Downton Abbey: A study of conflict and character development

I’ve been admiring Downton Abbey’s conflicts.  Every week, I’m stunned at the amount of conflict they pack into an hour.  I’m amazed at the different types of interpersonal conflicts and external situation conflicts.  I’m spellbound by how they build larger conflicts over the course of the season and how they increase, peak, and resolve smaller conflicts within one or two episodes.

I just watched Season 3 Episode 5 and I think it has a lot to teach in terms of romance writing.  I would like to focus on Lord Grantham.  He is kind and caring.  He is a fair employer and respected by his servants and the people who live on his land.  He has occasional bouts of arrogance, which is to be expected because he is an earl.  He has a sense of his own importance, bolstered by society and his position.

He has bursts of anger, impatience, and annoyance.  Sometimes he asserts his position in a manner that we, as modern-day viewers, find distasteful; but most likely, in his time, it would have been considered his right.  However, as his daughters become more modern thinking (for example, when his daughter marries the chauffeur) or when somebody does something he considers socially inappropriate, we see glimpses of bombast.  If he’s a snob, then it’s because of his social status.

Now let’s look at this episode.  We’ve already had glimpses of his overall kindness and flashes of snobbery.

Lord Grantham is dealing with three separate conflicts this episode.

1. He just buried his daughter and his wife blames his pomposity for listening to the fancy doctor instead of the family doctor.  He has grief and
2. marital problems.
3. He has foolishly invested all of his wife’s money and lost it and his daughter’s inheritance.  His son-in-law bailed him out and is now part owner of the estate.  Lord Grantham is the current earl, but it is at his son-in-law and heir’s sufferance.

Throughout the episode, Lord Grantham makes two overtures to his wife.  He asks if he can sleep in their bedroom again (she refuses) and he compliments her (and she rebuffs him).  According to John Gottman’s bid theory, this is the way to estrangement and divorce.

In addition to struggling with his grief and his wife’s refusal to forgive him, his son-in-law wants to make changes on the estate to make it more profitable.  He feels like he is being criticized for his mismanagement of the estate up until now.  In truth, when there was lots of money, it wasn’t a problem to be somewhat inefficient; his son-in-law is middle class and thinks in terms of effective business management.

All of these conflicts escalate over the course of the episode.  Just as he is arguing with his son-in-law and refusing to allow changes, the butler comes in completely indignant.  Lord Grantham tries to put him off, but the butler insists.

The butler is deeply affronted that the Lady of the house and her two daughters are eating lunch in a house where the cook is a reformed prostitute.  Such women are fallen women and must stay far away from proper society.

Lord Grantham, in a surge of righteous indignation, runs to the luncheon and demands that they leave.

This scene is a marvel of the confluence of all the conflicts in the episode.

His wife is angry because he chose social approval over their daughter’s life.  This causes her to flout his conventional attitude at the luncheon and refuse to leave.  Therefore they all refuse to leave, and he is left looking foolish, furious, and powerless.

His anger is not really about the former prostitute.  That is the pretext.  He is really roaring his frustration about his impotence: his inability to save his daughter’s life, his inability to make up with his wife, his inability to run the estate well.  This is all displaced onto his inability to get his wife and daughters to follow his will about a social order that is on its way to becoming obsolete.  His way of life is becoming obsolete.  He himself has to confront his obsolescence.

In terms of writing conflict and portraying character development, this illustrates a powerful tool.  Creating a displaced conflict and imbuing it with the intensity of the unspoken conflict is a very forceful and emotionally potent plot device.

The Showdown with the Ex

There is a scene which shows up in a lot of romance novels.  The heroine and the hero are in a relationship.  They are at a fancy party (usually a gala charity ball of some sort).  Their relationship is still at the unstable point.

At the party, there is a confrontation.  The heroine doesn’t feel like she completely belongs in the hero’s world.  Enter a woman who is everything that the heroine is not: more beautiful, more confident, better dressed, more expensive jewelry–but lacking the heart of our heroine.  (And also not owning the heart of our hero!)  But this rival wants our hero.  She wants him badly.  Badly enough to either make a play for him, or to be aggressive and spiteful to our heroine (either within or without earshot of of the hero).

What does this scene accomplish and why do I love it so much?

I’m up to that scene in my current work and I’m trying to clarify what the scene does so that I can ratchet up the tension.

1) She provides a foil to the heroine.  This is what the hero had before the heroine or this embodies his options if he doesn’t have the heroine in his life.  It reminds us that our couple has a richer and more profound relationship than the emotional drought that came before.

2) It provides an opportunity for growth.

a) Either the heroine can grow in confidence as she defends herself and realizes that she can hold her own

b) Or the relationship can grow in strength as the hero defends her, rejects the rival, or stakes his claim and states his preference for the heroine.

I think in my current book I’d like this scene to remind him that what he had before lacks substance compared to what he has now.  And to make the heroine momentarily stressed by all the externals, until she finds her internal resources and confidence to remember that what she has is more valuable.  I want the reader to cheer for the heroine.

So now I have to figure out what the rival will say that will really reach the heart of the heroine’s insecurities.