Sybil Crawley is arguably one of the most progressive characters on Downton Abbey. An interest in politics and women’s rights is one of her most defining characterizes, and that interest often surfaces in her everyday conversation. In one particular conversation halfway through the first season, Sybil’s declaration of support for women’s suffrage causes her sister Edith to respond disparagingly, “I hope you won’t chain yourself to the railing and end up being force-fed semolina” (S1, E4). The way the show portrays Sybil’s interest in women’s rights and her support of women’s suffrage as organically motivated by the inequalities she encounters in her everyday life asks the audience to accept the idea that even though Downton Abbey is rarely overtly political, the characters themselves—and particularly the women of Sybil’s generation—still have fully formed political opinions motivated by their day to day concerns. However, despite the often progressive nature of these views, Sybil, Edith, and Mary only act on those views when that action develops their respective romantic relationships, thus emphasizing the importance of romantic relationships over political action. This consistent correlation ultimately enforces the ulterior dramatic motives and conservative values of Downton Abbey.

In order to understand the context in which Sybil supports women’s rights and, more specifically, women’s suffrage, one must first understand both the history of the Women’s Suffrage movement in Britain and the difference between the constitutionalists and the militants, the two factions fighting for the right to vote. Beginning in 1865, women’s suffrage activists, who are today referred to as “constitutional suffragists” or “constitutionalists,” “advocated legal means of campaigning such as parliamentary lobbying” (Purvis and Holton 1) to urge the government to give women the vote. In 1905, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) that began with the same goals as the constitutionalists. However, dissatisfied with how slowly the government acknowledged their demands, the WSPU decided that a “more confrontational approach was necessary since it would bring more publicity to the women’s cause” (Purvis and Holton 3). As their actions became increasingly violent and the government continued to fail to act, “a second stage of militancy erupted, especially from 1912, as the ‘suffragettes’, as the WSPU members became known, engaged in a ranged of terrorist acts against property, such as mass window-breaking, setting fire to empty buildings and post boxes, pouring acid on golf courses and cutting telephone and telegraph wires” (Purvis and Holton 3). Though the militants and constitutionalists, or suffragettes and suffragists, respectively, shared the same goals, they were often at odds with each because their methods differed so radically. In 1913, the conflict between the two groups was at its height – five years before a limited subset of women got the vote in 1918 and fifteen years before women got the vote on equal grounds to men in 1928 (Purvis and Holton).

One of the more controversial methods employed by the suffragettes were hunger strikes. When arrested for their terrorist acts, the suffragettes could be placed in either the First or Second Division of prison, often based on their social class, where quality of life differed dramatically. Even more significantly, “placement in First Division represented to the suffragettes recognition that their protest was politically motivated” (Van Wingerden 89). As more and more working class suffragettes were arrested and imprisoned, in order to protest their placement in Second Division, they began to go on hunger strikes. These strikes forced the government to choose between releasing the women from prison, allowing them to starve to death, or forcibly feeding them through tubes in their noses. Constance Lytton, an aristocratic woman who went undercover as a working-class woman to “draw attention to the ordeals experienced by forgotten women” (Mulvey-Roberts 162) by seeing how they were treated in prison, experienced force-feeding first hand. Following her experiences, she wrote to the Times denouncing the practice as torture (Harris). In her column “Forcible Feeding of Prisoners,” Lytton claims that because of the occasional death and frequent lasting medical harm that force-feeding caused, it “should be ruled out of our penal system altogether, as the rack and thumbscrews have been ruled out” (Lytton). After these experiences, Lytton remained an ardent supporter of the cause of the suffragettes, in large part because involvement with the group “enabled Lytton to escape from the constraints of the feminine role imposed on aristocratic women” (Mulvey-Roberts 160).

However, despite these constraints, not all aristocratic women supported women’s suffrage, and those who did were more likely to side with the constitutionalists. In an interview on BBC from 1963, Lady Asquith and Lady Scott, whose social positions resemble those of the ladies of Downton Abbey, recalled their experiences fighting for women’s suffrage on the side of the suffragists. They claimed that the militant suffragettes receive too much credit for attaining the vote and that the constitutionalists actually did most of the real work. They acknowledge the effectiveness of the suffragettes in gaining the attention of the public, but not much else. As Lady Stocks puts it, the militants “worked up tremendous enthusiasm among women, but then their reason told them to go and join the constitutionals” instead. Still, although both ladies disapprove of the threat the militants posed to life and limb, they do not universally condemn them either. Lady Asquith explains these nuanced views best: “The cruel thing was that they were heroic…but their heroism and their courage was punctured by their extraordinary wont of humor and by the aesthetic recoil that they inspired even in not very squeamish people.” One imagines that at least part of that "aesthetic recoil" was caused by the brutality of force-feeding.

Sybil’s views, inspired by her everyday experience, fall somewhere between those of the suffragettes and suffragists. In the scene from Season 1, Episode 4, we learn about her views on women’s suffrage when the subject arises after Sybil complains about one of the many inequalities between men and women that she faces in her day to day life: corsets. She complains, “I don’t know why we bother with corsets. Men don’t wear them and they look perfectly normal” (S1, E4). Although corsets may be a tiny issue to take up in comparison to suffrage, they represent a way in which women are literally confined in their everyday lives that men aren’t. Edith, exasperated by Sybil’s complaint, tells Mary, “She’s just showing off. She’ll be on about the vote in a minute” (S1, E4). Even though Edith is the one to make the leap from corsets to suffrage, Sybil doesn’t question the connection, responding, “If you mean do I think women should have the vote, of course I do” (S1, E4). However, supporting the women’s vote is not quite the same as supporting the suffragettes, which Edith points out while making her own negative opinion of the militants clear: “I hope you won’t chain yourself to the railing and end up being force-fed semolina” (S1, E4). Sybil doesn’t immediately respond, so Mary asks, “What do you think, Anna?” (S1, E4). The inclusion of Anna in the conversation by an upper class woman such as Mary shows how the issue of suffrage often crossed class-lines. Anna, ever optimistic, responds with a smile, “I think those women are very brave” (S1, E4). Sybil agrees wholeheartedly with Anna: “Hear, hear!” (S1, E4). Still, finding the suffragettes brave—or, as Lady Asquith and Lady Scott did, heroic—is not the same as endorsing their behavior, so the viewer is left in doubt as to whether Sybil sides with the suffragettes or the suffragists, undermining her overall progressiveness. Through this exchange, Downton Abbey shows how personal experiences translates to political views for Sybil, Edith, and even Mary, demonstrating to the audience that although Sybil and her sisters may not act on their political opinions—after all, Sybil never does chain herself to a railing an end up being force-red semolina — Sybil certainly has them.

