Vinca Albert Hernàndez
Highly Recommended
Department of English Undergraduate Awards (2nd Year)
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to explore Lady Mary’s character and the role she plays in the award-winning series Downton Abbey, set in the early twentieth century. Lady Mary is the eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham and would be the heiress of the estate if she weren’t a woman. However, she manages to develop a strong and dandiacal character to assert her role as a woman in the aristocratic class she belongs to. This essay concentrates on different topics to argue how Lady Mary recreates the figure of the dandy. Fashion, class, roles and occupation, and gender fluctuation in her character are the main points addressed, being fashion one of the most representative of the dandy. Moreover, the character of Orlando, created by Virginia Woolf, acts as an underlying element of the essay and a point of comparison with Lady Mary and the time she belongs to.
Lady Mary once says, “I should hate to be predictable.” (Season 3 Episode 1 1:08:22), setting, in that way, the tone of her character which has been expanded and developed since the start of the series. Downton Abbey is an award-winning and extremely popular TV series created by Julian Fellowes and aired between 2010 and 2015. It explores the everyday life of the Crawley family and their servants who live in a large manor house surrounded by a big estate in Yorkshire, Downton Abbey. Set in the early twentieth century (the first episode is set in April 1912), the series explores both upstairs and downstairs characters and how they go through their lives interacting with circumstances such as the First World War. One of the main characters of the show is Lady Mary Crawley, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, and possible heiress of the estate. This essay will argue the presentation of Lady Mary as a dandiacal figure by exploring fashion, class, roles and occupation, and gender fluctuation in her character and how she uses her association with the dandy to assert her power as a woman. Furthermore, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando will be used as a point of comparison with Lady Mary, as it is another fictional dandy of the time.
Fashion is one of the key aspects of the dandy as it is a distinct feature that makes them stand out in the crowd. As argued by Feldman, “The dandy is […] artificial in dress and deportment, always elegant, often theatrical. […] the dandy has a defensive air of superiority that shades into the aggression of impertinence and cruelty. […] Outwardly cold, he burns inwardly.” (3). This could be an exact definition of Lady Mary as it will now be explored. Firstly, Lady Mary appears as someone extremely “cold, controlled and proud” (Braga 4) who does not show her emotions and uses dresses to hide them. Since the first episode, her passion for clothes is emphasised when she must go into mourning because her cousin and future fiancé dies on the sinking of the Titanic. Her first reaction when being informed by her father of the situation is “Does this mean I’ll have to go into full mourning?,” and when Lord Grantham leaves it up to her to mourn Patrick as a fiancé or as a cousin she says “Well, that’s a relief.” (Season 1 Episode 1 13:06, 13:26). However, Lady Mary’s clothes are not only a concealment for her real self and emotions, but they are also a delight to look at, she wants to be admired.
Lady Mary’s dress for her wedding with Matthew Crawley, the new heir of the estate, has extremely beautiful embroidery, and “As Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary Crawley) points out, the detail of her wedding dress is “extraordinary”” (Mattisson 13), and perfectly fits the character of Lady Mary. This dress is a form of self-assertion for her and her aristocratic family as well. As Woolf explains about Orlando when she starts being a woman, “[Clothes] change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.”, despite Orlando keeps being her own androgenic self, the change in dress means a “certain change” in herself and her relationship to the world (132). The same can be argued for Lady Mary, as clothes vary from season to season depending on how she wants to portray herself to the world. In the case of the wedding dress, it represents the beautiful and proud eldest daughter that ends up marrying the new heir of the estate for love and to secure her position in society. At that moment, the family is having economic difficulties, however, “Mary was never going to marry on the cheap.” (Season 3 Episode 1 14:13) and they have a status to maintain.
Furthermore, clothes also help Lady Mary to distance herself from the world and create a mask that helps her go through the challenges of life. The beautiful wedding dress shows her love for Matthew, but conceals the monetary disagreement that exists between them and almost stops the wedding. Another example is how dresses help Mary when she is mourning Matthew’s death in Season 4. Because of grief, she has frozen herself in a mask of indifference, imprisoning herself in black clothes thinking they will keep her safe. “Where is the black one?” (Season 4 Episode 1 5:20) is her reaction when her maid suggests a deep purple shawl to wear. However, when she decides to return to the land of the living, it is reflected in her clothes and mirrored in her actions. She assumes her role as co-manager of the estate until her son is of age (Gullace 23) and depicts it by wearing an embroidered purple dress to the tenant’s lunch.
