Downton Abbey and Philosophy (4 page)

And then there's Lady Mary, who may at times seem cold, calculating, and spoiled, but Fellowes makes her his primary feminist icon.

In Defense of Mary

Lady Mary isn't a villain. She's pragmatic, brave, and able to make independent decisions within her social context; in these ways she's a creature of both custom and progress. With her life spanning the past and the future of the British aristocracy in the days of World War I, she emerges as the ultimate heroine in Fellowes's fictional world.

As the series opens, Mary is expected to marry her cousin Patrick, the heir, to keep Downton and her mother's fortune within the immediate family. But when the
Titanic
takes her would-be fiancé into the icy waters, Mary is able to warm to a future of choice—within reason. A true pragmatist, she still understands her role as an aristocrat and as a woman who cannot inherit directly. Therefore, she has to marry either the new heir, Matthew Crawley (another cousin), or someone else with means. Since she and Matthew do not hit it off on their first meeting, she moves on to Evelyn Napier, a visiting wealthy young aristocrat who is handsome, pleasant, and polite—and a bit of a bore.

Napier makes a strategic mistake, however, by bringing the roguishly handsome Kemal Pamuk to visit with him. Mary is attracted to the mysterious foreigner, who makes his feelings very clear—quite a difference from the restrained propriety of the English gentry that Mary is familiar with. Mr. Pamuk is the bad boy, irresistible to Mary, and as with most temptation, it ends in sorrow: during their passionate encounter, Mr. Pamuk suddenly dies. Through the ensuing cover-up, Mary is given a fast-track education on the dark side of high society.

Fellowes creates a sad, touching scenario for his feminist heroine. After this experience, she approaches life with more compassion and, if possible, improved grace. Lady Mary has earned empathy, which prepares her for what happens later with her cousin Matthew, whom she has come to love. As the second season opens, Matthew is engaged to Lavinia Swire (after rejecting Mary at the end of the first season, suspecting that her motives are more financial than romantic). Mary's aunt, Lady Rosamund Painswick, obtains information about Lavinia that would potentially sever the engagement with Matthew, but when Mary has the chance to use it to try to win Matthew back, she doesn't take it. She believes that Matthew is happy with Lavinia, and although she loves him, she refuses to bend to the social pressures, including the loss of her inheritance, which might have pushed a lesser person to scheme for him.

After the Pamuk debacle, love looms larger for Mary than do money, property, titles, and social custom. For instance, when no one else will tell footman William of his mother's fatal illness, Mary does, which allows William and his beloved mother some precious moments together. Everyone else, even the progressive Isobel, insists on propriety over what is compassionate, but Mary does not.

Lady Mary is the embodiment of John Stuart Mill's ultimate argument against defining a woman's nature. Although society continues to determine what women “should” be and do, changing at a glacial pace as World War I charges ahead, Mary is true to herself. She chooses for herself, as much as she can, how to proceed with her life. While her pragmatism draws her to a man like Sir Richard Carlisle, her bravery directs her in the end to leave the potential wealth and social comfort of a life with the gritty newspaper mogul in favor of true love with Matthew. Of course, a marriage with Matthew is what the family wanted all along, even when Mary thought him a plebeian bore, so this outcome would satisfy both her pragmatism and her bravery—not to mention the legions of fans who want to see Mary and Matthew together.

“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.

Chapter 4

Hume's Moral Philosophy and Thomas's Moral Corruption

Joseph J. Darowski

Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

—David Hume
1

Despite airing on the BBC and PBS's
Masterpiece
,
Downton Abbey
fits the soap opera tradition. In fact, the show's creator, Julian Fellowes, has said that he doesn't mind the series “being labeled a ‘posh soap',” and clearly he has employed the twists and turns associated with that genre.
2

One of the most prominent soap opera tropes that
Downton Abbey
deploys is a bevy of villainous characters. Yet in a series with a wicked wife, a seductive soldier, a subversive chauffeur, a philandering farmer, and a manipulative media mogul, two characters come immediately to mind as villains: Thomas and O'Brien. These two have been so identified with villainy that when comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, an avid fan of
Downton Abbey
, was asked during a red carpet interview to choose his favorite villain from the series, he was only given the choice between Thomas and O'Brien.
3

Thomas, a footman in the first season and a soldier in the second, and O'Brien, Lady Grantham's lady's maid, are regularly shown scheming and plotting together. Often there is villainous cigarette smoke swirling about them—they are the only two characters regularly shown smoking, and their smoke breaks provide an ideal separation from the people against whom they are plotting. Both characters are worthy of analysis, but to provide focus this chapter will concentrate on Thomas, using the moral philosophy of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) to examine Thomas's actions as well as the reactions of other characters and the audience.
4