However, another scene in this episode reveals an ulterior narrative motive for giving Sybil her mildly progressive views: they help develop her relationship with Tom Branson. Their very first direct interaction arises because of Sybil’s interest in women’s rights. Having overheard an earlier conversation about women’s rights between Sybil and her mother, Branson tells Sybil, “I’m quite political. In fact, I brought some pamphlets that I thought might interest you. About the vote” (S1, E4). In both this scene and nearly all the other scenes in which Sybil takes a political stance, Sybil’s opinions serve to develop her relationship and connection with Branson. In fact, Sybil’s interest in equality is one of the main reasons Branson is even interested in her, leaving the audience to wonder if Sybil is political for politics’ sake or just for the sake of this particular romance. Indeed, after Sybil and Branson marry, the show’s emphasis on Sybil’s political views fades. This correlation undercuts any progressive potential Sybil’s support for suffrage and women’s rights may have since it emphasizes romantic relationships and, eventually, marriage as Sybil’s ultimate end rather than pursuit of her political ideals.

Edith’s experience with politics follows a similar pattern. After Sybil’s death, Edith begins to fill the role that Sybil left vacant by supporting women’s rights because of her everyday experiences. In the decade between the two voting rights acts, Edith points out to her father, “I don’t have the vote. I’m not over thirty, and I’m not a householder. It’s ridiculous” (S3, E4). Just as she does years earlier in conversation with Sybil, Edith connects her personal experience not being able to vote to a fully formed political opinion. At Matthew’s urging, she acts on that opinion by writing to the Times and ends up with her own magazine column on politics because of it. However, this experience, rather than leading to an exciting story arc of political activism, instead merely leads to Edith’s doomed romantic relationship with her editor, Michael Gregson. After Edith’s relationship with Gregson begins, her journalism remains, but her political opinions fade from the consciousness of the show. Just as Sybil’s politics served mostly to develop her relationship with Branson, Edith’s politics and journalism serve to develop her relationship with Gregson, undercutting the force of progressiveness of Edith’s politics.

In keeping with this trend, Mary’s vocal support of the importance of maintaining great houses serves a similar narrative purpose: it stems from her personal investment in saving Downton, but more importantly, in narrative terms, it serves as the base for her romantic relationship with Mr. Charles Blake. Mary does not often politically go to bat, but when Evelyn Napier and Charles Blake come to stay at Downton while doing some work for the government on the state of great houses, Mary discovers that Mr. Blake has no interest in the staying powers of the families. Mary is noticeably perturbed and verbally spars with Mr. Blake several times, denouncing his views of the aristocracy as lazy, entitled, and ultimately doomed. However, their relationship undergoes a dramatic shift on the night they save the pigs together. Mr. Blake sees Mary’s work ethic and tenacity as she willingly gets her hands (and everything else, really) dirty, and Mary comes to appreciate Mr. Blake’s knowledge of farming and willingness to work hard for a member of the aristocracy’s benefit. They get in a mud fight, and voila: instant romance and domestic dining in the kitchen. After this scene, although Mary continues to work to keep Downton going, she loses interest in the fate of great houses in general and her political opinions no longer serve a role in the show’s narrative. Mary’s politics, already less fundamentally progressive than both Edith’s and Sybil’s, serve a similar romantic narrative purpose that undercuts the strength of her character’s development politically.

These three instances demonstrate lack of importance placed on progressive ideologies relative to the dramatic potential of the romantic relationships of the upper class young women of Downton Abbey. Even though the upper class women of Sybil’s generation do often have political opinions stemming from their own personal experience, those opinions rarely motivate these characters to take any sort of political action. Instead, Sybil, Mary, and Edith’s political opinions primarily serve to develop their romantic arcs. This hierarchy inherent in the narrative structure of the show ultimately causes seemingly progressive ideologies demonstrated by the characters to enforce the conservative nature of Downton Abbey.

Carter, Helen Violet Bonham, and Mary Stocks. Interview by Joan Bakewell. Late Night Line-Up: The Suffragettes. BBC. London, 1 Feb. 1968. Television.

Lytton, Constance. "Forcible Feeding Of Prisoners." Times 30 Apr. 1912, Issue 39886. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Harris, Jose. “Lytton, Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer- (1869–1923).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2011. 20 Oct. 2015.

Mulvey-Roberts, Marie. “Militancy, Masochism, or Martyrdom? The Public and Private Prisons of Constance Lytton.” Votes for Women. Ed. June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton. London: Routledge, 2000. 159-180. Print.

Purvis, June, and Sandra Stanley Holton. “Introduction: The Campaigns for Votes for Women.” Votes for Women. Ed. June Purvis and Sandra Stanly Holton. London: Routledge, 2000. 1-12. Print.

Van Wingerden, Sophia A. The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866-1928. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1999. Print.