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| By Christopher Cerasi |
We need to talk about Edith. She really is the Jan Brady of Downton Abbey, the forgotten middle child desperate to shine and desperate for love and affection; but as always, the cards seem stacked against her. She gets little-to-no respect from her family and friends, is vexed at every turn by her glamorous sisters’ far more glamorous trials and tribulations, and when it comes to love, she has enough bad luck to fill several Lifetime TV movies.
She even has her own absurd (but hilarious) Tumblr, “Edith With Googly Eyes.” Poor girl can’t even get a break in the twenty-first century!
Or even get married to the war-rattled older man with the gimpy hand, it seems. In the course of the series so far we have seen her lose cousin Patrick in the sinking of the Titanic, Sir Anthony Strallan the first time as part of Mary’s payback, the kindly farmer John Drake, the horrifically scarred but perhaps alive cousin Patrick, and now Sir Anthony Strallan again, this time at the altar. Oh Edith, our hearts truly bleed for you; you really don’t deserve the gargantuanly bad luck at love you seem to be cursed with.
After the Great War there were few eligible young men for England’s ladies to choose from, especially after the enormous death toll and serious injuries suffered that left more than a small minority unable to have a proper romantic life. So it’s no wonder that Edith clings to Sir Anthony with a fervor that would make even Jane Austen uncomfortable; the sad fact is, the men of England are not exactly queuing up for her outside of Downton’s elaborate front doors. It just adds insult to injury that poor Edith really can’t manage to even make it - literally - to the actual altar without things turning to shit.
But if there is one thing in Edith’s favor, it is that she is a survivor.
She has known great depths of pain, and out of this pain has come a strength and resiliency that will certainly aid her not only in the immediate heartbreaking aftermath of another failed relationship, but in the years to come as England shifts inexorably toward a more modern and less traditional way of life. In his fantastic article in a recent issue of New York magazine, Matt Zoller Seitz makes an illuminating comment that can be applied to Lady Edith as well as the rest of the Downton clan, upstairs and below. “On some level, every line in Downton Abbey is about accepting hard reality and adapting accordingly, to bend without breaking,” he writes. “Every conflict between characters and their institutions, beliefs, or traditions always comes back to the same basic question: Should we continue doing things as always and hope for the best, or should we be pragmatic and change as much as we’re able?” If Lady Edith is anything, she is pragmatic, able to bend without breaking, or at least so far.
I think there will be a happy ending to Edith’s story; she is too plucky and has too much drive to go down without a fight. She is hardly unattractive, but compared to her stunning older and younger sisters, she is less gifted than would seem genetically possible, or fair. But she has brains and a fire in her belly (and she’s the only Downton female who can drive a car or a tractor!), and if anyone can channel that into something productive, Lady Edith can.
And you know what? I hope she does.
I’m rooting for you, Edith…
Watch Downton Abbey Season 3, Episode 2 on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.