Provocative and Prejudiced? 

Article by Amy Calladine. Edited by Rose Colville. Additional Research by Lauren Puckey. 

Picture the scene, you’re flicking through the TV magazine at the end of a hard day when you notice that the latest prime-time costume drama is about to start. Do you settle down for an hour of cosy comfort-viewing, or run for the remote as fast as you can? I have to admit to sitting somewhere on the fence between the two camps. As much as I love a dose of Regency dancing and happily-ever-after, I can’t help feeling slightly exasperated with the corseted heroines of shows like Jane Austen’s Emma, as they play the damsel in distress, meddling and matchmaking as they go. 

In series like these the sorts of women depicted can, at first glance, seem strikingly similar. All pretty dresses and perfectly curled hair, female characters are either demure and submissive, or scheming and catty. Most are members of the more affluent Middling-Sort, and almost all accept the terms of patriarchal authority without even batting an eyelash. It’s clear that these portrayals of women can be problematic and over-simplistic to say the least. 

Programmes are presented as a sentimental nod to an imagined bygone age, when courtship and carriages were the prime concern of women’s lives, and everything was rosy and innocent. Historically, we know this was not the case. Asidefrom the stifling grip of social convention, the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the British population divided to extremes. The dichotomy between the richest and the poorest became more starkly drawn, as did the imagined differences between male and female. This was a time of massive change, both physical and intellectual. The scars of industrialisation were being etched more deeply into the landscape, as the population at large struggled to cope with poverty, disease and exploitation. The nightmarish dystopia evoked by contemporaries from Hogarth to Hardy seems a far cry from the comfortable world of the costume drama. 

So where does this leave the likes of Elizabeth Bennett? In Pride and Prejudice, we are given an insight into a world where money, manners and respectability are paramount. We can begin to appreciate the precarious nature of women’s lives, bound up in double standards and frustrating convention. Although the drama is far from representative, there are some interesting reflections to be found within. When Lizzie’s rebellious sister Kitty runs off with the rakish Mr. Wickham, it is her reputation which will be ruined, not his. When the arrival of the handsome (and wealthy) Mr. Bingley sparks fierce competition, the desperation of potential suitors to marry and secure stability is clear. Austen is keen to impress that ‘A single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife’, and in doing so communicates something of the wider context of women’s lives in this period. 

The world depicted by the costume drama is not an accurate one, nor does it reflect the rich diversity of women’s lives in the past. The families featured are almost always white, middle-class and English. The controversial historical theory of ‘separate spheres’ is at work in the bulk of programmes, placing women firmly in the domestic setting, with men outside in the public world. Just as the accuracy of this model has been called into question, we should question its easy presence on our TV screens. Sometimes, the cultural meanings of gendered experience can obscure the realities of everyday life through a heady mix of expected norms and imagined ‘truths’. 

So where do you turn if you’re after a bit more substance from your costume drama fix? There are plenty of great programmes out there which build on the beloved, but rose-tinted, world of Austen and co. The work of the Bronte sisters is a great example. At first glance, you might dismiss Jane Eyre or Wuthering heights as another bonnets and breeches remake. However, both these stories are rooted in a harsh, gritty realism, and both offer an intelligent and sensitive exploration of women’s lot in nineteenth century Britain. 

The 2006 BBC remake of Jane Eyre saw Ruth Wilson stepping into the shoes of the passionate but plain governess. Orphaned from a young age, Jane shows an immense strength of character and personal determination as she ceaselessly pursues the happiness which has previously eluded her. The relationship she forms with her employer, the troubled Mr. Rochester, feels vastly different to Darcy and Elizabeth’s. This is a meeting of minds, of two individuals left alone on the edge of society and drawn together as equals. Aside from the small complication of a wife locked in the attic, Jane and Rochester eventually find their happy ending. 

T he recent ITV production of Wuthering Heights was dark and brooding, set on the desolate North Yorkshire Moors it evoked a lost world of betrayal and brutality. Much of this was due to the excellent casting of actor Tom Hardy as the infamous anti-hero Heathcliff. Hardy brings out the irrational, deeply flawed nature of a man trapped in emotional turmoil and haunted by his past. This got me thinking – perhaps the fact that Heathcliff was created amidst the reserved society of Victorian England is even more remarkable than his exploits on-screen. The authors writing the stories behind these adaptations were challenging convention just by putting pen to paper. Emily Bronte formed Heathcliff out of words and ink. The vivid, passionate intensity of her writing is testament to her talent as a story teller as well as her burning intellect. Clearly there is much more to the nineteenth century woman than timidity and tea-drinking. 

So I suppose it’s not the stories which reflect women in a misleading way, but what these stories have come to represent. Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the costume drama as nauseating fluff. Behind all that gentle sentiment are some genuinely fascinating chunks of historical detail. Obviously, these programmes cannot claim to be contextually accurate, but they do have a place in the canon of popular culture, as well as popular engagement with the past. First and foremost, the costume drama is a creative process. Now the stories of Gaskell, Bronte and the like have been extensively recycled and regurgitated, but in their first incarnation they sat earnestly between the pages of newspapers, magazines and books and spoke candidly about the worlds in which they were created. 

So it’s not all bad news. The portrayal of women in the costume drama is more complex than we may have first guessed. Just as each generation writes their own history anew, the revised costume drama has something important to say to the audience of the moment. It’s all too easy to reduce these programmes to an overused caricature but, with a bit of imagination, they can be transformed into something very different. If we stop and think about where the stories have come from, what they mean and why they were written, we can start to explore the lives of people in the past as individuals, outside of the numerous labelled boxes they could easily be slotted into.

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