Just Quietly Observing

theloise art commission by Ennwyn! They did such a lovely job ❤️

Artist credit:

"I've come to ask for your discernment." "Is that so?" "Do not look so pleased."

I’ve long grown suspicious of the side of historical romance enjoyers who seem to delight in finding new ways to say and imply and enforce this idea that women are only allowed to marry within their class—and that if they go outside of it, they must marry up. Or, if they marry down, then that man must still be wealthy, own land, and be “worthy” of her.

Fuck the poor. Fuck the thoughtful. Fuck the nice to her. Fuck the being delighted by her. Fuck the respecting her upon meeting her. Eloise needs a man who will make her struggle to become worthy of his respect. Eloise needs a man will force her to grow into a shape she never wanted to be in because the growth she has been capable of on her own is unimportant because it comes unattached to the dick of the most boring guy you’ve ever read about. Eloise needs to fall out of love with feminist scholars because the idea that she could ever join them, become their peer, or become anything like them is apparently stupid.

Because that's who Eloise is. She is witty, and opinioned, and out spoken, but she's also a good sister, she cares, and she tries to connect with them. She is always reaching out, she is always sacrificing her own interests to keep them safe and happy. She abandoned her search for knowledge in season 2 because she didn't want her association with "political radicals" to stain the reputation of her family. She always puts her family first, even over friends she loves very much. Her not wanting to discuss balls, dinner organization, suitors, and the placement of cutlery or whatever else women were expected to care about in that time does not make her a bad sister. Her having different interests than her sisters does not make her a bad sister.

Bridgerton Season 4 (2026) Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

"but what if they truly love each other- " no. eloise would still be conforming to those rules she was rightfully seeking to escape.

no matter how unconventional - not too much, obviously - they would try to make their relationship, how supportive phillip would be of her intellectual pursuits. in the end, eloise would still become the wife to a lord from the ton, conforming the way society has always wanted her to.

it would turn out eloise didn't actually know what she wanted, she just had to 'find the right gentleman' who would Allow Her to study and talk as much as she likes, safe within the limits of the golden cage that had always suffcated her - but that, really, she just had to learn to love.

So many people go on about how Eloise's arc is about "respecting women's choices" and yet the narrative makes it clear that Eloise's choices are not to be respected. All the while she is penalised for not respecting her sisters' "choices" to be wives and mothers (roles that they were groomed for since birth), the narrative is making it loud and clear that Eloise's own choices, not to marry, not to have children, not to conform to convention, to have the ability to have the experiences her brothers take for granted, are signs of her immaturity, which she most grow out of, faults and grievances cured by the miracle of "love".

The narrative then isn't supporting women's right to choose. It's about supporting women's right to choose to get married, settle down and have children. That is the only choice the female leads in Bridgerton are allowed to make.