The Secret Appeal of ‘Downton Abbey’

At heart we are all snobs—whether we acknowledge it or not, however egalitarian we may be in theory and however nervous we might be about our own position in society. Everyone needs (and almost everyone finds) someone to look down on. But why should Americans, whose republic is founded upon the proposition that all men are created equal, be so fascinated by “Downton Abbey,” a soap opera (now in its second season on PBS) about the English landed aristocracy during the Edwardian era, in which all men are definitely not created equal?

The Earl of Grantham, the owner of Downton Abbey, is deferential to the Duke of Crowborough merely because the latter was born higher in the aristocratic scale. The earl’s mother, the dowager countess, treats everyone other than her son as a lower species. The large staff of domestic servants has its own rigid hierarchy, presided over by Mr. Carson, the butler who finds honor in the refinement of his own servility. “Downton Abbey” portrays a fairy-tale way of life in which butlers and footmen appear far better dressed than today’s billionaires—many of whom, after making their fortune, seem to want to be sartorially indistinguishable from the most sloppily dressed adolescent rebel. The series thus satisfies a secret or vicarious longing for elegance without imposing the hard work that’s necessary to achieve it in reality. For many Americans, watching “Downton Abbey” must be like indulging in a guilty passion. Indeed, the series is almost a pornography of class and hierarchy. The voyeurs see in it a system that, in the England of the time, certainly dared to speak its name. In that system there was some flexibility—you could rise in class or, of course, fall—but where you were born on the social scale had a strong influence on where you would end up on it. Americans like to think that they live in a classless society, which seems to accord better with the egalitarian promises of the Declaration of Independence. But this is nonsense: The Declaration promises people the right to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness itself, much less to equal happiness. The problem, however, is that marks of distinction and the fruits of effort tend to be hereditary, passed on from one generation to the next. Indeed, one of the reasons that people try to distinguish themselves in the first place is that they want to ease or improve the lives of those who come after them, particularly their own descendants. So Americans uneasily both accept and reject the hereditary principle, a contradiction that’s uncomfortable for them but very productive. Sometimes they carry this to ridiculous lengths: I remember being addressed on the subject of the rigidity of the British class system by very rich men over lunch in a grandiose club in one of America’s greatest cities. They seemed not to notice that a uniformed staff was serving them with an obsequiousness that makes the servants in “Downton Abbey” seem positively revolutionary. It was statistically unlikely that the servants, or even most of their children, would ever rise very far in the social scale.

“Downton Abbey” comes, then, as a relief to Americans, in the way that a politically incorrect remark comes as a relief when something that’s true has been exiled from polite speech. Class does not just speak its name in “Downton Abbey,” it screams it. The aristocracy might be selfish and sometimes cruel, but it’s also witty, cultivated, mannerly and effortlessly elegant and self-assured. Self-doubt and social anxiety are unknown to it. When a former Duke of Westminster was accused of not knowing how people lived, because he had never been on a bus, he immediately got on one to prove the accusation wrong. He ordered the driver to take him to Grosvenor Square, “and quick!” How many of us harbor secret fantasies of such self-assurance that we would never dare avow in public!

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The Brits are the Best when it comes to theater and drama. The British Soap Opera or mini-series is a masterpiece as it is true to history and so very much unlike the American Soap Opera which hardly measures at all in comparison. Because the theater is public in England, you will see that the talent of British actors is unmatched! Case in point, the BBC Version of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth.

Pride and Prejudice: The Lake Scene (Colin Firth Strips Off)

Mr. Darcy’s Proposal – Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1996)