An Enquiry Concerning Thomas

In
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
, Hume contended that it is sentiment or passion, not reason, that most often motivates actions, especially moral actions.
5
He allowed that reason can override the passions at times, but he insisted that sentiments are the key driver of our choices. Hume's philosophy broke from a long tradition that believed passions were “irrational and unnatural animal elements that, given their head, would undermine humankind's true, rational nature.”
6
Hume was responding to
moral rationalists
, who argued that “right and wrong are determined by a permanent structure in the universe that all rational beings can understand.”
7
Hume saw the traditional view of our motivations and the way we judge actions as deficient in its account of human nature:

Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows that they cannot be derived from reason. . . . Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.
8

Not only are our actions influenced by our passions, our moral judgments are as well. Deciding whether a character trait is a virtue or a vice does not depend solely on reason; it also depends on our sentiments.
9

Hume distinguished between artificial virtues and natural virtues.
Artificial virtues
are those that are “contrived solely for society,” such as “justice with respect to property, allegiance to government, and dispositions to obey the laws of nations and the rules of modesty and good manners.”
10
Natural virtues
are those that exist independently of social norms, such as broad concepts including greatness of mind or general goodness. Both types of virtue benefit society. Our positive feelings toward virtues and negative feelings toward vices may, according to Hume, be connected to our recognition that virtues (both artificial and natural) benefit society as a whole. We are pleased by actions that serve the greater good and are displeased by actions that lessen it.

Thomas's actions violate both artificial and natural virtues. Thomas is motivated not by the welfare of society at large but by selfish concerns. As such, his actions are viewed unfavorably by those who discern his selfishness, including the staff and nobility at Downton and the fans at home. Hume scholar Rachel Cohon explains:

We reach a moral judgment by feeling approval or disapproval upon contemplating someone's trait in a disinterested way from the common point of view. So moral approval is a favorable sentiment in the observer elicited by the observed person's disposition to have certain motivating sentiments.
11

It is important to note that moral approval may stem from observing a person's “motivating sentiments,” not simply the actions themselves. For the viewers of
Downton Abbey
, Thomas's selfish motivation is made abundantly clear, so our reaction may be highly negative even if the actions themselves appear admirable.

For example, when Thomas asks Daisy to go to a fair with him, the action is not, in and of itself, malicious. We can imagine any number of motivations that might have made his invitation palatable or even praiseworthy. If Thomas had been at all interested in Daisy, or if he was just recognizing her fawning interest in him and giving her a pleasant night, our reaction would not have been negative. However, because we as viewers know that he is asking Daisy out only to spite William, who is in love with Daisy, we view the action as reprehensible. While Daisy is overjoyed that Thomas has asked her out, the viewers' sentiments are more likely to align with those of another character, Bates, who understands Thomas's motivations and is furious with him.
12

The different responses that Daisy and Bates have to Thomas's behavior help to illustrate another aspect of Hume's philosophy. Hume argued that virtue results in pleasure in the audience that perceives it, whereas vice elicits a negative feeling. How, then, can the same action result in two responses? Contemporary philosopher Julia Driver argues that Hume's philosophy allows for pleasure to be “appropriate or inappropriate (or ‘true' or ‘false').”
13
In other words, a person can have an incorrect understanding of the situation and therefore feel pleasure with someone's actions, whereas another person with better information will have a negative reaction to them. Daisy's pleasure is false, since she doesn't see (and doesn't want to see) Thomas's true motives. She perceives only his actions, which align with many of her fondest hopes. Bates and the viewer, whose eyes are open to Thomas's motives, recognize that his behavior represents a vice, so they experience the appropriate displeasure at his actions.

As Thomas's World Turns

When the audience meets Thomas in the first episode of the series, the camera is following him through a long tracking shot that simultaneously introduces us to several characters and provides a view of Downton Abbey. When Thomas passes by William, he asks, “Where have you been?” William replies, calmly but perhaps defensively, “I'm not late, am I?” Thomas snidely retorts, “You're late when I say you're late.” After that brief exchange, the audience knows that this character is controlling and unconcerned with the feelings of others, traits that will be reinforced as the series progresses.

Later in the same episode it is revealed that Thomas is also ambitious and manipulative. Upset that he has been passed over for the position of Lord Grantham's valet, Thomas attempts to undermine the new man, Bates, who was given the position. In addition, Thomas's efforts to improve his position in the servants' hierarchy by relying on a former lover, the Duke of Crowborough, backfire when the duke retrieves and burns the love letters the two had exchanged.

