‘Downton Abbey’ 602: What Are This Show’s Politics, Anyway?

Downton Abbey is finally coming to an end. To salute the internationally-acclaimed drama, we’re examining one particularly potent scene or storyline from each episode in the sixth and final season.

What exactly are Downton Abbey‘s politics? For all its pleasantry and propriety, Downton Abbey has always been sizzling with political commentary about class, sexism, racism, and most of all, economics. Last night’s episode seemed to bring all these debates to the forefront. Is the local hospital better served under the stewardship of the aristocracy or the state? When someone buys an estate, do they take on the responsibility of the lives of the people living on it or not? Do the Drewes deserve to be booted off their land after being emotionally destroyed by Edith’s personal game? Should Edith be allowed to live alone in London as a single woman? Are servants friends to the families they serve or are they pets? What is showrunner Julian Fellowes trying to say about all these issues?!?!?

It’s no secret that Fellowes is conservative. He’s a vocal Tory in the UK and the series has often been blasted by the left for romanticizing the aristocracy of yore. The show presents the Crawley clan as kind, likable people and socialists as misguided (or in the case of Miss Bunting, downright obnoxious). Each season of Downton Abbey has illustrated how the rapid democratization of Great Britain has cut into the grandeur and the glamour of the estate. These changes have trickled down from the upper to the lower classes in cruel measure. Servants are losing their jobs and ancient farming families are forced off their land. The message seems to be that all these progressive societal changes hitting post-World War I Great Britain are bad from top to bottom. Only the landed nobility can maintain the comfort of the status quo! So, it’s a conservative show, right? Easy peasy. We solved it!

The problem with that notion is that Downton Abbey also celebrates intensely liberal ideas. From the very first episode, Fellowes has positioned himself as an ardent feminist. The crux of the first season’s drama is the idea that the old peerage system unfairly cuts Lady Mary out of her own inheritance. Fellowes also creates a world where all three of the Crawley daughters only find happiness and fulfillment in employment: Sybil as a nurse, Edith as a writer, and Mary as the manager of her own estate. Not to mention the fact that he’s a believer in marrying for true love and not societal advancement. Women are repeatedly shown as being as smart and capable as men — and often more so! While the show has barely brushed upon the complicated subject of race, when it has, it’s always voted for tolerance. Fellowes loves to set up scenarios that point out that judging somebody for their ethnic or religious background is worse than just morally wrong. It’s snobbish.

Fellowes has also consistently presented moments to show the injustice of class division. In earlier seasons, downstairs characters like Branson, Gwen, Edith, Thomas, and even O’Brien would argue for the proletariat’s right to rise up. Some of them would succeed and find a better life, while others would find themselves totally stuck in their position, or worse, irrevocably ruined. The once shifty Thomas seems to be getting the saddest storyline this season. After dedicating most of his life to service, he’s finding himself unemployable and unwanted in this new democratic world. (Oh, and speaking of Thomas, his sexuality has always been treated as an opportunity to decry the absolute cruelty and horror of homophobia.) This season we’re also seeing a newly-educated, suddenly emboldened Daisy beating the drum of rebellion. “It’s the system!” she hisses in the servant’s hall when she sees injustice. She’s not wrong, though. Even if Fellowes admires the old class system, he understands its limitations.

So what exactly is Fellowes trying to say with Downton Abbey? If anything, it’s that the upper and lower (and middle) classes of Britain aren’t as separate as they seem. Everyone is irrevocably interconnected and society only flourishes when we all work together. But is that good? Is that bad? Well, who are the “good” characters on Downton Abbey? It seems that background has nothing to do with “goodness” in Fellowes’ world. The characters whom we love and root for to win are always simply the kind ones. No matter what a person’s race, class, station, religion, or political beliefs are, Fellowes has always championed kindness over cruelty.

Maybe the political statement Fellowes is really making is that a person’s political views don’t matter nearly as much as his or her moral character. We live in a world that increasingly tries to conflate politics with morality, and Fellowes sees them as separate. It doesn’t matter what you vote so long as you’re not an asshole. Be kind, is Downton Abbey‘s message. As times change, as the world pushes forward, while Downton Abbey irrevocably transforms, the only thing that ever endures is love.

[Watch Seasons 1-5 of Downton Abbey on Prime Video]
[Watch Season 6 of Downton Abbey on PBS]

[Photos: PBS via Nick Briggs/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2015]