#Anti Bridgerton

[alicentflorent]

Alright so bridgerton decided to tell a story where they gave their one dimensional 90s-esque blonde mean girl bully a story where we actually see a new side of her and see her learn to be a better person through her friendship with another woman, after previously seeing her treat other women as the enemy and competition we see her putting another woman, her new friend, before herself.

We also don’t just see this character start to grow and change but we learn of her tragic home life who in the second half of the season intends to marry her off to a 70 year old man who intends to rape her until she has at least five forced births. Then she tried to tell her so called women’s rights activist best friend who doesn’t listen because she only cares about her own problems, her mother also won’t help, society doesn’t care so she makes a desperate attempt by declaring herself as whistledown to gain money in her own right to take care of herself and get herself out of the marriage. The silver lining is she actually did manage to get herself out of the marriage so it was a smart move in saving herself but her so called progressive friend makes out that this is means Cressida was always just a bad person and the so called friend never looks at it from the perspective of a woman’s desperation to be free, despite women having freedom has been a major plot point this season and Eloise wants women to be different from societal expectations but no, not like that, not in away that I don’t find morally acceptable. Eloise coud have helped Cressida, the only person to show Eloise kindness and friendship when she needed someone, escape her horrible circumstances regardless of whether she “deserves” help.

But i guess the writers decided despite the development Cressida is a mean girl at heart and did something unforgiveable (but the real whistledown is forgiven quickly) so then they for some reason do a complete 180 and have her resort back to gossiping mean girl who bullies and spreads untrue rumours so that they can justify sending her away to live miserably to make Penelope’s happy ending more cliche by getting rid of her bully instead of making her a nuanced interesting character.

[dusty-daydreams]

I think Bridgerton ruined itself when it stopped giving scandals their proper weight.

In the scene between Colin and Cressida in the final episode of season three Colin seems pretty convinced that Cressida just needs to spend the off season or perhaps a year or two being quiet in the countryside and then people will forgive her and let her back into society.

This feels ludicrous- because that’s not how societies based on reputation work.

However, for all that Bridgerton claims to be about the dynamics of reputation, it shies away from consequences.

This is perhaps most clearly seen in Eloise’s story. At the end of season 2, Eloise is ruined - outed as convorting with not only men unchaperoned but working class political radicals. Her name, and to a large extent her family’s name should be mud. Should be poison.

Then in the first episode of season 3 Eloise is out and about at society events with no comment on it at all.

If the show actually did what it claimed too - be telling a romance story in a setting where scandals can make or break you, Eloise would not be welcome back in society.

Another example of Bridgerton failing the follow through with the scandals is how they decided to partially write Anthony and Kate out of the show.

The writers were confronted with a problem - Johnathan Bailey has outgrown this show - so how do we write him out?

They decided first to send him and his wife on an illogical second honeymoon and then they decide that Anthony ‘overprotective’ Bridgerton would be fine taking his pregnant wife across the world on a multi-month journey.

This is all especially illogical when the answer to their problem comes in taking the scandals of last season properly.

They could have easily had Anthony and Kate decide to stay home at Aubry Hall and spare his family the direct association between himself and the HUGE scandal that was their relationship last season. They could still have had Anthony and Kate pop back up to do the scenes they need to as the couple “visiting the family in London” but if the scandals consequences were taken seriously, it would make sense why they aren’t in the show that much, they just decided to avoid society and stay home in the country.

Which brings me to the reason why they seemingly decided to abandon the scandals having consequences.

Because the biggest scandal monger suddenly became the main character this season. Which meant that if her actions had REALISTIC visible negative consequences it would be hard to root for her.

