I Am Not In Menorca and "It Was Your Show All Along"...
Dearest gentle reader, today, this author was supposed to be on an island, the one called Menorca, but she is not, and because the best editors make the cut at just the right moment to leave you suspended until the next instalment or the next four episodes if you own Netflix and are marketing Bridgerton, you will have to wait until next Friday to find out why I am not sitting on a balcony in the Balearic sun with a pitcher of sangria.
“If the first series of Bridgerton was all about the steamy sex, the second series seemed like it was all about longing and yearning for what couldn’t be, then this third series is full of romance…” said an article1 which compared Penelope Featherington hiding her secret identity as Lady Whistledown, the gossip columnist who reveals all the Mayfair society intrigue, to us hiding ourselves from God because He wouldn’t need to see ink stains on YOUR hands to know it was YOU and I kind of love the idea that people who go to church are sort of normal and being entertained by the same things as everybody else only they’re just happening to suddenly remember God is watching them, and the minister did say on Sunday he was glad we had all turned up and we weren’t lying in our bed or playing on our Xbox or binging on Netflix and I wanted to say that actually, most people who aren’t here are playing golf or football or cycling or enjoying fresh air or meeting their friends in coffee shops or catching up on life or heading to their second job and they’re not all lazy sloths. And I don’t agree with the romance conclusion at all.
I hadn’t intended to be sucked in to Bridgerton because I found Daphne a bit of a drip in season one and she put me off season two although I’m not sure she was even in it, but I hate feeling left out and I couldn’t so much as pop onto Instagram without seeing Nicola Coughlan in a nice outfit so here I am, a quartet of episodes in, waiting for the next ones to drop and possibly slightly hooked. I apologise if you haven’t watched it, but you really should, and you can probably skip the first two seasons and just accept it’s mainly about women being paraded about during the debutante season in the Regency period in front of the Queen who always looks bored and has a HUGE hairstyle. And they’re competing to find husbands and going to lots of balls and stepping carefully out of carriages and there was a whole plot about money which I don’t understand but it involved cousin Jack and has culminated in Penelope’s sisters needing to produce heirs asap. Oh, and there are eight Bridgerton siblings who are all terribly popular and alphabetically organised and one of them plays the piano and the boys are exceptionally good-looking although I’m not a big fan of Colin’s handsomeness and I keep wondering when they talk about him returning from continental Europe if he did the Grand Tour thing, like Rob and Rylan, which is another of my recent television binges2 and the youngest boy has a broken arm and I have completely missed why, and then there’s Eloise who is a bit of a radical ruffian according to Lady Whistledown, and she is obviously my favourite. And there are two mamas, and they want their children to get married, but Lady Bridgerton wants hers to find love matches, lots of chemistry, attraction, affection and affirmation and Lady Featherington just wants hers to acquire status.
And I don’t think this third series is about romance, I think it’s about passion and discovering it and pursuing it and grabbing on to it and not letting go of it and being transformed by it, whatever that passion may be, finding someone who is only watching you, writing a column, or Francesca Bridgerton when she goes all dreamy about Beethoven’s Appassionata, “I could listen to it forever”.
This week, Rob Burrow, the former Leeds Rhinos scrum-half died from Motor Neurone Disease, and I don’t think we will ever see a better image of a love match than the pictures of his wife, Lindsey holding up his frail body in a swimming pool and carrying him around their home as she vowed to continue to care for him. In his final message3, he said, "I am just a lad from Yorkshire who got to live out his dream of playing rugby league. Every single day is precious. Don’t waste a moment. In a world full of adversity, we must still dare to dream”.
“Your duty is to cater to Mr Bridgerton’s dreams,” says Penelope’s mother when she learns of Colin’s proposal. “What about my dreams?” replies Penelope. “Ladies do not have dreams. They have husbands,” says Lady Featherington.
“Whistledown is power” is Penelope’s response. In an era when women were rarely permitted to have brains, she uses wit and wisdom to captivate an audience. She fumbles over words and fails to win suitors because she is shy and nervous, and I mean who hasn’t said something stupid about grass4 when put on the spot. “Deep inside, I know I can be clever and amusing but somehow my character gets lost between my heart and my mouth and sometimes I find myself saying the wrong thing, or more likely, nothing at all,” she says. “I want to be with someone who knows who they are and embraces their own peculiarity as I do,” says Lord Debling, as he woos her. And I think not everything has to be done for public approval. Who we are on the outside, our image, what we present for others’ consumption matters not an iota, if who we are on the inside, our identity is not authentic, exactly who we are meant to be. There’s something important about knowing thyself and not needing to parade it. And if I have one little ick, it’s that this third series focuses on Penelope’s external appearance, her stunning transformation, her show-shopping entrance5 as evidence of her worth when it is her intellectual brilliance that sets her apart. And if I have one big ick, it’s that she couldn’t just be happily single in the 1800s with a decent and fulfilling job but then that’s not what happens in the Bridgerton romance novels and there’s a script being followed. Penelope didn’t have to steal the show. It was her show all along. There’s a confidence and a radiance that doesn’t demand a ballgown.
Some people have asked me how the book I am writing is going. Some have even asked me what it is about. And if I had any clue what I was doing and I wasn’t constantly trying to find a physical space to write and the mental space to process what I’m writing, I would have fashioned a blurb which would package it all up neatly and explain it is all about LEAVING - leaving institutions, leaving beliefs, leaving roles, leaving societally-constructed identities, leaving anything that makes you feel lesser and devalued and joyless and passionless. I am calling it ‘Notes on Leaving’. How it is going depends on how you look at things, glass half-full, glass half-empty. It is nowhere near finished but it is started. This week, I was preparing an essay. It is the story of what I didn’t expect from leaving, all the things that happened simply because I wondered if there could be more for me. It will never be about what mark this book makes on the world, how many copies it sells or whether anyone gets to know who I am because of it. I am not searching for applause, or a crowd to be listening, or people to stand up in the aisles. I am writing it because if life is your stage, you need to make the most of it.
“Every single day is precious. Don’t waste a moment. In a world full of adversity, we must still dare to dream”.
I will leave you with a clip…
Until next week, dearest gentle reader.
If you need to fill the gap between now and the 13th June with more Bridgerton I would recommend watching Queen Charlotte as it is far better than series 1 and 2. Far less on attracting a husband, and more about a young woman taking back control of her life. I also liked the lady Danbury backstory as she is one of my favourite characters!