to me, Eloise's story is, in many ways, a tragedy. an elegy to girlhood and rebellion. the girl who one said 'suppose I want to fly'. the girl who dressed as Joan of Arc. the girl who spoke of wanting to attend university, of not wanting children, of fairness and the rights of woman. we watch her get cut down smaller and smaller until it feels like what's left is more a shell. not a growing up, but a growing in.
the people who are saying that Eloise falling in love is just a well known trope in this kind of genre miss the point. the ones who say that Eloise can still be a feminist and a mother and wife are missing the point. of course she can. many, many well known feminists are wives and mothers.
but they fought, and continue to fight, for women to be able to choose that path, if they so desire it.
and Eloise doesn't. she does not want the life she is being, inevitably, yanked toward. I'm sure the show will depict her happy. I'm sure the show will depict her fulfilled. I'm sure the show will even say she's the happiest and most fulfilled she's ever been and oh, how silly she ran from this for so long.
but Eloise is more, now, than just a character in Bridgerton. in many ways, she is one of the few characters who has transcended the show. she represents the countless women who put their girlhood dreams of freedom and equality on a shelf, who slowly, ever so slowly, became crushed beneath the boot of patriarchy. who conformed. because otherwise, what is the outcome? there is little choice but to conform. in that slow, dripping, insidious violence so many of us face. what she says does not matter. no one wants to listen. her anger, her sorrow, her flailing against the system she is trapped within- all washed away from her until her rebellion and righteous fighting spirit is bloodless and limp.
the show does to Eloise what the world does to so many women- silences them, and hushes them, and tells them they are wrong. but she's not wrong. she's not wrong for being terrified of childbirth, for not desiring it, especially in a time when it has such a high likelihood of resulting in her death. she's not wrong for raging against being forced to speak only of 'acceptable' things, embroidery and dances and gossip, when other topics are only confined and barred from her because she's a woman, of finding so many women in her life, who are not as enlightened or already crushed or kept in the dark purposefully, frustrating, for wanting to push back against the system she is ensnared inside of, for criticizing it. she's not wrong for pointing out the realities of marriage for women.
women were property. that is the life she lives. upon marrying, she becomes the property of, essentially, a stranger. all she owns, all she is. hardly even a person. why should she not fight against that?
feminists get married. feminists have children. feminists find much joy in these pursuits. but let's not mince words here. historically, what women faced at the hands of their husbands was horrific. and we had no protection from them. there is a reason killing one's abusive husband is such a trope, historically. and people are so fast to point out how feminists can be married and mothers, when many feminists also remain single and childless. but one outcome is considered significantly less acceptable than the other. it isn't that Eloise is in a romantic show and so of course that will be her outcome. it's that Eloise lives in the world she lives in. and Eloise flays it open for us to see how absolutely brutal it is. how cruel. how choiceless. how narrow.
she does not even get to know what sex is. she does not get to go to university. or travel. she does not get to attend rallies or clubs. she does not get to know what she so desperately wants to know. we watch her world collapse in on her, the walls cramping closer and closer. we watch her crumble. give up on her dreams. even her best friend keeps her in the dark after she's married. the female solidarity that Eloise believed them to have in Season 1, that they both would find out how one came to be with child so she could prevent it from happening to her, is gone. Penelope knows. And Penelope does not tell her. her siblings know, and her siblings do not tell her. her brothers get to party and drink and explore themselves, they get to go to beautiful places and learn about them, drop out of school on a whim, have relationships with no permanence, use their money as they please with no one to bar them from doing so. and Eloise?
Eloise gets to comment on the unfairness and then be dismissed and disregarded. Eloise gets to bang her fists against the glass until she tires. Eloise gets to ebb away, piece by piece, chipped at and ignored, until she's quiet. Until she gives up. Until she loses the battle and has no taste for the war. Until she tries to make connection after connection, but is ultimately pushed to the margins, those relationships fraying or thinning. Until she's alone and the only pathway to the world she has left is one in which she marries, puts her girlhood dreams and rebellion forever on a shelf, the way Violet did, and accepts that she's lost. that the fight she fought was always a losing a battle. that there was never any hope of her winning, no matter how ardently she tried.
and you want to tell me that's not heartbreaking?
