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angelosdaughter's Replies
People who resort to name calling have no credibility.
I may listen to opinions. That does not mean I have to agree with them to make everybody feel good.
Watching the series, I am able to see the
situation with the mindset of the time and place in which it is set. The aristocratic Crawley family is seeking a suitable match for Mary hoping to avoid the entail on the estate. If she had called out for help, she coùld have set in motion an international scandal because of who Pahmuk was. A woman who was at the center of such a scandal would be seen as soiled and less likely to be considered as a suitable bride for the aristocratic wealthy husband the family was hoping for.
I think you should do a little more reading, and if you don't know what an entail is, look it up.
In fact, I can't believe Fellowes missed that point.
Anne's execution was merciful by the standards of the day. Henry had him specially brought from Calais. He was an expert swordsman, and his aim was true.
The axe was an uncertain instrument. Margaret Plantagenet Pole, another of Henry's victims waa executed by axe, and was hacked to death.
My wisdom takes into consideration a lot of factors that you do not.
Hana-Ogi had a respected profession before she met Gruver, and he showed all of the marks of the stereotypical American husband of the time who expected a submissive Japanese wife to bear his kids and wait on him. She also was able to observe Gruver's buddy and how he treated his wife to whom, even though loved her, he was patronizing.
Then there was the official military attitude toward soldiers marrying Japanese women and bringing them to America.
Back in America, many Japanese had been forced into internment camps.
Hana-ogi would be respcted in her old age as a teacher. She made a wise choice.
Mediterraneo
Corelli's Mandolin
Yes, I can, no matter what Fellowes or Dockery said. Calling for help would have produced a scandal not just for the Crawleys, but also, because of who Pahmuk was, have provoked an international incident. In a situation like that there was nothing Mary could have done. He jumped on her uninvited, and was insistent.
I don't usually look for plot holes, but this was certainly one.
I think the white laundry is because Lista supports herself taking in laundry. When we first see her, she is scrubbing something on a washboard.
I thought it must have been because she was away from the village when the massacre occurred. It looked like she had been out gathering flowers or herbs. She was carrying a basket.
Me, too.
But I think the old man committed suicide because returning to the site of the village, and seeing Lista, the only other living villager, the old woman, who had been the girl that witnessed him, miraculously survived from the massacre, throwing his jacket with the yellow star identifying him as a Jew back into the pit, and walking away from his Jewish self, was at last able to reclaim his identity. She remenbered him, and his penchant for carrying around books that he loved to think about, but could not read. She gave him back himself. The suicide was his way of rejoining his compatriots. He had spent his whole life hating Jews, denying his identity. As Alex says, the expression on his grandfather's dead face was that of a man content to be where he was, that is, back with his own kind. The headstone on the memorial to the village restores to the grandfather his Jewish name.
I loved this movie, and especially Lista, who preserved the village of Trachimbrod through the mementos of the slain that she gathered and preserved for 'those who might come searching."
I agree. I was a teenager in the 1960s. Those were the styles of dresses many of us wore. I saw this movie when it came out. I was 16. I developed a crush on Horst Bucholtz.
There is a scene where Loed Grantham comes to talk with Edith in her room. She is dressed in night clothes and her robe and has let her hair down for the night. She is really quite pretty.
Very few men are going to refuse a woman who throws herself at him as Edith was always doing.
I don't believe in couples 'trying each other out' before marriage, but in the context of the series, that was what was happenng. Moral standards especially for women in the 1920s had loosened considerably. I don't know what you are going on about. These days standards regarding sexual morality have almost disappeared.
Tony's engagement was on hold by his doing as he rentlessly pursued Mary, who did try to tell him she did not want to marry anybody yet. He kept the other woman on the string, because in his words, he "had to marry" someone if he didn't succeed with Mary.
I think she agreed to sleep with him and then dump him to emphasize that she was not going to marry him. He was the pursuer, almost a male version of Edith, and then tried to play the honorable man card when he found out that in spite of having slept with him, she did not intend to marry him, hoping to guilt her into it.
Strallen was too nice, and didn't have it in him to outright refuse the pushy Edith until he was forced to do it definitively in a public way, in which she would have to take "No" as final.
He had tried to explain to her why they were unsuitable, but she refused to hear him.
Mary was who she was raised to be by virtue of being the firstborne and the hopeful rescuer of the entailed estate by making an advantageous marriage, which she did by marrying Matthew, the male heir upon whom the estate was entailed, and sealed it by bearing his son. Most of her misadventures after his death derived from not wanting to marry again until she could find a man who could make her as happy as Matthew had. I didn't have to like Mary, but in the context of birth order, the hopes and expectations placed upon her, and the times she lived in, I understand her, and she is to me, the most interesting character. I liked Sybil best of the sisters, and liked watching the evolution of Daisy
There is no point in continuing the conversation. We are never going to agree.
You won't change my mind about whiny Edith who keeps making decisions that cause her to whine even more. Strallen himself thought the age difference between him and Edith was too great. She kept insinuating herself into his path
About Mary and Pamuk: in my opinion, what he did was tantamount to a rape. I have read that even in such a situation, the body of the victim may involuntarily respond, which Mary, probably mostly ignorant of sex, would not have known, causing her to feel guilt. She was certainly not expecting him to invade her room, and practically attack her. Anything she did to cry out for help would have raised the house, and because of who Pamuk was, have caused an immediate international scandal.
