Shortly after the Turk incident, Mary refers to Kamal as “her lover” to her mother.
His approach doesn’t conform to our modern-day notions of consent. But if she had wanted to fight him off, she could have. One shriek and Carson would have come running with a massive candelabra to smash over his head.
I feel like Fellowes had no clue how to end Mary’s story and spent about ten minutes concocting the Henry character and even less time casting him. (I won’t even get started on dragging Tom back to England with nothing to do but act Cupid for Mary, leaving him with no job and no love life.) What a disservice to the Downtown fans. >>>>
I agree with you. There is zero chemistry between them.
but his voice…good enough for me
Sorry but that’s not accurate. She asked him to leave, she threatened to scream, she threatened to ring the bell for help and Mr. Pamuk pointed out (quite accurately) that if she did, no one would believe that she had not invited him and that she would be ruined anyway. Not my idea of a seduction. It seems that many viewers have romanticized what happened and minimized her victimization. If you don’t believe me, this site has a summary of the exchange.
http://positively-smitten.com/2013/02/24/an-analysis-of-downton-abbey-the-rape-of-mary-crawley/
What Edith did was infinitely more horrible than anything Mary has done. What’s more, she’s never shown an ounce of remorse. She has done very little in the series that wasn’t in her own interest, at the expense of others.
Examples: while she was “helping” the farmer during the war she also helped herself to the married farmer, whose wife did not appreciate Lady Edith’s tractor driving skills enough to be willing to share her husband. No remorse or apology from Edith. She harassed poor old Lord Stratten into proposing to her even though he was obviously reluctant. Fortunately for him, he finally grew a spine and left her at the altar. Her reaction was to throw herself, weeping on the bed bemoaning the fact that both her sisters were married, one was expecting a baby and she was going to be an old maid. Yes, she certainly loved that man deeply /sarcasm. Next she actually sleeps with a married man, becomes pregnant, has her aunt cover up for her and arrange for the infant to be adopted. Later she yanks the child away from the adoptive mother and coerces a tenant farmer to take the baby home for his wife to take care of although she’s not allowed to know of Edith’s secret. Of course, farmer’s wife falls in love with the poor orphan child and treats her like one of her own but Edith isn’t satisfied so she takes her back (again) leaving the woman in anguish and seriously damaging the couple’s marriage. They later lose the tenancy their family has farmed for many generations as a result of Edith’s selfishness, and have to move away but hey, it worked out great for poor Edith, right?
I’m just not seeing anything sympathetic about Edith. Mary may be haughty but she has gone out of her way to help others many times without any benefit to herself. If Edith has done anything kind for anyone which wasn’t in her own best interests, I can’t remember it.
Don’t worry, you’re allowed to prefer Mary and it’s only fiction anyway. No need for desperation!
Joblue–nicely done
@Joblue …I don’t think you are desperate in your post at all. You have made valid points why we shouldn’t feel quite so sorry for Edith and make Mary the villian. Yes, this is fiction…but look at this thread…we ALL talk about them as if they are real people. Many of our strong opinions have to do with our own reflections and expetiences in life. You changed MY way of thinking about the situation, so your post wasn’t in vain.
I think we have felt this way about the 2 of them because of that Turkish incident, but that happened when they were teenagers, and who knows how long the war between them had gone on and who did what to who. Edith may not have drawn first blood…we will never know.
And even if we have seen Edith do these bad things later on to others, they weren’t directed at Mary. She’s actually tried to get along with her and we’ve seen that. I have seen all the good Mary has done…but I bring my own life experience of a mean sister as I watch…and seeing Mary do that, as adults, prejudices me against her now unless she does something drastic other than just feel sorry about it. I hope it doesn’t end so my dislike of her is what I take away.
I agree. It’s good fiction doing its job. It allows us to judge people, gossip, take sides, in a way that we really shouldn’t do in real life.
@Joblue Cora asks Mary if she was forced. Mary says no.
I’m not trying to vindicate Kamal’s actions. It was creepy. He manipulated her into thinking others would blame her. But if she had screamed and people had come running, I’m sure that the household would have believed her over him, especially given Orientalist stereotypes of the day.
And I doubt that she kept silent to ensure the success of the Albanian talks. 
Edith is not perfect and she has made a lot of mistakes, but she at least tries to learn from them. I’ll allow that Mary is kind to certain people in her life, but overall she’s changed very little from that “uppity minx” (Mrs. Hughes’ words) of Season One.
