy and suffering, contentment and grief–just as Bex does so movingly in her role as Bullet in The Killing.
Unlike her overly-zealous sister, Marianne (incandescently portrayed by an 18-year-old Kate Winslet), Elinor does not make a show of her feelings. Instead, she sensibly and selflessly chooses not to burden others with her heartache–just as Bullet endeavors to keep her unrequited love for Lyric and her suffering at the hands of Goldie to herself. Elinor’s contained emotions at times appears cold to those close to her, especially to her sister who criticizes her repeatedly for her seeming emotional indifference. However, as Marianne painfully learns, Elinor’s saintly discretion proves the wiser and more loving countenance, and in good and perfect time, Elinor is finally free to reveal the sentiments she holds so dear to her heart.
Beth from Little Women
Beth (Claire Danes) from Little Women, directed by Gillian Armstrong (1994)
“If God wants me with Him, there is none who will stop Him. I don’t mind. I was never like the rest of you – making plans about the great things I’d do. I never saw myself as anything much. Not a great writer like you. Oh, Jo, I’ve missed you so. Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home. But, I don’t like being left behind. Now I am the one going ahead. I am not afraid. I can be brave like you. But, I know I shall be homesick for you, even in Heaven.”
Then just 14 years old, Claire Danes brought an incomparable spiritual wisdom and tranquil maturity to the sweet, shy, and beloved Beth March, akin to what Bex brings to the beloved Bullet. Like Bex, Danes is natural and unpretentious in her portrayal–rare virtues for two teenage actresses whose remarkable artistic gifts (Danes was also a pianist, Bex is also a poet) transcend their tender years.
Claire Danes’ remarkable acting gifts are on full display in perhaps one of the most moving scenes in all of film history when Beth, weakened by the remnants of scarlet fever which she contracts from visiting a poor family, tragically dies. Knowing that death is upon her, Beth proclaims, “I am not afraid. I can be brave like you. But, I know I shall be homesick for you, even in Heaven.” She is, of course, telling this to her sister, Jo, with whom she was close throughout her brief life. In this intimate moment between them, Beth reveals her abiding faith, much like Bullet does in her intimate moment with Sara Linden in the car. She asserts her faith in God saying, “If God wants me with him, there is none who will stop him,” and her faith in her sister’s bright future, predicting that she will become “a great writer.” Although Beth’s death is difficult and heart-wrenching to watch, there is a certain serenity that accompanies the last moments of her life. Bullet’s violent death–not shown on screen–was certainly without serenity and peace; however, we can imagine that her faith was steadfast until the end.
Natalia Lauren Fiore received a B.A. in Honors English and Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and an M.F.A in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University, where she wrote a feature-length screenplay entitled Sonata under the direction of novelist and screenwriter, Don J. Snyder, and playwright, Jack Dennis. Currently, she holds a full-time tenure track teaching post at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida, where she teaches English and Writing. Her writing interests include film criticism, screenwriting, literary journalism, fiction, the novel, and memoir. Her literature interests include the English novel, American Literature, and Drama – particularly Shakespeare. She blogs at Outside Windows and tweets @NataliaLaurenFi.
This is a guest review by Amanda Civitello and is published with permission. Note: this review contains no spoilers for Season Three.
“Christmas at Downton Abbey” (The Christmas Special). Downton Abbey: Season Two Original UK Edition. Writ. Julian Fellowes. Dir. Brian Percival. Masterpiece Classic/PBS Distribution, 2012.
The cast of Downton Abbey
The Emmy-nominated second season of Downton Abbey opened with its characters on the precipice of the destruction of their rarified pocket of Edwardian English aristocracy, with the Great War at Downton’s doorstep. [i] The season’s final episode, “Christmas at Downton Abbey,” submitted as part of the PBS Masterpiece 2012 Emmy campaign, mostly avoids talk of social upheaval in favor of returning to the human drama that was so popular in the first season. The Great War, explored at length during the second season, has already wrought significant – though frequently indirect – change at Downton Abbey. Youngest daughter Lady Sibyl, who trained as a nurse during the War, is now married to the family chauffeur-turned-Republican-journalist and at home in Ireland for Christmas; heir apparent Matthew’s fiancée Lavinia has succumbed to Spanish flu, having outlived her usefulness once Matthew recovered from his battle injuries; and Lord Grantham’s wealthy, widowed sister Lady Rosamund has brought home a new beau for the holidays – and that’s just the news from upstairs.
