The Woman in White, some BSG recs, and statistics
You know, I've yet to encounter a version of The Woman in White, except for a German tv miniseries, which does not change one crucial plot element. (The Woman in White, dear readers, is a Victorian mystery/thriller written by Charles Dickens' pal Wilkie Collins, the Thomas Harris of his day, who was a rather unorthodox gentleman living with two
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They changed that? I don't consider it so hard to understand, especially if the audience is *told* the gentleman would lose his status, his property and his money to a legitimate heir (no matter how distant, or to the Crown/government). That seems reason enough for motivation.
In these productions with the substitution of a rape - is this rape a witnessed thing? I mean, a servant's word against a gentleman in those days - the gentleman could easily destroy the character of his accuser in public.
I don't know if this was true or common practice, but Michael Crichton in The Great Train Robbery made mention of male sufferers of sexual diseases searching out virgins since having sex with a virgin was a spurious cure for those ailments. The scene in the book had a young but experienced prostitute selling her 'virginity' to a gentleman in need of a cure. (The movie substituted Leslie Ann Down's character for this act, which did not even near completion. Nor mention the venereal disease aspect, iirc.)
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In these productions with the substitution of a rape - is this rape a witnessed thing? I mean, a servant's word against a gentleman in those days - the gentleman could easily destroy the character of his accuser in public.
Exactly! One of the film versions (the one with the 12, 13 years old Anne raped as backstory) had her writing about it and depositing the pages in the late Mrs. Fairlie's coffin (as a substitution for the church registry proving Glyde was illegitimate, plot-wise, for the showdown). The ALW musical had Anne raped at age 16 and pregnant, but neither case provided a witness other than herself, in which case, as I said above, Sir Percival would never have worried.
The German tv series which is the only one I saw that kept the original secret was also the only one which kept Mrs. Catherick as a character. And of course once you eliminate Anne's icy mother from the stage (and she's one of the most memorable characters, with her Glyde-provided cash and her vicar-approved respectability), the logic of why Glyde would have worried at all becomes even more thin.
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If Anne *hadn't* been a servant, if she'd been, say, a relative of the next-in-line (young wife?). But then it wouldn't be Collins' story, even if the accuser had the status to back up her allegations and make them a hard threat. (Would a society woman break silence, though?)
The history buff thing. I've never seen a production of Pride and Prejudice that *didn't* have the entailed estate mentioned, meaning that the sisters would be destitute once their father died. That seems to work there; people recognize the dilemma.
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Whether a society woman break silence: I'm trying to think of a precedent at the time, in England, and can't. Centuries earlier it was a big, big scandal in Italy when Artemisia Gentileschi did it, and she had to go through some horrible treatment during the trial, but she's the only case that comes to mind right now of a woman accusing a man of rape with both of them being of the same reasonably good status in society, and bringing it to court.
Back to England and some decades earlier you have Lady Byron versus Lord Byron, but then Annabella never accused him of rape (nor did he rape her) in the separation proceedings. It was the threat to bring up incest and homosexual affairs that was used, and in a circumstantial way.
Anyway, I can only make this work for me if the story changed so much that Anne had powerful relatives to back her up. (Annabella had them.) Then the threat to talk would be a genuine one. Far more likely, though, that they would have tried to get her married as quickly as possible.
I recently watched the audio commentary for Sense and Sensibility, and Emma Thompson and Lindsey Doran both mention they had to explain to Ang Lee and to Sydney Pollack why the girls couldn't just get a job. (Other than becoming governesses, and why becoming a governess was Not A Good Thing to be in Victorian England.) But I haven't met anyone who wondered about this, either. So yes, some discussion of the results of illegitimacy discovered (which they did include in the German version) would probably do the job.
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Yes, doing what, making what kind of money to live on? After having been trained to be ladies only.
Same thing sort of applies to gentlemen, since some levels of society had gentlemen who did not work, per se. Managing their estates, if they did, yes. But professions?
Enough people have read Jane Eyre to get some idea of the status of governesses. (Especially the scene where the ladies of society mock Jane/governesses within earshot as if her listening in accounted for nothing.) Then again, maybe because of Jane Eyre there's a romantic air about that profession.
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(Much like you can differ between the description of nurses pre-Florence Nightingale - vulgar women with a penchant for drinking, a la Sarah Gump as written by Charles Dickens - and post-Nightingale nurses - angels of mercy.)
But Jane Eyre the novel changed all that, and yes, I think ever after, there was an aura of romance around the profession. Which Charlotte, who after all knew as did her sisters that teaching wasn't one bit romantic because she had tried it herself, probably never intended...
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