It doesn’t seem like the Earl of Grantham has a very good relationship with his sister. Have we seen that throughout, or has that just been in the last few episodes?
They have played that up for some reason in just the last few episodes.
I’m pretty sure my H would leave me for Lady Rosamund. He says how much he likes her EVERY time she is on screen!
LOL, thanks! Clearly I needed to get the definitive Mary vs Edith post off my chest
I’m frequently finding the character development to be bizarrely inconsistent as JF scrambles to conclude all the storylines and it often seems that he has forgotten or just abandoned earlier subplots. I thought at the time and still think that the incident with Mr. Pamuk would clearly be a rape by modern standards but I’m not sure Mr. Fellowes sees it that way. I’m sure that at that time, Mary would have been held responsible for the whole sordid incident and that Mary herself would had felt that it was her fault for having flirted with the man which is why she would have told Cora she wasn’t forced. At that time, if you didn’t literally have a knife to your throat or weren’t beaten to a bloody pulp you were considered to have consented. A scream for help would have ensured that everyone would have known about her “shame” and Pamuk knew that very well.
Edith may have grown and matured in the 14 years since then (I would certainly hope so) but so has Mary. She has often been shown to have reconsidered her own behavior when shown that she is wrong and most significantly was willing to give up the love of her life to avoid hurting poor Lavinia. If Edith had once been shown putting anyone else’s well-being ahead of her own (including her own child’s) I would feel differently about her. Julian Fellowes hasn’t chosen to have her do that so I have to assume that she’s simply a sad but ultimately self-centered individual.
I think Edith’s desire to be with her child and not just conveniently leave her in Switzerland shows more strength than weakness. For that time, even for 50 years later, she was definitely courting scandal by even considering this.
I wish they had brought back Charles Blake for Mary. More humor, more chemistry, more daring (in that he’s not an aristocrat), and he would be a very helpful person for running DA with her.
^^ I guess the feelings of the Swiss adoptive mother are insignificant next to Edith’s, not to mention the trauma of a baby being yanked out of not one but TWO adoptive homes in the space of what, two years? Some may see that as strength; I see it as blind selfishness. She certainly isn’t willing to expose herself to scandal by going public with her maternity (even keeping it from a man who wanted to marry her). That would have taken some courage but sadly that’s not what happened. Poor Marigold is going to need a lot of therapy (but she’ll never get it).
I do agree that Charles Blake would have made a more satisfying partner for Mary, at least for me. I feel a bit let down by her marriage in the last episode but I gave up on JF writing logical romance a long time ago.
I’m just happy he didn’t have Tom marry the odious Ms Bunting…
So many young women were railroaded into giving up their babies during the “baby scoop era”, it is really shameful. I didn’t realize how vast the problem was until I read the comments in a NYT article about the movie Philomena. Technically, this was before the baby scoop era but Edith’s predicament and her feelings of wanting to be with her baby should not be so easily discarded because she allowed older and more powerful people in her life to make bad decisions for her while she was pregnant and just after she gave birth. It would be like fighting the tide to try to claim her baby! Especially for a class of people who don’t do much hands on parenting, as we understand parenting to be.
^^^This. I’m a baby scoop era adoptee myself and I assure you, what Edith has done was way more courageous than leaving the baby in Switzerland. And trust me, Marigold will need a lot less therapy this way.
With all due respect, Edith’s situation does not in any way resemble the situation in Philomena. She was not forced to give up her child; if she couldn’t face the shame of doing it publicly in England she could have easily been able to live abroad with the baby as a “widow”. One of the things I find so absurd in the story is that after all the angst and drama about anyone finding out about Edith’s maternity, no one who knows about it has been remotely unkind to her. Even her formidable grandmother is supportive and her parents accept her situation with love and understanding. She has not been subjected to any approbation at all. She chose to place her with an adoptive mother for some period of time. Perhaps some people don’t really believe adoptive mothers are “real” mothers and that the bio-parent should be able to change their minds at any time without obligation to those who have relieved them of the “burden” of their unwanted, inconvenient offspring. I like to think that those who feel this way have never been close to anyone who has adopted an infant but I promise you that taking away an adopted baby is just as excruciating to the adoptive mother, as taking away any biological children from the “natural” parents would be.
I’m sorry but I can’t trust that any child who has been torn away from two homes where they presumably were bonded to the women they regarded as their mothers would not be damaged by the experience.
It’s a good thing little Marigold is fictional
I am an adoptive mother and I disagree with you, Joblue.