Why I Feel Guilty Watching Downton Abbey

I’m an over the top “Downton Abbey” fan. Lately I’ve beenavoiding all Sunday night engagements (at least those that continue past 9:00 PM ET) and am downcast if I haven’t heard the Dowager Countess’s most recent aperu. Despite the show’s manifest weaknesses (sorry, but didn’t amnesia go out with Susan Lucci) and because of its strengths (read: Dame Maggie bracelet pandora jonc avec charms Smith) I’ve been hooked since Season One. coque iphone 8 Like most DA fans, I’ve watched “Sht the Dowager Countess Says” on Youtube more times than I care to bracelet pandora amitié admit, and thought bracelet pandora facebook that SNL’s Spike TV parody of the show was, hands downton, the funniest thing I’ve seen all year that didn’t feature Melissa McCarthy.

So why do I feel a little guilty when I, like manyJesuits I know,turn on PBS every week

In Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited (and in the popular 1981 TV series as well) the flamboyant Oxford aesthete Anthony Blanche addresses the protagonist Charles Ryder, a budding artist who is besotted with a Catholic noble family, the Marchmains.

That line stayed bracelet pandora coeur scintillant with me all these years (yes, I was addicted to “Brideshead even as a college student). And I sometimes think of it as I take in the costumes and furniture and manners and breeding and general hauteur of the denizens of America’s favorite English country house. Can charm, as Anthony Blanche warned Charles Ryder, blind our critical facultiesIs all forgiven when people are charming, rich and well mannered, or more specifically (and literally in this case), to the manor born I fear so.

In other words, I feel slightly guilty liking Downton because it celebrates:

1.) Income acheter bracelet pandora argent pas cher inequalities. No, bracelet de yoga en pierre naturelle avec oeil de tigre et marbre gris femmes priere noir mat chakra bracelets hommes erkek bileklik I’m not going bracelet pandora charleville to get all “Occupy Downton” on you, and yes, I know that the show also concerns onthe downstairs staff (whose love lives are as absurdly complex as, to quote Fair Lady, every peer who’s here). But the main allure of the series for the PBS set is the ultra wealth upstairs characters. coque samsung In other words, would “Downstairs” have been as popular as “Upstairs, Downstairs” What about a show focusing on the dutiful Mr. Bates vigorously brushing Lord Grantham’s dinner attire every five minutes Or a series on the now I’m bad now I’m good now I’m sorta bad again lady’s maid O’Brien helping Lady Grantham fasten another diamond necklace around her upper class neck

It’s hard to bracelet pandora prix reduit overlook the fact that we’re watching a show about rich people who have poor people working for them. And don’t seem to mind. As thetheologian Sidney Callahan wrote on In All Things: “[O]nce your eyes are fully opened you see the hidden power of class: how it perpetuates privilege while inflicting psychic wounds and cultural deprivation.”

Yes, I know that this season we’re focusing on how much things are “changing” in the aftermath of the First World War, but the Earl 2019 perles ethniques en pierre doeil de tigre tresse bracelets pour femme bracelet reglable de priere de yoga de charme reiki pulseras abk020 of Grantham and his progeny still live in an awfully big house with awfully nice furniture and wear awfully nice clothes. If you really want know how things changed after World War I, dip into Paul Fussell’s magisterial study The Great War and Modern Memory. On the other hand, Fussell’s book, oddly, includes not one of the Dowager Countess’s lines.

2.) Noblesse oblige. Look, Lady Edith Lady Sybil is having a relationship with the chauffeur! (And he’s Irish.) Look, the Earl of Grantham is going to a pub a pub to confesshis need for hishis valet, Bates, as if Bates bracelet crane en cuir veritable marron mode pour hommes gothique en acier inoxydable boite lien chaine hommes bracelet bijoux 8 5 ddlb148 were on his level. coque iphone Look, bracelet pandora collection noel Lady Mary is confiding in her lady’s maid as if they were equals. Olympus to speak to mortals.

Yes, there is some amader turquoises pierre de lave or animaux hibou bracelets hommes ethinc meditation femmes priere bijoux yoga pluseras mujer ab290 genuine affection between the upstairs and downstairs personages, and the relationship between the longtime butler Carson and Lady Mary is one of the more enjoyable in the series. coque iphone 5 Butin actual manor houses, the situation was quite different. For more on that, check out Below Stairs, written in bracelet pandora orleans 1968 by Margaret forum bracelet pandora Powell, who was “in service” as a young woman. goed hoesje In her memoir, the former kitchen maid talked about bracelet pandora mousqueton the ever present divide between and the latter being her former overlords. “We always called them ‘Them,’ wrote Powell, “‘Them’ was the enemy, ‘Them’ overworked us, and ‘Them’ underpaid us, and to ‘Them,’ servants were a race apart, a necessary evil.”

Even when the gentry condescend to speak to their inferiors, it’s bracelet pandora tresse not much to celebrate. coque huawei coque iphone 7 Treating an employee, even a poor one, with respect is 2019 mode femmes noir mat pierre jaune bracelets ete colore strass perles bracelets bracelets hommes pulseras ab378 a pretty low bar, if you ask me.

3.) Snottiness. coque huawei This brings me to everyone’s favorite character: the Dowager Countess, or if you must, The Right Honourable Violet Crawley, Countess of Grantham. The amader vintage jaune paillettes pierre de lune et perles de pierre noire bracelet hommes yinyang priere elastique bracelets pour femme ab316 idees composition bracelet pandora earl is, depending what bracelet pandora boulogne sur mer word you wish to use: waspish, biting or catty. coque iphone xs She makes quel taille bracelet pandora comments that are, take your pick: droll, withering or devastating.

Here what we’re enjoying: her makingfun of people who don’t know the “right” thing to do or to say or wear; putting down people without titles; and mocking people from outside a privileged social milieu. NOKD, as some of the preppies used to say when I “went up” to Penn. (Oxford was too far). marble iphone 11 case Not our kind, dear. coque iphone 5 pas cher If you heard her putdowns in épaisseur bracelet pandora real life say, in base bracelet pandora yourworkplace you’d probably say, “What a jerk.”

But since she boasts an impressive title, has pots of money and dresses well (or is, more precisely, upholstered well) she gets a pass. iphone 11 case kate spade Rich people, I guess,can be mean.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that these people are titled, wealthy, have exquisite taste, live in magnificent old houses and possess vast tracts of land means that they get away with a lot. Has that “creamy English charm” taken us in Killed our critical faculties, as Anthony Blanche warned Charles Ryder or really, as Evelyn Waugh (who himself knew something about class) warned us I’m afraid so.

So I feel a little guilty watching it.