snew:
Mary is always beautiful but this scene was monstrous and lacked the sensitivity it desperately needed. Pamuk comes across as a predator.
He WAS a predator :/ I mean he didn’t take no for an answer downstairs earlier in the night and didn’t take no for an answer when she said she would scream. Pamuk was a predator.
I agree, and that is what I’d originally typed, but after reflecting on it I’m not certain the writers intended for him to be the predator that I saw him as. Or rather, that I continue to see him as. Coercive sex is rape, period, and the atmosphere of the scene didn’t properly reflect the gravity of what was happening.
Agreed! Julian didn’t treat it like the rape that it was and it KILLS me that he didn’t.
Oh god…I COMPLETELY AGREE with both of you. This scene still breaks my heart.
^ all of this
With respect, I believe that you’re missing the point. And while yes, in this day and age, coercive sex is rapey, you can’t apply the contemporary arguments about the necessity of consent to a sex act that’s occurring in the Edwardian era. The historical context completely changes the terms on which Mary and Pamuk are meeting, and treating this scene with “sensitivity” would completely subvert its authenticity.
So for one, you’ve got to remember the When. But you’ve also got to remember who we’re talking about, here. Lady Mary Crawley is no shrinking violet; she’s a calculating, manipulative, self-interested bitch — and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s what makes her so interesting, and what makes her character’s evolution so powerful; in Season 1, all of her game-playing and calculating in order to get what she wants ends up blowing up her one chance to actually get what she wants, which is a marriage founded on love. She tried to eat her cake and have it, and lost everything instead. And in Season 2, for the first time, we see her vulnerable and awkward and (gasp!) even acting selflessly.
And given all that, if Lady Mary Crawley of Season 1 didn’t want Pamuk in her room, I’m pretty sure he’d be back out in that hallway quicker than you can say “O’Brien”. (Or if not, she would certainly have jumped on the easy out offered by her mother when she asked if he’d forced himself on her — knowing she’d be believed, knowing her family would cover for her, and not caring a lick about the reputation of the man who coerced her into sex.)
But instead, there’s a moment — and it’s a really great bit of acting on the part of Michelle Dockery — right after the two of them have discussed the impossibility of ever actually being together, and right before they start getting busy, where you can actually see her struggling between her own self-interest (maintaining her pristine, marriageable Edwardian morals) and what she longs for but can never have (the freedom to make decisions based solely on what she, personally, desires). And considering what he’s offering — which, in the context of the era, is nothing more or less than what may well be the only chance in her life to experience the physical act of love with someone she’s genuinely attracted to, as opposed to dutifully married to — I don’t think it’s at all surprising that she’d decide to take advantage.
(Source: ithinkyoufweaky)
