Downton Abbey

By now, you may have heard of the PBS (yes, you heard me right) show that's been attracting an impressive following: "Downton Abbey," a British import that chronicles the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants in the years leading up to World War I and during it. Here's a quick trailer for Season 1:

Season 2 just finished airing on PBS last month. In case you missed the show, the library has both seasons on DVD. You can find them on the DVD shelves that house our TV shows under DVD TV DOWNTON. We've also got the book on the show, The World of Downton Abbey.

I recently started watching "Downton" out of curiosity. Now I'm hooked. You come to care greatly for all the characters and the few villainous characters there are, you love to hate. Even then, you can grudgingly see where their bad attitudes come from. Upstairs, benevolent patriarch Lord Grantham (played by Hugh Bonneville) oversees his brood, which includes his mother, wife and three daughters. Downstairs, the dignified Mr. Carson does the same with his small army of staff.

In Season 1, the ill-fated Titanic has taken with it the heir to Downton Abbey. The rules of inheritance shift Downton's fate into the hands of a unknown third cousin, Matthew Crawley, a lawyer working in Manchester. The fact that he is unlanded and employed (gasp!) is cause for great consternation.

The show examines, among other things, issues of class and gender at the time. Be prepared; the first episode starts out slow and it takes a while to warm up to the show but by the end of Episode 1, you'll be flipping over to Episode 2 and pushing "Play." It may be a period piece, but it's written in a way that feels thoroughly modern and relevant. No stodgy, boring portrayals here; just well-written, absorbing fun. There is drama, romance, and humor — all PG-rated, of course (this is PBS) — but engrossing nevertheless.

The Portrait of a Lady / by Henry James

If ever an author marginalized his homeland in favor of other, more fashionable places, it was American Henry James (1843-1916). Any slight was largely unintended however. With regard to his lifestyle, it seems only practical that James would concentrate his literary efforts on the settings and subjects at hand. Born to a wealthy New York City family already well-regarded for their intellectual prowess--James' father Henry Sr. and his brother William were both accomplished philosophers and his sister Alice's posthumous diary would influence later feminists--James received a classical (if informal) education . For much of his early life, he lived abroad traveling extensively with private tutors through England, France, Italy and Switzerland. It was during this formative period that James garnered a great appreciation for the art and culture of some of Europe's most cosmopolitan settings. His only sustained residence in the United States came when he briefly attended Harvard Law School after which he resumed a semi-permanent home abroad in England for the remainder of his life. His novels, short stories and varied prose, much of it heralded as classic 'American' Literature, is predominately set in Britain and continental Europe where it almost exclusively depicts a society and class of people who could well-afford to devote themselves to the refinements of life. Consequently, critics of James have said his fiction is unrealistic and have derided the author as an unapologetic anglophile with eurocentric tendencies. His 1881 serialised novel The Portrait of a Lady follows a young American girl as she takes up a residence with relatives in England and subsequently grows into womanhood.

American Isabel Archer is only 19 when her father dies and her Aunt Touchett comes from England intending, upon request from Isabel's late father, to take the girl back with her to the Touchett estate of Gardencourt. It is settled that a life lived here in proximity to a more sophisticated social element can give Isabel a better chance to "blossom" into a well-refined, cultured woman. Almost instantly upon her arrival, Isabel is courted by several suitors, among them an older, well-off gentleman named Lord Warburton and a younger American man, Caspar Goodwood, whose been in love with Isabel previously and has followed her from America. Though both men are of able means and come well-recommended, neither can win Isabel's hand in marriage and each graciously depart from her company. It is also during this time that Isabel forms a close attachment with the Touchett's son, Ralph, whose terminal illness both prevents and dissuades him from pursuing Isabel romantically. But Ralph is a kindhearted, affectionate man and while it's never explicitly stated, it is he who perhaps loves Isabel in the purest, most unselfish way. As the elder Mr. Touchett, stricken with a similar illness, lies dying it is Ralph who persuades him (anonymously) to bequeath a legacy to Isabel, an inheritance large enough so that the girl may have the means to cultivate her higher faculties through travel and association with European society's more sophisticated set.

Though surprised at her good fortune, Isabel suspects that Ralph may have had a hand in it. And as anticipated, the young woman does indeed flourish with aid from her newfound wealth, first in the salons of Paris then the courts of Italy where along the way she procures the friendship of one Madame Merle, a thoroughly "complete" woman polished in every sort of way and a person Isabel hopes to emulate. Consequently, it is Madame Merle who introduces Isabel to her "friend" Gilbert Osmond, a man as impressed with Isabel as she is with him. Before long the two are in love and, despite the warnings of others that Gilbert is a fortune hunter, Isabel agrees to marry him. But what she doesn't know, what she doesn't even fear as she succombs to the affable and gallant wiles of Mr. Osmond is that dangerous secrets have been witheld from her concerning Gilbert and his charming daughter Pansy, a girl much in the same strangely limited situation as Isabel formerly had been.