Which means that Bridgerton sacrificed its Stakes and its Drama so that Penelope Featherington would be likeable - because they weren’t willing to have her put in the work to truly improve

[alicentsaegon]

They actually took the BEST male love interest in all of the Bridgerton universe and made him into a woman destroying both his and Francesca's characters and arcs going forward.... Like I'm sorry but the gender roles Michael and Francesca have are integral to their story... The infertility, Michael inheriting all of John's estate and title....and the guilt that comes with it. They even give him John's old clothes to wear

[lovelyo]

aight, why didn’t the show, since it wants to firmly believe that they’re all about feminism and what not, try to counter Cressida’s mom’s ideology of women being enemies by having Pen and Cressida put their differences aside and work together to get through their situations, show a sign of solidarity amongst women.

if the writers didn’t dope Eloise up with dumbass gas, she could’ve convinced Penelope to help Cressida, since she’s the bastion of women’s right and she wants to help young women see that their rights don’t have to be compromised cause of the patriarchy, right? Start small and be the middle man between Pen and Cressida and get them to see that they’re more alike than they really think and see that both their reasons come from feeling powerless. The rest really takes care of itself.

but alas, that requires thinking and not wanking off Penelope.

[kanthonyism]

Even after spending two seasons with Kate, we still don't know what her Father's name is or her Mother's name or the name of town/area she grew up in India...

Especially given how in the books two of Kate and Anthony's children are named after Kate's mum and dad (Miles and Charlotte)

Predictably that is not their name since both of them are of Indian descent and yet Kate's story line and the lack of screentime to develop her further and downplaying her trauma (Library Scene Season 2) still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Especially after the Sheffield Dinner scene where Kate said, "My mother has a name" Well then what is it Rachel????

You'd think considering that the show runners shipped them to India at the end of Season 3, we'd atleast get the name of the town or the state where Kate grew up and would take Anthony rather than vague descriptors about how it is such a charming place and blah blah

UGH It is so frustrating to see how Kate's storyline is always an afterthought for the writers, best believe they'd make up her lore when it's most convenient for them

[penstealingghost]

I do think a lot of period dramas and historical novels (not just Bridgerton but they don't get a pass) don't understand why Jane Austen is a household name. They think its just about romance and pretty dresses. Just ignoring all the social commentary that still lights up book club debates. I need writers to consider that the setting informs the themes of a story.

[artcinemas]

the racism and antiblackness in the bridgerton fandom might be the only period accurate thing about this show.

[strideofpride]

Does Bridgerton ever break from the “experienced man teaches inexperienced woman all about sex” model? Or is that just like the entire point of the show?

[hussyknee]

The book covers of Regency romance novels are an absolute crime, but in Cecilia Grant's case they're nothing short of absurd. You could maybe excuse some of these half dressed gym bros in breeches cradling heroines either swathed in satin sheets or off-the-rack prom dresses if the contents are some kind escapist erotica in a setting that could pass as the Regency era on a porn set, à la Bridgerton. But when it's something like Grant's Blackshear Family novels, the covers go from ordinary crime to war crime.

Grant's writing is beautiful, very introspective, slightly antiquarian and almost literary. The Blackshear novels are very touching mediations on love and desire and social injustice within the dictates of respectability and vulnerability of the landed gentry, not the aristocracy, travelling everywhere from the tenant homes and farms of country estates to the gambling hells of London to field hospitals crammed with the dead and dying of the Battle of Quatre Bras. The sex scenes are well done, but they're slower burn than a beeswax candle and definitely not the point of the stories at all. They're about how people in history lived and loved.

The covers for the books?

What, I say, the fucketh?

The treatment of this entire genre and its writers by the publishing industry is a study in misogynistic contempt. It doesn't matter whether they're queer or het, or fantasy or mystery or historical or all of them. Anything tarred with the brush of romance and a feminine readership is considered "chic lit" and therefore not worthy of proper editing or halfway respectful or even relevant covers, much less critical recognition.

[vicontheinternet]

So Penelope can be the gossip girl of regency era calling whores and other thing and caused marina to almost die but she’s still the victim Eloise hanging out with Cressida is where yall draw the line

[absolutechaosss]

Long stopped giving a fuck about Bridgerton but man it makes me upset how Marina was treated and used as a stepping stone to Penelope's romance. Penelope did a fucked up, violating thing to get her way and the narrative seems to simply not care? Maybe I'll be wrong once season 3 comes around, but Marinas treatment really soured the show for me, it was shitty writing and she was the only black female love interest in season 1.

