Downton Abbey and Philosophy by William Irwin

Author:William Irwin
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-03-19T04:30:00+00:00

“I Underestimated Your Enthusiasm”13

Together, the women of Downton Abbey—including Sybil with her youthful hubris, Isobel and Violet with their wizened authority, Cora and O’Brien with their manipulative impulses, and Mary with her pragmatic strength and courage—paint a picture of early-twentieth-century feminism for an early twenty-first-century audience. The term feminism can evoke images of extremism in some people’s minds, but as Downton Abbey helps to remind us, behind the philosophical and political concept there are real women: complex, unpredictable, and imperfect, but entitled to stand on equal footing with men as fellow human beings. Even if it’s been a hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic, Downton Abbey, along with a little dose of feminist philosophy, highlights the equality that we continue to strive for.14

Notes

1 John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869), Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27083.

2 Season 1, episode 3.

3 Season 1, episode 5.

4 Season 1, episode 7.

5 Mill, The Subjection of Women.

6 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1999).

7 For more on Thomas’s scheming, see chapter 4 in this book.

8 See . . . well, the entire first two seasons!

9 Season 1, episode 4.

10 Season 2, episode 3.

11 Season 1, episode 5.

12 Season 2, episode 2.

13 Season 1, episode 1: Edith speaking to Matthew after a day of touring local churches (in a failed effort by Edith to gain Matthew’s romantic interests after a challenge from Mary).

14 My thanks to Mark White for asking; love and appreciation to my husband for being my everything every day; and gratitude to my loyal friend, Bell. This chapter was written in honor of the most influential women in my life—my grandmothers, Eva and Mary—and is dedicated to my beloved student family, without whom I would surely have gone mad.

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