Embedded Files
Volume 1 | Issue 4 - Leaders
Article by Hannah Lyons. Edited by Rose Colville. Additional Research by Liz Goodwin.
‘She is in the street, they tell me almost every day. And this is her sole employment from morning till night.’
Mrs Boscawen to Lady Chatham, 12th April 1784
Those of you who caught the latest Hollywood attempt at a period drama may have realised that 2008’s The Duchess featured more wigs than actual Whigs.
It tells the story of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, a young bride who marries into a life of domestic hardship yet manages to become the most fashionable face of the ‘bon ton.’ Whilst staying relatively true to Amanda Foreman’s biography, director Saul Gibb preferred to focus more on the role of Georgiana as the eighteenth century celebrity and ancestor to Diana, Princess of Wales, rather than addressing her active role in the politics of the eighteenth-century period.
What Gibb fails to do, and Foreman’s biography pulls off tremendously, is to paint a portrait of a woman who had a passion for politics. A woman who not only wanted to host fashionable soirées for the Whig party but who wanted to become an adept political campaigner. In Gibb’s film, the closest we get to seeing Georgiana’s role in the political affairs of the late eighteenth century is when she presents future prime minister, Charles Grey, to the crowds of Westminster. This famous 1784 Westminster Election, whilst appearing as a minor forgettable scene in the film, enjoys in Foreman’s biography a whole chapter dedicated to its importance. At no point are we invited to see Georgiana parading through the streets of Westminster, dressed in the Whig attire of blue and buff with a foxtail pinned to her hat, canvassing the boisterous crowd. Through the film Georgiana’s own endeavours with the intricacies of Whig party politics are lost to us.
Georgiana’s heavy involvement with the Whig party did not stop following her tireless struggles in the 1784 election. Despite the hounding abuse of the press, she organised and was a part of a general momentum that led to a coalition between the Foxites and the Grenvilles in 1804. Throughout her later life she continued to document political affairs in her own diaries. Through these we learn that the accusations and rumours as drawn up in the press following her actions in 1784 were too much for an eighteenth century society, unfamiliar with female participation in politics, to handle. Georgiana was never again permitted to canvass in the streets of Westminster.
Gibb’s greatest flaw in The Duchess is his failure to focus on Georgiana’s entry into the male dominated world of eighteenth century politics. As Foreman most rightly notes, ‘It would be another hundred years before women once more ventured boldly into street politics as Georgiana had not been afraid to do in 1784.’ Perhaps if Gibb had instead concentrated more on the Duchess’s passionate political convictions, her unprecedented role as an indispensable female political campaigner, then we would have had a film celebrating Georgiana’s life, rather than a film which leaves us feeling a little more than tragic.
Report abuse