Adapting heritage: Class and conservatism in Downton Abbey

Abstract

The huge success of ITV's neo-Edwardian Downton Abbey, which has recently completed its third series on British television and is currently being shown in the US, displays the continuing, and indeed increasing, popularity of heritage television for the contemporary audience. This essay examines the ways in which Downton provides a sanitised, yet seemingly ‘authentic’, portrait of a period of instability and rapid change, which its writers have identified as having much in common with our own present. I explore here the ways Downton comments on that present, through its portrayal of a house and its inhabitants, which function as a state in microcosm. This drama can be considered, in de Groot's definition, ‘post-heritage’ in its innovative and self-conscious post-modernism, but, as I will discuss, it simultaneously recalls the Thatcherite roots of more traditional heritage in its conservative representation of class. Through an examination of these issues, and with close attention to the servant/employer relationships that are key to the narrative, I will explore the version of the past offered by Downton, its intertextual and complex relationship with the heritage tradition, and its at times confused and contradictory social ideology.

Keywords::

• Downton Abbey
• post-heritage
• neo-Edwardian
• class

Notes

^1. For more details on the awards Downton has received, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606375/ (accessed April 2, 2012). For rating figures see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey#Reception

^2. For further discussion of ‘the Downton effect’ and the fashion industry, see for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/fashion-blog/2012/jul/31/downton-abbey-fashion and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2216312/Downton-Abbey-Effect-The-likely-fashion-trend-given-Londons-luxury-brands-shot-arm.html

^3. See http://brielise.hubpages.com/

^4. See, for example, The Guardian, November 17, 2011: www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/17/downton-abbey-kirstie-new-boring (accessed March 10, 2012).

^5.Downton has even borrowed costumes from A Room with A View: see http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/downton-abbey-amazing-secrets-behind-155785

^6. For a discussion of the intertextuality created by the repeated use of the same actors in period drama – working to ‘assert the existence of a distinct generic microcosm – the world of the classic novel adaptation’ – see Cardwell (2002, 89–93).

^7. Several legally-trained fans have discussed the inheritance plot of Downton online; in particular James F. Nagel has pointed out the similarity between the Grantham family's entailment and that in Austen's fiction. See http://austenprose.com/2011/01/14/downton-abbey-entailed-understanding-the-complicated-legal-issues-in-the-new-masterpiece-classic-series/

^8. The message of the previous series is undermined by the unexpected death of Matthew at the end of the most recent (2012) Christmas episode of the drama, however. Having saved the estate financially, and finally produced an heir, Matthew, the plot suggests, has served his function for the Crawley family, and the moderate, modernising influence he brought to the house is at an end. A cynical critic might observe that, in Downton, the middle classes are only tolerated and integrated insofar as they are useful, and are then disregarded!

^9. By, among others, The Daily Mail on several occasions: see, for example, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2022645/Downton-war-Britains-favourite-drama-bloody-battles-arent-confined-trenches.html

^10. See the cover of Private Eye, no. 1275, 12–25 November 2010.

^11. For rating figures for all episodes of Titanic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_(2012_TV_miniseries)#cite_note-8

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Byrne

Katherine Byrne teaches English literature at the University of Ulster. She has published on Victorian fiction and the history of medicine, and on adaptation and neo-Victorian studies. Her recent monograph, Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination, was published in 2011.