[dusty-daydreams]

Ah yes the radical feminist act to be a gossip columnist that tears women down for not living by the strict social code that you yourself are rebelling against by being a gossip columnist

[alicentsaegon]

Gender discourse aside for one moment, am I the only one angered they made Francesca seem the bessoted one while meeting Michael/Michaela and not the other way around. That completely ruins her character. The entire point of the story is that Michael has been in love with Francesca for years knowing full well she would never, ever betray John, emotionally or otherwise. Ironically that's what Michael admires her for, he tells her so himself. That's what makes it tragic and beautiful.

[junewongapologia]

The fact is tho that no matter how you look at it, no matter how insufferable she is, no matter how Out Of Touch, regardless of whether she’s doing herself no favours: Eloise is right about society and just about everyone else in the show is wrong.

Like, she’s not got the full picture, she’s blinkered and her political philosophy is not very in depth or well thought out. But she’s right, and I think that’s why a lot of people watching really don’t like her because she’s breaking the illusion. All in all, the 1810s were a shit time to be alive for most people, and you can “well actually” it all you like, but the Luddite movement existed for a reason, the Chartists existed for a reason, Porto-feminist writers like Wollstonecraft and de Gouges wrote what they did for a reason.

So when you keep being reminded that it was a terrible social order for women - in a show targeted mainly towards women for escapist purposes then that character is going to come across as irritating, because she’s ruining the immersion.

Really, her attitude isn’t more anachronistic than the dresses, or the hairdos, or the diamond necklaces (men and women had been advocating women’s right to vote since before Eloise was born, lads), but it’s a problem because people are watching the show for the sweeping romances and the general regency vibe, they don’t want to think about how the regency was for most people. Which inevitably leads to some incredible projection, when watchers of a show with the central conceit of only being interested in the love lives of the top one percent of the one percent of the British aristocracy acting as though Eloise is the only privileged person on the show.

And yeah, she is better off than most of the people who exist in all of Regency Britain (though if you were to take the show as read, Britain is made up of about 70% aristocracy, 1% gentry, 5% urban bourgeoisie and 24% urban workers), but she’s the only one whose privilege is harped on out of her whole family and social circle. 99% of the speaking characters in the show come from a posher background than Beau fucking Brummell.

And! Eloise is literally just about the only main character who ever has to question her privilege! And when she is in season 2 she doesn’t throw a shitfit, she’s willing to learn! She goes out of her way to hear perspectives that she wouldn’t have heard in her social circle! But the narrative punishes her for that, and that’s because for all the criticism she gets about needing her privilege checked, they don’t actually want her to learn, they just want her to shut up and enjoy the trappings of regency decadence as much as they do.

Also - I know it’s really fashionable to rag on “pick-mes” and “Not Like Other Girls” - but actually, no, “traditional femininity” has never been socially unacceptable for women the way being GNC is, and it is in fact ruthlessly socially enforced against GNC women, even more so in the 1810s. Eloise is a teenaged girl in a society that stigmatises her for her wish for more legal autonomy, the idea that she’s somehow the villain for not being able to enjoy “feminine” hobbies without seeing them as just another element of the way women’s education is trivialised as ornamental, is farcical. “Sewing is a valuable and useful skill” so is cooking, but there’s a reason my mam, and not my dad, had home economics lessons, and that reason is still misogyny, despite the fact that it set her up better for being able to operate independently as an adult.

Idk I’m just kind of uncomfortable that in a world of rising reactionary political sentiment towards women, and this seemingly increasingly re-normalised view that women need to be wives and homemakers, people feel that the person on the show who needs to do the most introspection regarding their politics is an eighteen-year-old who is vocal about the fact that she has limited legal rights, and not any of the adult men in the show (a lot of whom probably have seats in the Upper House!!!) who never mention politics at all.

And frankly, given the shower who were Having Political Opinions in the long eighteenth century, Eloise’s brand of semi-anachronistic protofeminism is infinitely preferable to Hannah “I refuse to teach the poor how to write in my schools” More, or Edmund “don’t read my big thesis on revolutions too closely it’s definitely not all lies and junk history” Burke, or even a load of prominent members of the Bluestocking Society.

[whenthegoldrays]

Bridgerton has done so much harm to society

[bibliophilicstranger]

I miss period dramas that felt like period dramas.