Meanwhile, file this under ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’: While Thomas is indisposed, poor Molesley finally gets that big promotion to First Footman which, as luck and bad timing would have it, isn’t all that great now that there’s no Second or Third Footmen. And here at Downton, it is throwing open a window into understanding Thomas’ segregation and bitterness.
It might be one of the most shocking (and brushed aside) aspects of recent history brought home to Downton in these five seasons. Unfortunately today, despite long since becoming a discredited relic of the past, in less enlightened places (including some places in the US) conversion ‘therapy’ is still forced upon young people, often with the same predictably tragic results. Other times they were committed to mental institutions and tortured against their will. Sometimes men and women sought out these ‘treatments’ in a desperate attempt to fit into the society that unjustly reviled, persecuted and prosecuted them. We are in 1924, long before Stonewall, when mainstream medical professionals and lay people thought homosexuality was a mental illness and it was often ‘treated’ in inhumane ways that included castration, electric shock, lobotomy, or torture drugs (which look to be what Thomas is using). We don’t know for sure, but it seems as if that advertisement in the back of Popular Footmen magazine was for some sort of barbaric homosexual conversion ‘therapy’ scheme that was common at the time. We soon find out it was likely the latter. He looks pale and has dark circles under his eyes, leading us to surmise that either he had a very good time or a very bad time in London. We begin with the lonely figure of Thomas returning to the great house.
Suppose when Green said, “Why have you come?”, he wasn’t talking to Bates? Suppose he was talking to Anna? Cue the music… What’s in a Name: The Rainbow Connection:
Was it the same for you, Downtonians? It was a moment that made me wonder. There was a moment in tonight’s episode that made me gasp out loud and sit bolt upright.
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