Ross Poldark and violence against women
Jun. 30th, 2015 02:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeWhen I was a teenager, the Poldark series on Masterpiece Theatre was our version of Downton Abbey, an addictive British soap-drama-romance with more flattering men’s clothing (late 1700s), and those stunning Cornish landscapes. We watched every season, we read all the books. My own personal crush was on Dwight Enys, the local doctor – more handsome than Ross Poldark, smarter, and certainly less exasperating.
I’m watching the new series with considerable interest, but I’m especially curious to see if and how they’ll rewrite the more problematic parts. Ross has saved Demelza from her father’s beatings, but he’s not exactly consistent in this regard.
First, we have Ross championing his old-maid cousin’s elopement with Capt. Blamey, a man who had beaten his first wife to death. In the new version, it had been an accident, at least according to Blamey. Originally, I believe it was alcohol, and that he quit drinking thereafter. It’s all very well to say that Verity should be allowed to make up her own mind, and as it transpires, Verity and Blamey do live “happily ever after,” but Ross doesn’t seem sufficiently concerned about Verity’s motives, her eagerness to trust this man who is probably her last chance for marriage. He is much too quick to excuse Blamey’s violence against his first wife.
Not too much later, a young woman named Keren comes to town with a travelling show and decides to stay as the wife of one of Ross’s employees, the miner Mark Daniels. She’s quickly bored of him, though, and when the handsome young Dr. Enys comes to town, Keren throws herself at him and has an affair. Mark discovers this and kills her. Mark will hang if he’s caught, but will he be caught? No, he won’t, because his friend Ross helps smuggle him to safety in Ireland. Now Ross not only excuses lethal violence, he condones it.
But it gets worse. The premise of the show is that Ross comes back from fighting in the colonies to find that his beloved, Elizabeth, is on the verge of marrying his cousin, Francis, and he has to make the best of it, while trying to get some financial stability without relying on the Warleggans, the local family of amoral bankers. However, a couple of years along, Francis dies, and Ross has in the meanwhile gotten married, so Elizabeth is still off-limits. Elizabeth is not cut out for widowhood and soon accepts a marriage proposal from George Warleggan. How does Ross react to the news? Why, he rides over to her home in a fury and rapes her. Not violently, certainly, but it is altogether clear even by the less scrupulous standards of the 1970s that Elizabeth does not want it and does not consent to it.
Ross Poldark may be dashing and bold and unusually sensitive to the plight of the working classes, but I’ve never been able to see him as a hero. I hope the new series will rewrite the story enough to change that.
I’m watching the new series with considerable interest, but I’m especially curious to see if and how they’ll rewrite the more problematic parts. Ross has saved Demelza from her father’s beatings, but he’s not exactly consistent in this regard.
First, we have Ross championing his old-maid cousin’s elopement with Capt. Blamey, a man who had beaten his first wife to death. In the new version, it had been an accident, at least according to Blamey. Originally, I believe it was alcohol, and that he quit drinking thereafter. It’s all very well to say that Verity should be allowed to make up her own mind, and as it transpires, Verity and Blamey do live “happily ever after,” but Ross doesn’t seem sufficiently concerned about Verity’s motives, her eagerness to trust this man who is probably her last chance for marriage. He is much too quick to excuse Blamey’s violence against his first wife.
Not too much later, a young woman named Keren comes to town with a travelling show and decides to stay as the wife of one of Ross’s employees, the miner Mark Daniels. She’s quickly bored of him, though, and when the handsome young Dr. Enys comes to town, Keren throws herself at him and has an affair. Mark discovers this and kills her. Mark will hang if he’s caught, but will he be caught? No, he won’t, because his friend Ross helps smuggle him to safety in Ireland. Now Ross not only excuses lethal violence, he condones it.
But it gets worse. The premise of the show is that Ross comes back from fighting in the colonies to find that his beloved, Elizabeth, is on the verge of marrying his cousin, Francis, and he has to make the best of it, while trying to get some financial stability without relying on the Warleggans, the local family of amoral bankers. However, a couple of years along, Francis dies, and Ross has in the meanwhile gotten married, so Elizabeth is still off-limits. Elizabeth is not cut out for widowhood and soon accepts a marriage proposal from George Warleggan. How does Ross react to the news? Why, he rides over to her home in a fury and rapes her. Not violently, certainly, but it is altogether clear even by the less scrupulous standards of the 1970s that Elizabeth does not want it and does not consent to it.
Ross Poldark may be dashing and bold and unusually sensitive to the plight of the working classes, but I’ve never been able to see him as a hero. I hope the new series will rewrite the story enough to change that.