The Turk says "You can still be a virgin for your husband" and something else to the effect of "If we use our imagination we can still have fun". I always thought the implication was that he did not take Lady Mary's virginity. I realize she would still be "ruined" by the social standards of the day. Was she or was she not a virgin when she married?
It's the most notorious cut in DA. JF's script included a line from Pamuk about hiding a vial of blood under the pillow and a little acting to fool her husband on the wedding night. The producers cut it, sure that everyone would know what he meant. Instead, the most lurid explanations imaginable showed up on discussion boards. No, she wasn't a virgin for Matthew, but there's a good chance he wasn't either--between university and the army, he had plenty of chances to lose it.
Also, I'm confused. Didn't Daisy see them moving the body into a room and not out from a room? How was it Lady Mary's room?
She saw the three of them taking the body back down into his room or in that direction.
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darogr
8 years ago
Thanks!
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myndchanger
8 years ago
All I saw was Cora carrying feet through a door. Did I miss something?
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tomcervo
8 years ago
We saw Daisy look and the reverse angle of Cora and the feet--which would have been pretty remarkable on its own--but she may have seen all three.
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siobanphotogirl
8 years ago
So if Matthew was not a virgin at marriage, which he would be expected to be in his society, when Lord Grantham asks Matthew how the honeymoon was, and Matthew says "My eyes have been opened!" he meant...?
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tomcervo
8 years ago
So if Matthew was not a virgin at marriage, which he would be expected to be in his society,
Ideally--but in wartime, standards always slip. Novels written by veterans often refer to what men do when they think they won't be alive in a week.From George Simmers' excellent blog:
As for the sexual passages (inexplicit, but sufficiently amoral to keep the book off the rather vicarish AQA A-level reading-list, Iβd guess) they are a useful reminder that the men who fought were human beings, with all the human faults, needs and instincts. There is a tendency to sentimentalise and even emasculate the memory of the soldiers. Many like to think of the typical Somme casualty as the pure and decent Roland Leighton, as refracted through the mourning prose of Vera Brittain. Itβs salutary to remember that not all soldiers were as pure as this imagined Roland . (And, come to think of it, did Roland himself ever pop in to the notorious Number 10 brothel at Amiens? We will never know.)
https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/portrait-of-an-airman-byphilip-arnall/#more-5665when Lord Grantham asks Matthew how the honeymoon was, and Matthew says "My eyes have been opened!" he meant...?
My guess? That the ice maiden Mary came to a boil in no time.
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tally1-934-484232
8 years ago
It was not expected for upper class men to be virgins at the time of marriage. It was expected for upper class women. That's the double standard.
If anything, the men were expected to have experience and to be able to guide their virginal wives into the brave new world of sexual intercourse. The upper class men were notoriously randy and this extended down to the upper middle classes. Plenty of stories of the boys of the house sleeping with the maids, carousing with local prostitutes while at university and of course there's the infamous statistic that a quarter of women in London in the 19th century were prostitutes.... Robert most certainly would not have been a virgin when he married Cora and Matthew extremely unlikely to have been one either at the onset of the show, let alone the war.
The concept of men needing to be virgin might have been given lip service, but mostly by the churchgoing middle classes. The reality was always quite different, except for women, who were definitely expected to hew to a virgin course till marriage and any rumor or indication otherwise had significant implications.
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tomcervo
8 years ago
Yes, to all of this; my own reading brings out the same. Not to mention horror stories of brides infested with venereal diseases on their wedding nights.
It extends to marital fidelity as well. Wives were expected to be faithful until they'd produced an authentic heir or two, after that they could play the field as much as their husbands.
A famous philanderer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cust
so much of the Cust strain entered England's peerage, and that from such a number of cradles there gazed babies with eyes like large sapphires instead of the black boot buttons of their legal fathers.
Robert and Cora are
not the norm.
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CakesAndAle
8 years ago
Robert and Cora are not the norm.
despite their eye color differing from that of their daughters. tee hee.
Incidentally Cust appears briefly in Nancy Astor (1982). As a character, that is -- not the real HC. π
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SuCue
8 years ago
It would have been fun to have Lady Astor show up in the series. Early in the series they have Mary staying at Clivedon, but it was just an aside.
She wasn't quite the same as the other American titled ladies like Cora or Consuelo Vanderbilt; she was "well-born" but didn't have a lot of money. Plus she was divorced with a child. She was just very, very beautiful (as a young women, though - didn't age well.) years ago I read the memoirs of her lady's maid, Rosina Harris. Very interesting and one can probably find a used copy on Amazon or Alibris.
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