Eloise and Benedict's dynamic is both so important and so, so sad to me because like, here are two siblings, both second-born, both have great passion, and both want something greater than the conventional life their society is offering them, they are the only two people that truly seem to understand each other, and so they really only have each other to confide in
But the thing is that Benedict is ultimately allowed to have what he wants, he gets to study art, he gets to be a rake, and explore his sexuality, he gets to marry below his station, and he gets to explore who he is, and what he wants, and nobody stops him
And then you have Eloise, who gets... none of that
While the show allows Benedict to explore who he is outside of the confines of the ton, the show—and the fandom—punishes Eloise anytime she tries to do anything that is not expected of her
She enjoys writing? Violet belittles her interests and the show absolutely refuses to allow her to pursue this
She attends political rallies? She is outed to the ton, and her entire political plotline is dropped
She falls in love with a working class man, who is literally the only person in the show who actually cares to hear what she thinks? Penelope sabotages that relationship to stop Eloise from finding out her Whistledown secret
Eloise doesn't want to get married? Violet is going to punish her for it, and when Eloise is upset about it, the show is going to demonize her, and make her apologize for not loving the tradwife lessons being forced on her
Eloise wants to be a spinster? Violet is going to punish her, and the show is going to make it seem as though what Eloise wants is ridiculous, isolating, and lonely, as if there weren't societies for spinsters as 25% of noble women in that era remained unmarried
The show lets Benedict be different, it lets Benedict explore who he is, and it rewards his unconventionality
But Eloise? She is insulted, and belittled, and constantly beaten down by everyone around her, so that when becomes a man's live-in bangmaid and stepmother to children she never wanted, the audience sees it as plausible because she's now a shell of the woman she once was
This isn't character development, this is literally a twisted alt-right fantasy of leftist/childfree women being 'fixed' by a man and conforming to societal norms, becoming tradwives because their feminism and independence was really just a byproduct of how lonely they really were or some bullshit like that
The fact that the show used essentially the same archetype for two of its main characters, but the man is rewarded for the very same traits that his female counterpart is consistently punished and humiliated by the narrative for displaying is very telling of the writers mentality, and how they view feminist/childfree women
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