Class Fascination!

Flora and Floss

A very popular post on my blog is the one called Washtubs, Woodstoves and Iceboxes, a scene from my first draft where I have Flora and May drop Margaret off at the train station in 1908 and they return home only to Floss, while they await Marion.

Well, my final version of Flo in the City will start in 1911…Flo’s final year at Academy.

I have sort of stalled. It’s been such a gloomy May. This morning I have all the lights on in my living room. When the trees fill in there’s little sun in my living room anyway, even when it is bright outside.

Anyway, I am stalling on editing my Flo in the City Book, but not ignoring it. As I last posted, I watched all 7 episodes of the first series of Downton Abbey the other day. That recent miniseries, written by Julian Fellowes, takes place between the Titanic sinking and the onset of WWI -the Tighsolas era!!

When the first episode opens, the Crawley’s have just gotten electricity. Tighsolas was ‘wired’ in early 1913. I know, I have the bills.

At the end of Downton Abbey, they get a phone. Tighsolas got a phone before 1913. There is talk of making local phone calls. I only have bills for 1913 era though..so I’m a bit confused.

Anyway, after the fact, I scoped the web for reviews of Downton Abbey. It seems it was the most watched miniseries since Brideshead Revisited in 1981 (more viewers than P and P, imagine!) Very popular. One reviewer ascribed this to the enduring fascination with CLASS – more than any enduring fascination with the Edwardian Era, although he admitted that was part of it. Downton Abbey was described as a Costume Drama. It is obvious that the fascination with Period Pieces has a lot to do with a love of fashion. (The one exception here is Pride and Prejudice, where the focus was not on the fashion at all, except perhaps Mr. Darcy’s see-through breeches.)

Hmm. Well, there’s the problem with Tighsolas. Tighsolas is about middle class Canadian women, who made their own clothing. Flo in the City, is about a young middle class teacher in training who learns about the costs of cloth and clothing, the human cost. The Nicholsons were ‘in between stairs’ as it were, that’s the part I find interesting, but will others?

Stories about the Middle Class in the era are rare, or don’t exist. People are interested in the poor and the rich. In Upstairs Downstairs they show one middle class family. In Downtown Abbey, a middle class lawyer and his retired nurse mother, are adjusting to better propects.

And yet, the Middle Class’s story is very interesting… because it is OUR story. We’re no different from the Middle Class back then, aspiring to higher things for us and our children, yet knowing it’s much easier to slide down the ladder of success than to climb up it. We know that more than ever. Hence so many middle class professionals paying out hundreds of thousands for their children’s private school education so that these same children can keep up with the more entitled in society.

The Nicholsons, too, invested in their children’s education, although the school fees were small by today’s standards, 2 or 3 dollars a month, if I recall, for Academy fees. Still, this was a sacrifice for them and Flora understands this in Flo in the City as she struggles to pass her final year, so that she can enter Macdonald Teaching College.

Hmm. I bought the Downton Abbey from Amazon.co.uk, and I played it on my Big Screen through my computer. Yesterday, I decided to buy Cranford. I went to the Amazon.ca site and they wanted to charge me 42 dollars! The Amazon. com site was selling the same dvd for 24 dollars and the UK site for 3.50 pounds… Well, when I tried to purchase the dvd off Amazon.co.uk, it wouldn’t let me at first, which scared me. But I persisted, clicking madly around the site, and now I am getting Cranford for a cost of 10.00.

The Tighsolas Era as Reflected in Downton Abbey

Harper’s Bazar image 1913

I watched the 7 episodes of Downton Abbey all at once, a 2010 British mini-series that takes place between the Titanic and the Onset of WWI, starring Hugh Bonneville (who was so good as the Dad in Lost in Austen) and Maggie Smith.

In Lost in Austen Bonneville had all the droll lines and delivered them with aplomb, this time Maggie Smith has all the potentially funny lines and nails them, each and every one.

Well, Downton Abbey is a cross bewtween a Jane Austen Novel (about marriage prospects and entailments) and Upstairs Downstairs, and is written by the screenwriter of Gosford Park.

