Downton Abbey: One Giant Metaphor for Abstinence

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First lesson I learned from Downton Abbey. Don't fuck a hot stranger visiting your family because he'll probably die in your bed and then your mom is going to help you carry his corpse across the house.

I’m starting to get it now. For everything that Downton Abbey is supposed to satirize; stuffy British society, social morays, hypocrisies of class culture etc., it is actually following all of those guidelines, particularly the sexual connotations of the time. Basically I’m saying that Downton Abbey is a giant metaphor for abstinence. Hang in there baby birds, let me explain.

Everyone that engages in any kind of devious behavior, especially that which is not acceptable at that time under those circumstances gets severely punished in life, usually it’s death. So let’s start. Just look at poor Sybil. Poor pants-wearing, feminist, slightly communist, way-to-hot for Crawley house Sybil. Not only did she run away with someone way below her class, a goddamn commoner chauffer, who’s Irish at that…wait, who’s Catholic at that! I’m surprised the church elders weren’t called in. And what happens to her? She dies in childbirth. And if you haven’t heard this news maybe it’s time to crawl out of the hole you’ve been living in, ya freak. 

Lesson #2: Never wear any fucking pants because you'll eventually die at childbirth.

Let’s look at other characters. Ethel Parks the horny maid from Season 2 bangs an Army Colonel on the floor of the kitchen and ends up knocked up and forced into prostitution, and though she’s somewhat rebuilt her life, no one in Downton will give her a fair shake. Apparently you just have to be completely sexually repressed until you turn into a giant wad of farts like Carson the butler or dying-for-her-first-orgasm housekeeper, Elsie.

Thomas Barrow is another example. I mean can’t a guy just hit on another guy even though that other guy is probably not gay anymore? He is the most unlucky in love ever, and it’s basically because he’s hypersexualized. The man he nursed after the war ended up killing himself. Way in the beginning of the series, he was having an affair with some Duke and that went to shit faster than Barrow’s wandering hands.

Basically anyone who acts on his or her feelings, which has always been a huge British taboo is reprimanded for it. When Lord Grantham basically threw himself on one of the housemaids, she decided she should basically fire herself for leading him on. For chrissake. Can’t anyone get it in at Abbey Shore?

And whatever you do, don't get pregnant in an age before birth control because you'll eventually have to prostitute yourself to support your child and then give him away despite all of the sacrifices you've made to keep him.

 The people who are doing the most well are those who haven’t had the dust knocked off their private parts since the mid-1800’s, case and point The Dowager (Maggie Smith) who looks like she’s going to continue living forever even though she died 10 years ago, and always have smart ass things to say that put her on top of everyone else.

Also, let’s face it but Edith. Who is clearly still a virgin and likely to stay that way. And we just know she’s going to be turning into the Dowager soon enough, or the slightly insane old maid sister, perhaps that’s a better path for her. Lady Edith Blanche Dubois. I like the sound of that don’t you?