At least for awhile the incident remained the knowledge of only a few members of the household.
As for Mary's later assignation with Tony Gillingham, by then she had also been married and widowed, no longer inexperienced nor expected to be. I am now watching the episode where in a discussion with Anna, Mary remarks on the modern idea, that couples should be compatible in the bedroom as well as in other areas, and should try out that compatibility before deciding to marry, and that is what she does, and finds Tony wanting. She is in the beginning reluctant to consider Tony as a suitor. It is he who insists on pursuing her, leaving his would-be fiancee' to hang fire because he "has to marry" until he is sure Mary will not marry him. And after sleeping with Mary, he is shocked that she would reject his suit after having slept with him.
Whatever you think of Mary, she was born and bred to be who she is, and in spite of having to pursue an advantageous marriage, she slso has the brain and drive to help save and run the estate.
She does acquire some humility by the end of the series.
In any case, everything ends happily for all of the characters including Edith, who has acquired self-confidence and a titled husband and outranks Mary in the end.
P.C. has gone overboard. Nothing is wrong, no consequences for anything. I unashamedly don't subscribe to that herd mentality.
My reasoning makes sense in the mindset of the times. Yours doesn't.
Mary, the eldest daughter on whom rested the family's hopes for a successful marriage that would keep the estate in the family was raised to be the center of attention.
Whatever Mary did after Pahmuk entered her room and jumped on her would have caused a scandal. Drake's wife and anyone else would have blamed Edith for attempting to steal her husband. Women were held accountable for leading men on.
Different times. Edith had a habit/reputation for putting herself in the way of almost any single man, even Mary's cast-offs. Strallen did his best to push Edith away. She wouldn't be pushed away, forcing him finally to leave her at the altar to make the point that they were unsuited. She was just desperate for a man. Most women of the time would have avoided a liasion with a married man with an insane wife in an asylum. Not desperate Edith and as is usual, it doesn't go well for her. I would say she excels at shooting herself in the foot. She is easily the most irritating character in the series ably seconded by that silly little twit Rose.
If you watch the entire series with attention, Tom and Mary often support each other, and after Matthew dies, it is he who most effectively encourages Mary to carry out Matthew's vision to save the estate. He and Mary knew those plans. Theirs would have been a solid basis for a marriage along with the other factors I have mentioned.
To each their own. Sick of the term _ _ _ whatever shaming. Some behavior deserves shaming. Keep your p. c. I don't subscribe to it. Edith is whiny and needy. But for the wife's coming upon them, she would have taken the farmer Drake for a lover. Mary's history before marriage consisted of one encounter that it could be argued was not completely consensual. Mary is the eldest, and because of the entail on the estate it is incumbent upon her to marry and produce a male heir, so she is educated, groomed, and spoiled to that end. Matthew, the heir to the estate because of the lack of Grantham sons, would be the favored candidate, just as in Pride and Prejudice, the Reverend Collins the heir to the entailed Bennett estate would have been a favored candidate for one of the Bennett girls. That would be the only way the Grantham and Bennett women could avoid being turned out of their homes, and be made dependent by the death of each family's Paterfamilias.
A close friendship and the common interest in the preservation of the estate would be a rock solid basis for a successful marriage between Tom and Mary. They are also the parents of two of the family's children by their deceased partners, another common interest. Love was not the main criterion for marriage among the holders of grand estates. The ability to keep them in the family was.
Lord Grantham said he wasn't in love when he married the American heiress Cora Levinson for her fortune to save the estate. Lots of those types of marriages occurred with American "Penny Princesses" I think they were called. Jenny Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill was one such.
Love came after in those situations, if the spouses were lucky.
Rose was an empty-headed giggly little flirt who led men on and was lucky that those she pushed away after leading them on, went without causing complications.
We don't know that the girl who came into the record shop was Florence's daughter, only that she described Chuck Berry's music as happy and bouncy. Many people probably described it that way. And of course, the girl said that her mother preferred classical. But the issue is left purposely vague.
In my opinion, Florence's other love was her music, and it is likely that it was her music to which her life and energies were devoted.
Considering her disgust at the mechanics of sex, I can't imagine she would endure childbirth.
Not everyone is sex-crazy. Asexuals are just not interested, and are mostly invisible. They don't make a show of being uninterested in sex. They don't need to become nuns or priests. To some it is just disgusting. They can fall in love. Of course it is best if they fall in love with someone like them. It is only fairly recently that asexuality was recognized
Even in 1962, sex was not that much of a topic of conversation. There was a time when such things were not discussed with girls, and young women were not told about periods. I remember my Grandma telling me she thought she was dying. Most were not told what would happen on the wedding night. Florence's reaction was not surprising. It would be disgusting if one's feelings do not tend that way.
I am sure many young women were raped on their wedding nights back in the day.
Kate Phillips had a peripheral part in one episode of "The Alienist" TV series. The atmosphere on that series was also dark and hazy.
The Ottoman Lieutenant
A TV series broadcast some years ago called 'The Terror' loosely based on the Franklin Expedition had some graphic depictions of cannibalism. At one point they had a body stretched out on a table face down like a cake with pieces cut out of him. It was disgusting.