It’s a bit Soap Opera-like then, but just a touch. In period pieces the fashions are the star and here is no exception, although the fashions worn by the younger women in Downton Abbey are a tad twenties-ish – at least I think. I suppose that means they are supposed to be cutting edge, but those v-necks during the day seem wrong.

The pic above is from Harper’s Bazar, 1913, so it was a coming trend.

And to save money, I guess, the producers of Downton Abbey show lots of autos, not many horse-drawn carts and carriages. The streets of the small Yorkshire? town near the Abbey tend to be empty most of the time, not chock-full of activity as was the case, I imagine.

In this Downton Abbey miniseries there are three girls competing for husbands and they appear weight conscious, but in a contemporary way.

I thought of this, because the Nicholson girls were certainly weight conscious, but not exactly in the way we are today. Mother Margaret worried when Flora was too thin, and exulted when she gained weight at Macdonald. With weight came ‘colour’ which meant she was healthier and less likely to die from La Grippe, as so many did.

Edith gives her weight as 138 (in her clothes I guess as she weighed herself at a store). She does not say she is fat. (She was about 5 foot 5 inches.)

Marion’s weight Yo Yo’s. She too gives her weight, at 19, as 130 pounds. She’s 5 foot 2. In 1912, she is under great stress and loses a lot of weigth, everyone comments. This is not considered a good thing.

Maybe there was more pressure of the wealthy to be thin, even then, before the First World War, but I don’t think so. Full-figured women were still desirable, if not going out of fashion. Adele Blood was deemed “the most beautiful blond on the stage” and she was more Mae West than Kate Hepburn. In fact, my own grandmother had a similar build.

Remember, that skinny twenties look was called ‘the garconne’ as in the female boy. So they believed thin women looked ‘boyish.’ Today, all actresses are ballerina thin, but they are not seen as boyish at all.

Today,there are few plump young actresses, if any at all. Taboo.

Many reasons have been given for this trend, which tracks against real life, where everyone is getting fatter and fatter. Some feminists believe, the more power women have, the less female fat they are allowed to have. I suspect it has to do with an invention back in the 1900/1910 era, the motion picture. Skinny women look better on film, their faces anyway, and the body followed

Anyway, I liked Downton Abbey a lot, (I watched all 7 hours at one sitting). My only problem, in retrospect, is the one pivotal scene, a seducation scene that seems more of a rape scene. It happens to the eldest daughter just hours after she meets a handsome exotic stranger. I can’t quite figure it out in relation to the very prudish 1910 era.

And at the end a miscarriage happens because the Mom, played by Elizabeth McGovern, falls coming out the bath. From what I know, such things don’t happen, baby is well-protected in these cases.

Having just watched the first two series of Upstairs Downstairs (and Gosford Park!) it was fun to compare. There is a clearer line between the good servants and the bad servants in Downton Abbey than in U/D.

The cooks are similar. The young maids and footman are similar. (My Yorkshire grandfather was a footman, supposedly, before being shot off to Malaya, because an Earl’s daughter fell for him. Footman had to be tall and presentable, it seems, so they were bound to attract female attention, despite their lowly position in life. )

The Butler and Housekeeper are not as pivotal -or as captivating- in Downton Abbey as in U/D, but similar.

In the opening scene, when Hugh Bonneville’s character learns about the sinking of the Titanic, his thoughts immediately go to the steerage passengers, who he assumes, (correctly) have mostly drowned. This is to show, right away, that he is a good sort. He says,”Poor souls, travelling to make a better life,” he says. Ironic statment, since from I can see from the 1911 Canadian Census, many of these young Englishman and women were going to work as domestics in Canadian homes, since there was a dire shorthage of help and English people were preferred over all others. So instead of working in an elegant home, they get to be Jack and Jill of all servant trades for middle class people like the Clevelands,in a Victorian townhouse on Lorne Avenue. They employed a young English girl fresh from overseas.

Adele Blood. Flora sees her in 1912, in Everywoman. I will include this in Flo in the City, my book about Middle Class Canadians in 1910. The Nicholsons had no maids, but lots of upper class pretentions, all the same.