Lady Rosamund’s narrative thread plays second fiddle to the episode’s main concerns, the murder trial of Lord Grantham’s valet, John Bates, and the imploding engagement of eldest daughter Lady Mary to newspaper magnate Sir Richard Carlisle. The tempestuous and controlling relationship between Lady Mary and Sir Richard is worthy of an in-depth feminist critique, but because its development occurs over several episodes, it’s not feasible to do it justice in this piece. However, the Christmas special’s treatment of Lady Rosamund and her love interest, fortune-hunter Lord Hepworth, encapsulates most concisely the paternalistic, patriarchal society in which they lived. Moreover, Lady Rosamund’s story serves as a useful way to begin a discussion about the way that Downton Abbey portrays two of the senior ladies of the family: Lady Rosamund and her sister-in-law, the Countess of Grantham.
In the first and most of the second seasons, Lady Rosamund is essentially a plot device who interferes in her nieces’ lives and runs reconnaissance for her mother when necessary to move the story along. Fortunately, the considerable talent of Samantha Bond rescues the character from marginalized oblivion. Lady Rosamund is compelling, even when her scenes don’t contain very much for her to do. There’s a complexity and nuance to Bond’s performance that makes Lady Rosamund someone worth caring about, in part because she’s an actor who makes excellent use of her voice. She’s very much like Maggie Smith in that respect: they are both cognizant of the voice as a flexible, powerful instrument and exercise it accordingly.
“Christmas at Downton Abbey” finally gives Lady Rosamund a storyline of her own, and one worthy of Bond’s thoughtful portrayal. Lady Rosamund’s suitor’s family fortune is so diminished that, as the Dowager Countess of Grantham puts it, “he’s lucky not to be playing the violin in Leicester Square.” Indeed, Hepworth only apprises Lady Rosamund of his dire financial straits at the insistence of the Dowager Countess. “I’m tired of being alone,” Bond’s Lady Rosamund says, and the brilliance of the portrayal is that she sounds exhausted; there’s only the barest glimmer of enthusiasm for a new romance. Lady Rosamund acquiesces to the best future she thinks she can buy: heartbreakingly, she adds, “And I have money.” In Bond’s hands, Lady Rosamund doesn’t sound desperate, as her words would suggest; rather, she’s resigned to an unfortunate, uncomfortable reality. She knows how society values her – and it’s not for her intrinsic merits, but rather for her late husband’s considerable fortune. She’s shrewd: she knows she’s entering into a business arrangement as much as anything else, but she’s motivated by her desire for a partnership as well. When she catches Hepworth bedding her maid, Shore, Lady Rosamund is certainly stung by the betrayal: “I just can’t stand it when Mama is proved right,” she declares, bitterly. She knew he wanted her for her money; she simply dared to hope for more.
But Lady Rosamund is not the only person charting her course. Unbeknownst to her, her mother and brother discussed the match and its ramifications before she discovers Hepworth’s duplicity. “Is a woman of Rosamund’s age entitled to marry a fortune-hunter?” the Dowager Countess asks her son. Yes, he concedes, providing she’s been made aware of the circumstances, “but for God’s sake, let’s tie up the money.” It’s clear that Lady Rosamund finds herself trapped in a gilded cage. She is twice damned: as a widow, she’s essentially passed back to her family, who permit her to make significant life decisions; and despite the independent image she presents, the final say regarding her finances rests with her brother.
Lady Rosamund and her beau, Lord Hepworth
Of course, it’s not a personal slight against Lady Rosamund. The paternalism that Lord Grantham exhibits (and that his mother defends) isn’t the fault of the show: Downton Abbey is, after all, a historically-minded serial; writer Julian Fellowes can’t help the prejudices of the time period. While there’s historical precedent for a woman in Lady Rosamund’s position, the show is fictional and so functions within its own universe, with its own rules. We can watch with an eye toward parallelisms because the world of Downton Abbey is a carefully crafted one, and contrasting Lord Grantham’s handling of his own history and his sister’s nascent romance invites the viewer to realize the prevalence of paternalism in aristocratic families. It’s not accidental that Lord Grantham himself was a fortune-hunter actively searching for a bride wealthy enough to rescue Downton Abbey. The Countess of Grantham and Lady Rosamund are commodities, and their value is their net worth. Lord Grantham doesn’t much mind what his sister does with her affections so long as her money is tied up; some thirty years earlier, he didn’t much mind who he married so long as she balanced his accounts. Julian Fellowes’s use of parallelism in the narrative is shrewd: we discuss these issues because of the way he chooses to tell the story.
