Sunday, May 20, 2012

Questions Downton Abbey needs to answer

I'm finally caught up with Downton Abbey, and there are some things I'm wondering.

1. How is Ethel supporting herself? Ethel was fired from her job as a housemaid when she was caught having sex with one of the soldiers. She and her baby are shown living in a tiny, dingy cottage and being brought food from Downton Abbey by Mrs. Hughes. She's clearly shown as impoverished and unemployable, so how is she even still living? We have seen hints of mechanisms for people to receive food, clothing and toys through charity, but how is she paying her rent? Who is her landlord who agreed to rent a house to someone unemployable, and why?

2. What's Sybil's day-to-day life now like? The Christmas Special mentioned that Sybil had married Branson and is now pregnant, which also means she's living at best a middle-class life after having grown up in the manor. How is she adjusting? Even though she learned some basic cooking and housekeeping when she trained as a nurse, there must be some things she wasn't expecting or wasn't prepared for - a Sybil equivalent of the Dowager Countess's "What is a weekend?" moment.

3. When are the maids going to get new dresses? In one of the post-war episodes, the ladies mention that more recent fashions (shorter skirts, less fitted bodices, corsets irrelevant) are more comfortable and better for moving around in than old fashions. "The old clothes were all very well if one spent the day on a chaise longue, but if one wants to get anything done, the new clothes are much better." But the maids' and the nurses' uniforms are still the old dress, with the full skirt and the hourglass figure designed with corsets in mind (even if they aren't actually wearing corsets underneath). I know that people didn't just replace perfectly functional clothes back in those days, but it does seem rather foolish to have the people who have to actually do physical labour wearing less practical clothes than the nobility.

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