The Portrait of a Lady is popularly considered to James best novel. It could also be said that it is his most 'Jamesian' novel, the author portraying a world, his own little microcosm of parlors, drawing rooms and galleries, where his brand of literary realism is given room to thrive. Of course no one who regards this James novel (and many of his others) would say that his mode of portrayal, a realm absent of anything but the wealthy elite stiffly going about their lives, is in any way realistic. And it's not, at least in the sense that the 'real world' and the cross-section of society contained within it are not only disregarded, but that any activity relegated to the mundane aspects of life are ever within the scope of the story. Much of it does seem like pomp and circumstance. But that's just it. James' "realism" is never intended to encompass such aspects which he feels, perhaps justifiably, aren't necessary to elucidate the ideas, themes and 'realities' he aims to render. For his is the kind of style, very acutely rendered within context, which strives to engage the most intimately authentic portions of human life, the conditions, choices and consequences enmeshed therein. An understanding of this concept isn't without contradictions. It is perhaps a bit hard to accept Jame's realism--a motif in which he firmly insisted was intended to oppose romanticist elements in fiction--when such a flourishing type of life as Isabel aspires to carries such exclusive, largely unobtainable means. (FIC JAMES)

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion / by Ford Madox Ford

English author Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was actually born as Ford Hermann Hueffer. And though his surname bore a characteristically German tinge owing to the shared nationality of his father, writer Francis Hueffer, Ford was actually descended from a long line of noted British aristocrats including his maternal grandfather, the renowned painter Ford Madox Brown, whose middle name the writer would formally adopt in 1919. A man who did as much to promote the literary careers of his contemporaries as his own--his journals The English Review and Transatlantic Review were vitally instrumental in the development of early 20th century literature--Ford was a writer who wrote a great deal but achieved success sparingly such as with his 1915 book The Good Soldier, repeatedly named as one of the best novels of all time. Dealing with the damning consequences of infidelity and falsehood which befall two Progressive Era couples, it has been characterized as an ironic commentary on the author's own philandering lifestyle during the period.

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard." So the reader is told by John Dowell who proceeds to tell of the tragedy which befell him and his friends in the space of nine years. In 1904, the John and his wife Florence are incredibly rich Americans who've arrived at the pleasant town of Nauheim in Germany to help heal Florence's "weak heart" through a series of prescribed spa treatments and thermal baths. By chance they form an acquaintance with the Ashburnhams, an Edwardian English couple who are also at the spa to the seek treatment for a heart ailment, that of Edward the husband. Also a decorated Army officer, a captain whose served in countries like India and South Africa, Edward seems the quintissential English gentleman and makes quite the impression on both John and Florence with his stoic bearing and seemingly implacable demeanor, always the courteous, courtly escort with Florence and an accommodating whiskey drinker and cardplayer with John. Over the preceding summers as John tells it--the couples parted ways in the intervening seasons, the Dowells touring the continent and the Ashburnhams back to their Surrey estate--the friendship between the two couples grew immensely, their fondness for one another remaining all the way up until one night when Florence's "weak heart" gave way and she died.

John Dowell's arrival at the Ashburnham's home in England, following a series of letters requesting that he visit, abruptly turns everything on its head as he's brought to the gripping truth which erases all of his his existing preconceptions on the past few years. Related to him by Leonora, and told in pieces interspersed throughout the narrative, is the infidelity of Florence and Capt. Ashburnham, the pair's torrid love affair being carried on right under his nose. Even more arresting is that Leonora knew (had always known) about Edward's string of illicit love affairs, his hopeless inability to remain faithful to his wife and Leonora's hellish lifestyle of basically having to be complicit in the ordeal--the couple's wealth was basically bankrupted by Edward's notably desperate liasons with a steady stream of needy lovers. Edward's affairs, his past and present have offset a plethora of miseries. Florence's death, not unlike that of Maisie Maiden, another spa attendant who'd been led on by Edward, was in fact a suicide. In truth, nothing was ever wrong with Florences' heart. She'd only fabricated the condition to get John to take her away from her own past which included her own series of scandalous affairs. The illuminated truth is not only something to which the past has suffered, it is now something that will have lasting reverberations and immediate repurcussions on a disillusioned John for the remainder of his life.

Ford actually based The Good Soldier on his own life; at the time he'd made a complete mess of his existing marriage through extramarital dalliances with more than a few "family acquaintances". What's so great about the story though is the way it reflects a culture at large just prior to the earth-shattering trauma of World War I. It is indeed a grim vision of things to come for a world at the brink. The posh, comfortable lives of the Dowells and the Ashburnhams have seemingly everything going for them. Neither want for anything and each couple embues the standard of aristocratic distinction, Capt. Ashburnham especially resplendant as the dashing officer, the "good soldier", and Florence the darling product of a blue-blooded New England family, a shining example of American capitalism, ingenuity and good breeding. And yet everything is crumbling before their eyes; the very core of the British Empire is corrupt and the backbone of the American Protestant system, its Calvinist work ethic and Puritan foundation, is a fraudulent hypocrisy. As Dowell, as unreliable a narrator (a device Ford uses to perfection) as their ever was, puts it, "It is a queer and fantastic world . . . Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?" (FIC FORD)

Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero / by William Makepeace Thackeray

Overshadowed for much of his relatively short writing tenure by others, W.M. Thackeray (1811-1863) was nonetheless a notable scribe, satirist and observer of human nature, particularly well-regarded for his fiction and editorial anecdotes by the reading public as well as the very same members of the British upper-class which he so cleverly caricatured. Born in India, Thackeray was brought to England permanently in 1815 after the death of his father. During the passage, his ship was shortly detained on the island of St. Helena where the then exiled Napoleon Bonaparte was pointed out to him. The emperor's permanent deposition, brought about as a result of the Battle at Waterloo, was an event which indirectly forms the backdrop for his 1848 serially published book Vanity Fair, the author's most celebrated novel and a prized work of Victorian literature.
.
.

