Force and Sex Crime

[gabbygrl]

I've recently begun watching Downton Abbey. If you're unfamiliar: it's a British period drama about a noble family and their staff in the early 1900s. It's very well one and I'm enjoying it an awful lot

Comments

[teaberryblue]

I agree 100% with you.

It's tough to figure things out when you're talking about a period TV drama, though, because production-wise, they made the right choice in that dialog: at the time that Downton Abbey takes place, people's idea of what rape was and what constituted rape were very different. Husbands couldn't rape wives. A woman conceding to sex was considered the same as consenting to sex. In fact, not saying no was the same as consenting. Mary would not think of that as rape; she would think of it as her failing in her protection of her virtue.

[gildedage]

I second Tea. The creator of Downton Abbey is crazy particular about dialogue, set design and plotting so that it's accurate to the period. In the second season, he made the writers rewrite a scene because the upper classes were eating cake with forks, when in fact they ate cake with their hands. No joke.

I think it was pretty clear in the scene that the sex was non-consensual by all of our current day standards. I think what they were trying to point out is exactly what Tea said, that to the characters, it was not rape.

It should turn our stomachs. But I think it also points out how different we are as a culture and society from people who were living just under a hundred years ago.

[gabbygrl]

I'm only worried because these attitudes have persisted somewhat to this day.

[gabbygrl]

(Responded at length below)