Downton Abbey

I think Lord G knows the art dude wasn’t flirting with his dog. He was toying with his wife to see what she would say.

About those instructions for the BC device that Anna didn’t get–would they have even come with printed instructions? She had the book from Mary–wouldn’t the instructions be in that maybe? Think Anna kept the book and read it in her spare time? Mr. Bates could be in for a lot of surprises.

What was the name of that book…we could google it!

Here’s the book, according to the Baltimore Sun – Marie Stopes’ “Married Love.” And it’s available on Kindle for 99 cents. Let the research commence!

P.S> Just went back and checked the episode – Lady Mary specifically says “Marie Stopes.”

This is what I found and as graphic as it got in an online version:

“It should be realized that all the proper, medical methods of preventing undesired pregnancy consists, not in destroying an already growing embryo, but in preventing the male semen from reaching the unfertilized egg cell. This may be done either by shutting the semen away from the opening of the womb, or by securing the death of all (instead of the natural death of all but one) of the two or three hundred million spermatozoa which enter the woman. Even when a child is allowed to grow in its mother, all these hundreds of millions of spermatozoa are inevitably and naturally destroyed every time the man has an emission; and to add one more to these millions sacrificed by nature is surely no crime! To render inert the ejaculated spermatozoa which would otherwise die and decompose naturally, is a simple matter, now familiar to every intelligent physician and layman. The knowledge is easily obtainable.”

"Where the bride is, as are most of our educated girls, composed of virgin sweetness shut in ignorance, the man is often the first to create “the rift within the lute”; but his suffering begins almost simultaneously with hers. Unconscious of the nature, and even perhaps of the existence of his fault, he is bewildered and pained by her inarticulate pain. It is my experience, that in the early days of marriage, the young man is even more sensitive, more romantic, more easily pained about all ordinary things than the woman, that he enters marriage hoping for an even higher degree of spiritual and bodily unit than does the girl or the woman. But the man is more quickly blunted, more swiftly rendered cynical, and is readier to look upon happiness as a utopian dream than is his mate.

On the other hand, the woman is slower to realize disappointment, and more often is the more profoundly wounded by the sex-life of marriage, with a slow corrosive wound that eats into her very being.

Perfect happiness is a unity composed of a myriad essences; and this one supreme thing is exposed to the attacks of countless destructive factors.

Were I to touch upon all the possible sources of marital disappointment and unhappiness, this book would expand into a dozen bulky volumes." She goes on to talk about prostitutes and disease ridden men.

That first paragraph is so lovely and so Victorian! It doesn’t seem like Lady Mary’s experience as a 20th century woman.

I read (in the fascinating History of Sex) that the final slowdown of syphillis and gonnoreah was begun with the invention of vulcanized rubber in the 1800’s. Condoms were given to soldiers and brothels in Germany and London required men to use them by 1900. Antibiotics weren’t commonly around until the 1940’s.

Well, don’t look up the book on Wikipedia. Contains spoilers about Downton. :frowning:

Thanks for the heads up!

But Marie Stopes wrote another book, called “Wise Parenthood.” It is all about birth control. I found the entire text online.

I don’t think he was toying with his wife. I think he was just angry, and lashed out at the most ridiculous thing. Like when you have an argument with your SO, and start yelling about the cap on the toothpaste tube. It’s something tangible to yell about, even if that’s not what you were really mad about at all.

Finally watched Sunday’s episode. Agree with others who have said Sarah Bunting was more likable this time around. Anna buying the BC for Mary will definitely result in an uproar with Bates. And just how much does the farmer’s wife NOT like Lady Edith for hanging around so much? One other comment/question: Is Cora’s voice Elizabeth McGovern’s normal voice? I find the whole breathy/whisper thing somewhat annoying.

The word I would use for Cora is “simpering.” Or maybe “saccharine.”

I just find the smirking-smug tweek of Mary’s expressions more annoying than Cora. Don’t you have the urge to smack her like a bratty teenager or is that just me? I don’t see Bates getting upset with Anna over anything, she’s too perfect in his eyes to be blamed for anything including murder.

Can someone remind me how Edith’s child got to Downton? I remember her going aboard when she was pg. I know they said the baby was abandoned but I don’t remember the details.

I am also puzzled by the birth control scene. Initially I thought she must have bought condoms as I didn’t think a diaphragm was available yet. So I laughed when Mary said just one would be fine. :slight_smile:

They basically smuggled the child into England. Edith and the farmer had made arrangements before Marigold’s birth for him to take her. Obviously, the wife loves Marigold and resents Edith for stepping in and acting as her mother.

Well maybe if Edith even acknowledged the farmer’s other children, it would be more palatable to the wife. You know, bring them all a little treat or something, but she totally ignores them!

Edith’s Aunt Rosmund arranged for a Swiss couple to raise Edith’s baby. It was Edith (spurred on by Branson saying to her at Rose’s ball that she shouldn’t allow the family steamroll over her - he was talking about nothing in particular, didn’t of course know about the pregnancy) who went up to Mama and told her she was going to go back to Downton early because she decided she was going to go abroad. Edith arranges with the farmer before she leaves, while everyone at Downton is still in London, to take in the child - Edith is spinning the “my friend died and someone needs to take the baby but my parents never approved of my friend so the baby living in Downton is impossible”. She tells him that is why this must be a secret from her family - he agrees and doubly adds that it will be a secret between just those two - he won’t tell his wife it was Edith’s friend but say it was his friend. That is a good reason why farmer’s wife is a bit confused about why she cares so much about this kid, if it was said that it was Edith’s friend, she might not be so suspicious.

I think the farmer’s wife is wondering if her husband and Lady Edith had something going on…

^^I think so too.

Regular Masterpiece watchers will recognize “Married Love” as the same book Miss Valentine Wannop caught the school girls giggling over in “Parade’s End” - televised back in about 2012 as I recall.