"Revenge may be wicked. But it's natural".

.

Becky Sharp is a sly, artful woman always scheming towards a better deal in life. Orphaned as a girl after the deaths of her artist father and opera singer mother, Becky was kept at a privately run finishing school until she came of age and inherited a moderate income, though not one guaranteeing her financial independence. With her beauty, wit and devilishly clever charms of which few women can match, eligible bachelors and married men alike routinely fall prey to her wiles, exemplified when her hasty marriage to the easily manipulated Rawdon Crawley, done solely for want of financial security, is brought about without the consent or blessing of any of the man's relations. With Rawdon now her willing pawn, Becky feels no less limited to tampering with those in her immediate circle. She routinely intermingles herself into the company of men in high standing such as General Tufto and Lord Steyne, both fashionable aristocrats, while still finding time to aid Rawdon in cheating at cards and fleecing wealthy members of the ruling class out of their money.
.
Though her flirtatious cocquetry is always winning her new male friends, Becky's shrewd, self-promoting lifestyle, enacted without conscience, has essentially eliminated the potential for female companionship. Amelia Sedley is the exception to the rule. A benevolent and compassionate though naievely ignorant and, in her own way, vainly fanciful girl brought down in society by her family's financial ruin, Amelia has remained Becky's loyal ally ever since their days at finishing school together, even spurning rumours that her own beloved husband Capt. George Osborne has been lured in by Becky's arts. But when the captain is killed in the war with Napoleon, Amelia's misfortune seems to only increase as her own father's spendthrift ways and misuse of her meager widow's legacy plunge Amelia and her newborn son into further destitution and misery while Becky's amoral behavior, often executed at Amelia's expense, seems to only elevate her financial status and social standing. Yet, tragically, such is the lot of those in 'Vanity Fair', where "the general impression is forever one more melancholy than mirthful".
.
The title Vanity Fair is a direct homage to the term's original inception in John Bunyan's seventeenth century Christian allegorical treatise, The Pilgrim's Progress, in which a town called Vanity holds a year-round fair devoted to worldly novelties, tawdry attractions and all kinds of "licentious, fleshly" activities--"moreover at this Fair there is at all times to be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, knaves, and rogues, and that of all sorts." (Bunyan, 96)*. Thackeray's novel is in parts full-on parody while at other times soliciting solemnly stern lessons. Yet the narrative is always whimsical, the author's personal running commentary on the "upraised curtain" of life routinely conjecturing, as if a casual member of the audience, about the stage on which the world and its actors tread, their lives driven by pretentious yearnings and carnal desires perpetually leading to greivous, lamentable and often absurdly cruel consequences. The character of Becky Sharp, one of the most popular female literary figures ever since, was one of the first prominently featured anti-heroines to appear within an English novel.
.

*Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress. Eastbourne: Kingsway Publications, 1972.

"Upstairs, Downstairs" [DVD/TV-mini]

.
Before the digital age back when entertainment was bland and inoffensive, television had a far greater appeal not just as an instrument to waste time, but as a medium to promote artistry. Programming had just barely progressed into syndication and networks could still rely on an audience's attention span to cover specific time slots, even maintain interest enough to tune-in the following week. It was the golden age for dramatic sitcoms, soap operas and miniseries.
.
"Upstairs, Downstairs" was a program that not only flourished in this era but withstood the test of time as one of the most remarkable TV series ever broadcast. Produced in partnership with the BBC and seen on networks worldwide, the show portrayed an Edwardian era household in which a prominent politician's family resided "above" ground while their servants inhabited the "below" ground quarters. Airing in 1971, it was carried for six full seasons until 1975, fictionally representing the three decades between 1900-1930.

A ridiculously talented cast of actors including Nicola Pagett, Pauline Collins, Anthony Andrews, Leslie-Anne Down, Gordon Jackson and John Alderton comprised the lead roles as the series' immense popularity held an unprecedented global appeal. A poignant drama to be sure, it was the show's qualitative insight into history that made it so intriguing, an amalgamation of characters and dialogue meshed alongside actual twentieth century events (WWI, Titanic, 1920's, etc.). Relevant social issues were also present. Working class scruples pitted against liberal capitalism, tradition versus progress, "place" instead of potential were all themes envived in the context, never failing to resonate with devoted viewers enchanted by a seemingly simpler but all-the-more intimate period.