Falling in Love in a Hopeless Place: Emotion in "Downton Abbey"
In the show "Downton Abbey" we follow a family as their world of servants and luxury is thrown out of whack due to changing times and people. Lord and Lady Crawley have three beautiful daughters but this means no heir to the Abbey, and a future lacking in money. The show follows this family and specifically the three daughters falling in and out of love.
The middle daughter, Edith, has the hardest time in looking for love and much of this has to due with her emotions. She is the typical middle child, and finds herself less beautiful then her other two sisters. Edith also seems to be overlooked much of them time. This creates a large amount of anxiety and worry. Even her parents plan on her being the single nurse who takes care of them in their old age.
The middle daughter, Edith, has the hardest time in looking for love and much of this has to due with her emotions. She is the typical middle child, and finds herself less beautiful then her other two sisters. Edith also seems to be overlooked much of them time. This creates a large amount of anxiety and worry. Even her parents plan on her being the single nurse who takes care of them in their old age.
Edith makes it her mission to find love, but this combined with the worry and anxiety creates a somewhat lethal combination. This is because anxiety inhibits our ability to succeed or complete a task because, "the energy and mental resources we expend while worrying detract from the resources we have available for processing information" (18). So what does this mean for Edith? It means that in her attempts to find love she did not look at the warning signs. She was so concerned about falling in love that the fact that Sir Anthony was a decade older than her and expressed concerns of marrying her was not important as long as he did marry her. |
All of these emotions come to the forefront at the worst of time then, at the alter. Edith's worry and concerns of being alone one day are one of the key reasons she found her self alone at the alter. So why did Edith not see this sooner? Emotion families can help in explaining this.
Anger and fear are the emotions that surround interest, joy, and admiration. This chart also shows and better explains Robert Plutchik’s Eight Primary Emotions. Primary emotions include, "anger, anticipation, joy, acceptance, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust" (19). The chart shows secondary emotions such as, "submission, awe, disappointment, remorse, contempt, aggressiveness, optimism, love" (20).
This means that these emotions are easily confused for each other. Edith is angry that her family expects her loneliness and fears they may be right, so she finds admiration and joy in place she may have not without the initial emotions. Throughout the story line, love is not easy for any of the daughters to find or maintain. But with Edith especially, love will be harder to find due to the underlying emotions that are fueling her ambitions for love. |
For Edith to successfully find love, she will have to first recognize these emotions and then realize the impact they are having on her search for love. With this she has the same chance as either of her sisters at her own happily ever after. Until then even after maybe end up being her own monologue.
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