That’s not to say that Fellowes is waving the feminist flag; he’s not. He’s in the business of writing well-crafted, witty scripts that tell a good story and maintain as close a degree of fidelity to the historical record as possible. The choices he makes as the writer are entirely to that end. Sometimes, they’re pro-woman, whether in a roundabout way, as in asking the audience to consider what life used to be like, or in a more explicit manner, such as Sybil’s interest in woman’s suffrage and ambition to work and pursue a more autonomous life for herself.
In other instances, however, the show shies away from the most challenging of its subplots. The Christmas special is notable for the storylines which it does not address, and the three most prominent of these concern women: the unresolved question of Lord Grantham’s infidelity; Lady Grantham’s sense of purpose derived from running the hospital housed in her home during the war; and the inter-class intimacy that develops between Lady Grantham and her lady’s maid Sarah O’Brien following the former’s miscarriage in the season one finale.
The first two missed opportunities are linked: as presented in the season, Lady Grantham finds such meaning in her work for the hospital during the war that she initially can’t contemplate returning to her old life of attending to her social obligations. Her husband bristles at her newfound direction, which means she has less time for him. During the seventh and eighth episodes, his flirting with a housemaid, Jane, becomes more and more serious, culminating in an encounter halted only by the precipitous interruption of Lord Grantham’s valet. After Bates leaves, Lord Grantham seems to have reevaluated the situation and remembered his marriage vows – and the fact that his wife is next door, gravely ill with the Spanish influenza.
These two storylines, though linked, fail in their portrayal of women in different ways. In the instance of Lady Grantham’s independence, her narrative simply peters out. In the penultimate episode, Lady Grantham apologizes for “neglecting” her husband; by the Christmas special, she has happily returned to playing lady of the manor, worrying over whether there’s sufficient time to change for dinner.
The apology in question occurs just after Lady Grantham’s brush with death; in response, Lord Grantham simply says, “Don’t apologize to me.” But refusing her apology doesn’t absolve Lord Grantham of his guilt; nor does he seem to have any inclination to admit his indiscretion to his wife. From a feminist perspective, this is a perplexing editorial decision. The script allows Lady Grantham’s apology to stand, because she wasn’t the wife she was supposed to be. He might not accept it, but she’s the one who says the words. Lady Grantham’s tentative steps toward greater independence are immediately retracted; she apologizes for it. In a drama serial that deals primarily with interpersonal relationships, there’s no compelling reason to not address Lord Grantham’s infidelity. In the end, it’s Lady Grantham who’s punished and corrected.
The other missed opportunity in the “Christmas at Downton Abbey” concerns Lady Grantham and her lady’s maid, Sarah O’Brien. In the last episode of the first season, O’Brien’s anger at Lady Grantham’s perceived slight takes a fateful turn when she deliberately endangers her mistress and inadvertently causes Lady Grantham to miscarry. Throughout the second season, then, O’Brien channels her guilt into taking extraordinary care of her mistress; their relationship is characterized by increasing complicity and mutual affection. It is O’Brien who nurses Lady Grantham through her grave bout with Spanish influenza. The overtures of friendship are never quite realized, however, and O’Brien’s touching, climactic scene in which she asks Lady Grantham’s forgiveness occurs when the latter is delirious with fever. Having made the affection she feels for her mistress readily apparent (Mrs. Patmore, the cook, comments on it), O’Brien’s devotion is even acknowledged by Lord Grantham, who actively dislikes her. The Christmas special, however, never addresses the issue at all. It’s a missed opportunity to consider female friendship within a socio-economic context: after all, O’Brien has waited exclusively on Lady Grantham for over fifteen years, resulting in a curious master-servant relationship marked by necessary affinity and learned intimacy. Their tentative steps towards greater familiarity would be an interesting avenue for the show to explore, given the increasing social mobility that’s on the horizon. The fact that the storyline is wholly ignored in the Christmas special is disappointing.