Class and how “the Abbey itself deliberately functions as a microcosm for the state” (Byrne 315) make Lady Mary a dandy both accepting and challenging the various aspects of her position as an aristocratic eldest daughter. This microcosm of society is depicted in the hierarchical structure that creates the family and their servants, upstairs and downstairs. In this way, it can be argued that Downton Abbey “resonates with the desires, anxieties, and values of contemporary viewers” (Delsandro 515) because of its diversity in characters and plots. Lady Mary and Thomas Barrow, the eldest daughter, and a servant, are from different worlds but they are remarkably similar, and they represent how class can affect a dandiacal figure trying to sort out their “complexity, intelligence and darkness” (Byrne 322). While class frees Lady Mary in many ways, it imprisons Thomas. As a gay man in the early twentieth century using a dandy personality to build his relationships with the other servants, he is always left out and defined as a mischievous character. But “No man is an island, Carson, not even Thomas Barrow.” (Season 6 Episode 8 1:02:36) as is shown when he tries to end his life because he does not see any light in his darkness. Thomas, like Lady Mary, challenges both class and gender norms which he experiences quite harshly throughout the series. Although all he suffers, he learns to sort out his darkness by accepting himself as he is. Therefore, it can be argued that class expectations are only another way to put on a mask to hide what is shameful and painful. Because class is performative (Byrne 318), Thomas and Lady Mary create constant mirrors between them as they challenge their respective classes’ expectations. She sums up perfectly why “My life makes me angry.” when explaining, “Women like me don’t have a life. We choose clothes and pay calls and work for charity and do the season. But, really, we’re stuck in a waiting room until we marry.” (Season 1 Episode 4 12:33). Although class allows Lady Mary to explore idleness, occupation, and love on her own terms, only through being in constant defiance against the constraints of her class she can attain what she wishes and not settle from the beginning to what her family expects of her.
However, class allows her much more than she sees because the world is her own, or, if not, of her class. She can be a woman “navigating oppressive gender roles” as portrayed in the series (Nesbitt 252), but she also has a position, a place to stay and people who love her despite her “brutality” when portraying her dandiacal elegance (Feldman 8). Class is both a constraint and a reason for freedom for Lady Mary and as she grows up through the series, she discovers the real power that she has even if she challenges gender norms as defined for her class. For example, when a maid is trying to blackmail her by threatening to expose her week's adventure with Tony Gillingham in a hotel, she decides to avoid her, but her father gives her some money and makes her swear she will not say a word unless she wants to be prosecuted. The maid’s reaction is quite clear, “Aren’t you the lucky one? But then, I suppose you always are.” (Season 6 Episode 1 47:50), describing with anger how society privileges the aristocracy and that, even when they challenge their path, they have more possibilities to remain untouched.
Roles are the basis of a patriarchal and hierarchical society. As Robert, Earl of Grantham, puts it, “We all have different parts to play, Matthew. And we must all be allowed to play them.” (Season 1 Episode 2 44:05), a traditional way to justify the class system but also a statement that can free Lady Mary to play with the roles expected of and assigned to her. With the dandiacal portrayal of herself, she explores how she can broaden her roles, and from being the eldest daughter of an Earl who must marry rich because the law does not allow her to be her father’s estate heiress, she goes on to be the manager of the estate. This long transition is important to note and analyse, as it deals with class and gender constraints of power as well as fashion. Roles and clothes are one and the same for Lady Mary and, because of that, her dresses and her actions go hand in hand and sometimes they even hide each other’s consequences. Lady Mary is a daughter, an heiress, a wife, a mother, an estate agent, and an extensive list of roles can follow, but, in the end, she is another woman fighting her way into a society that does not accept her independence.
The fact that dandyism is her way to manage her “social, economic and […] sexual vulnerability” (Byrne 317) is exemplified in her adventure with Mr Pamuk. Lady Mary is another victim of the system of primogeniture (Bonfield 490), she needs a husband if she wants to secure her future, but she does not want to marry her parents’ choice, so she decides to show herself as a rebel. When she first meets Mr Pamuk, she is attracted to him. Dressed in extravagance and acting accordingly, they become closer as the day goes by, however, the adventure becomes serious when Pamuk shows up in her room in the middle of the night. At first, she tries to make him go away, and when he approaches her, she says, “You believe I’m much more of a rebel than I am.” (Season 1 Episode 3 28:44), seeing here for the first time her vulnerability, she is still a woman in a patriarchal world. The night with Pamuk and the fact that he dies in her bed is something that haunts Mary and destabilises her world. She is “damaged goods” (Season 1 Episode 5 29:11) so she cannot fulfil her roles as she should.
