Like 10 million other Americans, Steve and I watched Downton Abbey on Sunday. We bulleted through Season 3 on our Netflix disks last week, so we were all ready for the drama and dreamy dresses and drollery from Maggie Smith.
If you were a character in Downton Abbey, who would you be? I would like to say that I would be Edith, the daughter who has been unlucky in love, but is making a transition to a political columnist for a London newspaper. I would never be so witty to be the Dowager Crawley. I always think of the smartest thing to say five minutes too late. However, I suspect that my lot would not be among the upstairs gentry, but with the servants downstairs. I’m sure that I would have the been red-haired, red-faced cook, Mrs. Patmore.
One of the ongoing themes of the show is how modernity is reshaping the mores and the economic foundation of English gentry. They can no longer afford to maintain their homes in the manner of the past. Daughters are marrying the chauffeurs. Women want to vote. The serving girls know how to operate the mixing machines better than the seasoned cooks. There is no need for valets and other servants, so the servants have to find new occupations. It is a world in transition, and in any transition, some beautiful things will be lost.
I’m working on an article this morning about deTocqueville and his bittersweet predictions about society and economic life as the Ancien Regime declined and the beginning of a new age of equality.
I wonder if all this interest in Downton Abbey comes from from our curiousity about a return to the old ways. If we’re really moving into an age of permanent inequality, can we be so far from Downton? We now have nanny consultants, Christmas tree stylists, and personal IMAX theaters. One of few growth opportunities are in businesses that cater to the new international, uber-wealthy class.
One of the themes of Downton is that those who embrace the inevitiable changes with grace and flexibility are those who survive. It’s a lesson worth remembering.
Apt. 11d 
In an Edwardian world, I would probably be a senior butler type: risen to the top of his own little world by brains and hard work, manager of a large staff, utterly supportive of the existing class structure and comfortable with his own place in that structure. I believe there is a character of that description in the show but I don’t watch it enough to say whether he quite matches me.
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Did you ever watch Upstairs, Downstairs? There’s a butler there who fits your description exactly.
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I’ve never watched the show, but I took a quiz on Buzzfeed and was told that I’m McGonagall.
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Didn’t Agatha Christie have some quote about never imagining she would be poor enough not to have servants or rich enough to have a car?
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I think that some of the angst today is that with social media, the class differences in the US and Canada that we believed did not exist have become much more visible. It’s part of that fantasy that anyone can make it on their own if only they worked hard enough.
At least in the UK there’s less imagining or pretending that class differences have little impact.
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I agree, not just social media, but also more significant information transfer in general. I’m guessing that many now have someone in their facebook feed who has a lot more resources than they do, with friends of friends of friends.
But, it’s also true that inequality (i.e. class difference, ala Downton Abbey) has been increasing: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/disinformation-on-inequality/
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Building on what you’ve said, I think we can parse it even further – the class differences have always existed, whether visible or not AND economic inequality has increased. There’s some Venn diagram overlap but having money doesn’t necessarily mean someone is from a higher class. And vice versa. (i.e. new vs. old money).
The “secret handshake” of class is independent of wealth.
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I’d be Isabel, probably.
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