Downton: Who is Good Enough for Mary?

All right, all right, I admit it, after laughing at women for years who follow their soap operas as if these fictional stories were a part of their real worlds, I have been unable to give up my guilty pleasure of Downton Abbey. 

There is so much not to like: story lines which drag on and on and once resolved seem to have reached a conclusion from utter exhaustion rather than consummation--in particular the trials (multiple trials) of Anna and her husband, Bates. They just cannot catch a break. Both are finally cleared of all legal charges and set to live happily ever after in a warm, loving home, filled with children, but no. She has an incompetent cervix and keeps losing the pregnancies. This is fixable, but one wonders if Julian Fellowes will allow her to survive childbirth, to give birth to a normal child who does not get run over by a truck.

Then there is the stray comment from the Earl about his "indigestion." Whenever some one notices a physical symptom, even when it's the dog, ISIS, you know that is going to come back to a major event. The Earl, I fear, is headed for a major coronary. 

Why Fellowes chose the Earl, rather than Cora, one can only speculate. Cora has been the emotional, ethical center of decency in Downton from Day One. When she considers a fling with that weasel who winds up in his evening gown in her bedroom, only to be interdicted by the furious Earl, Cora has the mettle to face down the Earl saying, "If you have never let a flirtation get out of hand, then fine, go sleep in the other room!"  And of course, we know the Earl has stolen a kiss from a maid and felt so guilty about it, he fired her the next day, twit that he is.

But it's Mary, who we are focused on, and have always been because it is Mary who always remains unfinished, unattainable, unpredictable and aloof. 

We also know that nary an aristocrat has the capacity for love and appreciation of her real values. But Tom, the chauffeur does.

Tom is impossible, for two reasons: 1. He's a commoner. 2. He's her brother in law an the Earl might accept him marrying one daughter, but not two. Enough to cause a coronary, for sure.

But why do I care about Mary?  Really, I liked Sybil so much better. She had a feeling for the underdog and she managed her conflicting feelings for her class and her parents while following her inner star toward Tom.  Mary, on the other hand, is cruel to Edith and barely cognizant of her own child. 

And yet, there is a quality about her, a capacity to love. She loves Carson, and she knows on some level, she loves Tom. The one person she has ever actually missed in her life is Tom. 

The capacity to miss someone is the necessary, if not sufficient, condition to love. What Fellowes has done is really pretty nifty: He shows us what is going on in Mary before she realizes what is going on. Now, that is a neat trick.

If love is blind, well then, we all can be blind to love within ourselves. Scarlet O'Hara is blind to her own blooming love for Rhett Butler; Constance MacKenzie  does not see love coming; even Lady Chatterly cannot understand what she feels stirring inside her. 

This may be a gender difference. Men, typically, know full well when they feel that magnetic pull. Women, I would guess may not always.

It's Fellowes art that he can depict this difference.