Apart from that unfortunate adventure, Lady Mary uses love and courtship to hide her power. She has a mind of her own and she will not be conformed to the roles that are imposed on her (Mattisson 11), but she will challenge them. As seen in Orlando, “as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking” (Woolf 192), and Lady Mary uses attraction to her benefit as well as Orlando uses her marriage to fulfil a personal and social need, being able, after it, to finish her poem (Woolf 194). Around Lady Mary, there are always a bunch of suitors when she is not married, and thanks to the social attention given to her suitors and her love of being admired, she can still run the estate and create her own path after Matthew’s death without receiving much criticism. Therefore, she embodies male-gendered roles despite never resigning from her dandiacal and attractive femininity.
Gender has been argued to be a point of dissidence in Lady Mary’s portrayal of herself as she does not want to embody the woman ruled by “our Lady of Purity”, “our Lady of Chastity”, and our “our Lady of Modesty”, as in Orlando’s portrayal of herself as a woman, “There is no place for [the Ladies] here” (Woolf 93, 95). Orlando and Lady Mary are not that different from each other as they both use fashion, class, and their roles to challenge gender norms and assert themselves and their power. As argued by Feldman, “Not just class but gender is hierarchical, and to challenge it is to step beyond a known culture towards chaos” (9), meaning, in this context, that how Lady Mary acts is portrayed as scary for more conservative characters because they do not know a world where a woman can have as much power as a man, for example, in the running of the estate. When she first asserts herself as the new agent, the reaction of Mr Finch, who has come to discuss the arrangements for a fat stock show, is quite telling, “Mm-hmm. I see. […] Well, it’s a changing world.” (Season 6 Episode 2 4:08).
The example of managing the estate is an important one when analysing the gender fluctuation that we can find in Lady Mary’s character, but it is not the only one. The basis of Lady Mary as a dandy is rooted in her gender which is a challenge in itself because it is much more than how she dresses or how she acts. “Clothes are but a symbol of something hidden deep beneath” (Moslehi and Niazi 6), and Lady Mary's use of fashion is a way to portray her true self. Orlando does the same thing when using cross-dressing, as the biographer explains it, “the true self […] is, they say, compact of all the selves we have it in us to be” (Woolf 221). For Lady Mary, her “true self” is made from fluctuations in fashion style, class expectations and roles, but fashion is the greatest example of all because it is a visual thing. The plot about the arrival of pigs to the Abbey portrays how she manages to balance both typically feminine and masculine expectations. Dressed beautifully for the evening she goes for a walk with Charles Blake to see how the pigs have arrived and she ends up covered in mud after carrying water for the dehydrated pigs all night, “A night of discovery.” (Season 4 Episode 7 34:53). If “dandyism challenged the rigid separation of the two-sex system” (Feldman 12), Lady Mary fights against it from the inside, she may not be politically rebellious as her sister Sybil or have a London life while being the editor of a magazine like her other sister Edith, but she has a power of her own, a mind of her own, and she builds her own freedom when society is not ready to give it to her because “[…] the world is changing.” but “Not that much, and not fast enough for you.” (Season 1 Episode 5 29:51), referring to the story with Mr Pamuk. This independence that she shows from the start is developed through the different plots she engages in, as “Downton Abbey contains wholesale challenges to the conservative social and sexual order depicted in the series” (Nesbitt 254). While embodying some traditionally conservative values, Lady Mary shows herself in a constant challenge against gender norms about clothes, behaviour, and sex, using her dandiacal power to define herself as being in between the lines and to play around with a more masculine appearance, with the suitors she attracts, and with the roles she embodies.
In conclusion, it can be affirmed that Lady Mary is portrayed as a dandiacal figure in Downton Abbey, one that challenges expectations and constraints from a more conservative point of view than other characters. However, she makes changes for herself in the class and gender systems that want to define her. As it has been argued, fashion is a key element for the dandy, and it is also of utmost importance for Lady Mary. Her clothes define her as much as she defines her clothes. When discussing class, it is important to note her upper-class background and the benefits and expectations that come with it. Much related to the roles she plays, Lady Mary fights her class’s definitions of women to put her own limits in the different areas of her life, fluctuating between both gender conventions to assert her power in a time when women had many limitations. Like Orlando, Lady Mary “need neither fight her age, nor submit to it; she was of it, yet she remained herself” (Woolf 190), and because “she remained herself” she was able to use her dandiacal figure to change her own world.
Works Cited
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