Indeed, the lack of female friendships is a curious omission in Downton Abbey. There is minimal complicity between the main upstairs female characters: most relationships are marked by outright dislike or disinterest. It’s disconcerting; these ladies who are perfectly charming, each and all, around men, but who seem to lack any kind of amity with other women. When moments of camaraderie do come, they are typically between the ladies and their maids: Lady Sybil befriends Gwen, a housemaid, in the first season, but Gwen leaves Downton; eldest daughter Lady Mary has an affectionate relationship with her maid, Anna, that’s similar to her mother’s with her lady’s maid. What renders the dearth of female friendship so extraordinary is that it would have been unusual at the time. [ii] By rendering women either objects of desire or economic necessity, and essentially presenting them only vis-à-vis men, Downton Abbey doesn’t engage with its female characters as fully-realized people. They only rarely step outside of a male-defined paradigm, and when they do, they’re inevitably walked back. Gwen leaves Downton, content with her new job; Lavinia dies on the cusp of a budding friendship with Mary (complicated, of course, by Mary’s continued affection for Lavinia’s fiancé); O’Brien cries bitter tears at her mistress’s bedside and is treated no differently from anyone else on the receiving line for the staff’s obligatory Christmas presents.
Lord Grantham and the Dowager Countess discuss Lady Rosamund’s finances
Ultimately, the lens of patriarchy influences the female characters’ understanding of their self-worth. Lady Grantham tells her daughter that she’s “damaged goods” in the first season after Lady Mary loses her virginity to a handsome, rogue diplomat. Initially we bemoan Lady Grantham’s inability to empathize with her daughter’s plight. As the series progresses, that opinion begins to change. By the Christmas special, when Lady Grantham’s steps to independence have been halted by her husband, it’s possible to see that early scene with Lady Mary in a new light: if Lady Grantham understands her daughter’s worth to be entirely wrapped up in her virginity (read: her marriageability), what does that say about her own sense of self? Julian Fellowes’s tendency to return to similar themes in new contexts enables his audience to reassess those early impressions. In this instance, the audience reconsiders the knee-jerk condemnation of Lady Grantham so as to sympathize with her plight as well. For all that she’s terribly wealthy and beautiful, she’s not expected to be much more than that. What’s sad is that she doesn’t expect to be, either; when she does, she’s put back in her place by her courtly – but no less paternalistic – husband.
Downton Abbey is, in effect, a thoughtful portrayal of the harsh reality of aristocratic women’s lives that lurked beneath the gilded exterior. They lacked autonomy and individual agency, were frequently treated as commodities, and the patriarchal, paternalistic society in which they moved colored their own self-worth. Men like Lord Grantham, as much a product of that society, nevertheless perpetuated their privilege, becoming active apologists for the very hierarchy that constrained their daughters. But beyond the beautiful clothes and the fabulous sets and the compelling acting is strong writing and purposeful manipulation of narrative structure. Julian Fellowes has rightly received glowing criticism for Downton Abbey’s plethora of witticisms and sharp one-liners, but the real achievement is in the narrative’s use of parallelisms to explore a single theme from different angles.
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[i] While the term “Edwardian” derives from the reign of Edward VII of England (1901-1910), historians sometimes extend the upper bound to include the sinking of the RMS Titanic (1912) or the start of European hostilities in the First World War (1914). For aristocratic families like the Crawley family at Downton Abbey, the rigid classism and social hierarchy (and its attendant mores) continued well into wartime.
[ii] Sharon Marcus’s excellent 2007 Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England is a wonderful, immensely readable but rigorously scholarly exploration of the full spectrum of female friendships, from the platonic to the intensely erotic. However, Marcus’s data is primarily drawn from sources written by historical women of the middle class, and some of their experiences (going to school, e.g.) would not have applied to any of the Crawley daughters. Lillian Faderman deals with the spectrum of friendships in the United States in roughly the same time in 2001’s To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America, which includes chapters on upper-class women.