How has Thomas become such a villainous individual? When so many of the reactions to him are negative, why does he choose to act that way? The pressures surrounding Thomas's homosexual relationship with the duke—not just socially frowned on but also illegal at the time—may serve as a clue to some of the character's motivations. Fellowes says the following of Thomas:

It's hard to be gay in 1912. . . . It's illegal. If anyone finds out, you go to prison. So for me, him being gay means you slightly stay your hand. He's not just horrible. To get any kind of emotional life going, he's got to take his life in his hands every time. That seems to me to be a sympathetic thing. . . . I don't believe that most people wake up and think, How can I be horrible today. In their brain it is a legitimate response to the bad treatment they have received or some bad situation they perceive.
14

Thomas had turned to a former partner for help and was not only rebuffed but mocked. The duke's actions may have been motivated as much by class differences and the legal threats that loomed as any change in his emotions. These social constructions, including class and law, undoubtedly would have been on Thomas's mind as he considered this turn of events.

Later, Thomas makes a romantic advance toward the Turkish attaché, Kemal Pamuk, and is rebuffed. Mr. Pamuk seduces Lady Mary that night, and to gain access to her room he has blackmailed Thomas, who once again finds himself manipulated after neglecting to consider his rank when attempting to establish a romantic connection.
15
And in perhaps the most revealing and intimate moment the character is afforded, Thomas opens up to a recently blinded soldier, telling him, “You're not a victim, don't let them make you into one. . . . All my life, they've pushed me around, just 'cause I'm different. . . . I don't know if you're going to see again or not. But I do know you have to fight back.”
16
After this conversation, in which Thomas feels a real connection, the soldier commits suicide.

In three attempts at emotional closeness with another man, Thomas is rejected every time. As a result, his sense of what produces positive emotions is going to be markedly different from the “general point of view,” which, according to Hume scholar William Edward Morris, Hume considered to be the “proper perspective of morality.”
17
This point of view would ideally remove bias that results from personal opinions, lack of information, or adverse personal experiences. On this basis, we can imagine that Thomas's moral comprehension and appreciation of his own behavior would be somewhat skewed. This is not to excuse his behavior—that would require an entirely different chapter!—but it may help us to understand it better.

When Thomas Is Good—and Denies It

Hume maintained that one reason we experience pleasure when viewing acts that conform to artificial virtues is “solely for their tendency to benefit the whole society of that time or place.”
18
Many of the actions that have caused Thomas to be perceived as a villain, such as his flouting of customs and laws, defy artificial virtues. In a sense, the man who feels pushed around by society has simply been fighting back. Thomas is motivated purely by his own self-interest and is not bothered by many of the social mores that define proper behavior. Thomas does not find the pleasure that signifies virtue in the same actions that most of the other characters do—not only because his homosexuality is socially and legally unacceptable but also because of how he has been treated by those with whom he has tried to find happiness.

The list of Thomas's offenses is certainly enough to raise eyebrows. In addition to the examples we've discussed so far, Thomas is shown stealing wine from the house, attempting to frame Bates for his crime, stealing a wallet, mocking a man for mourning his mother's death, self-inflicting a nonfatal wound in order to leave the battlefront, mocking his former colleagues, and attempting to navigate the black market of rationed goods. Through it all, Thomas rarely defends himself. If anyone is to hear him explain his motives, it is generally O'Brien, while she and Thomas enjoy one of their sequestered smoking breaks. There is one instance, however, when Thomas defends himself against the judgment of others, and this time his “transgression” is not in violating social mores.

In the following dialogue, the staff is expressing disgust that William, a former footman who has been injured in the war, is not allowed to recover at Downton Abbey, which has been converted to a convalescent home for officers, because he is not an officer. Instead, he's forced to stay at a distant hospital.

O'Brien:
Any news?

Daisy:
Only that the doctor won't let William come to the village.

O'Brien:
He never!

Daisy:
It's for officers only, he said.

Mrs. Patmore:
And [William's] poor father staying there with him. Spending money he's not got and traveling miles to do it.

Daisy:
It's not right.

Thomas:
No, it bloody well isn't. [
The staff stops working and stares incredulously at Thomas.
] Well, I'm a working-class lad and so is he. And I get fed up seeing how our lot always get shafted.
19

The staff finds it hard to believe that Thomas has pure motives in his sympathy for William's plight—and Thomas shares their feeling! He is uncomfortable being viewed in a selfless or empathetic light, so he tries to reclaim a self-centered basis for his statements, asserting that his motive is not one of care for William but is in his own self-interest only.

In essence, Thomas has created his own morality, in which motives and actions that serve him are preferred to ones that serve the greater good. Since he feels rejected by society, he doesn't find pleasure in its artificial virtues. Instead, his pleasure is found in securing his own station in the world. Thomas doesn't see the methods he uses as morally questionable, even if those looking on from an ideal “general point of view” would disagree. Thomas makes no effort to step back to this general point of view because he has felt attacked and betrayed by society. He has become insular and focused on himself, leaving concerns for the greater good of society to others.