March 4, 2021 • 35 mins
The marriage market in the world of Bridgerton is a strategic dance of advancing family fortune and political clout. The accompanying debutante presentations before the real-life monarchy were phased out decades ago by Queen Elizabeth II. But Executive Producer Betsy Beers shares why it’s the kind of snow globe of rules and social codes Shondaland likes to shake up.
On this episode the hosts explore the rites of exclusive Regency spouse-shopping. Author Julia Quinn also makes her first appearance on the podcast to ponder the stories of men and women who weren’t invited to the matchmaking balls.
Executive Producers: Lauren Hohman, Sandie Bailey, Holly Frey, Gabrielle Collins
Producer: Chris Van Dusen
Editor: Chandler Mays
Host/Guest-hosts: Gabrielle Collins, Dr. Hannah Greig, Jess Brownell
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bridgeton The Official Podcast is a partnership between Shondaland Audio
and iHeartRadio. I would love for us to on this
episode kind of get into that I don't know how
many people are really familiar with the marriage market, and
that it was a real thing, and that in so
many sorry, that was perfect, the marriage market cooling, that's
(00:25):
the marriage I think it's fad acts, but maybe that's
my husband right. Welcome to Bridgerton the Official Podcast. I'm
your behind the scenes guide Gabrielle Collins, and I'm historian
Hannah Craig. I'm television writer Jess Brownell and on this
(00:46):
episode we are going to talk about why I actually
think the marriage mart sounds amazing. There's an asterisk, though,
sort of. Last episode, we took our first steps behind
the scenes of Bridgerton by visiting the show's historic locales
with production designer Will Hughes Jones and showrunner Chris Van Deusen.
(01:07):
We thought the physical setting of Bridgerton would be a
fun way to peel back some of the layers of storytelling.
On this episode, we're going for the heart the marriage market.
We are talking about the political dance of advancing family
fortune and rights, and I'm not talking about the underbelly
of this game. Everyone here is of age and has agency.
(01:33):
So much hasn't changed, just kind of the Veneer has,
and so I think that's what we can get into
in this episode. The whole idea of matchmaking and the
marriage market is such a great way to get into
the centerpiece of the show. Also a really great way
to get to know you too a little better, Hannah,
being an expert in eighteenth and nineteenth century humans. Yes,
(01:56):
I am, and I think talking about ray months is
the great way to get into Bridgeton. And even though
Jess can't tell us that much about season two, I
think we can be pretty sure there's going to be
romance and love. So everyone. If you'll remember Jess as
a writer who cut her teeth on Scandal or is
the saying cut your gums? No, Well, she helped to
give us season one of Bridgerton, which is streaming on Netflix,
(02:19):
and she's the keeper of season two secrets. You know,
I actually just booked my flight to London for season
two production. Oh all happening. It's beginning. The sets are
going up, the actors are getting ready. We are about
to start filming Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah. When we
talked with Golda, she said she had gone in for
(02:41):
like an eight hour dress and wig fitting. Wow, and
saw Luke Benedict. Yeah, there's a Benedict Luke and a
call in Luke. Yeah. So it sounds like it's exciting. Yeah.
I did my own sort of costume fitting. I had
to buy some roll sweaters and coats. I'm coming from
(03:02):
Los Angeles, where my wardrobe is T shirts and jeans.
So what is the weather like? They're La Hannah. It's
pretty cold and dank and drizzily and all the other
onesful wets we've got for rain. Dank really does not
sound appealing. It Isn't there a cozier way to say
that things are wet and gloomy? No, I could give
(03:23):
you the full dictione. When you get hit, Jess, you're
gonna need a lot of different words for rain. Yeah.
And of course, Jess, you are giving us our first
I think true tour of the bridgetin writers room this episode. Yes, absolutely,
I'm really excited to pull up that proverbial seat we've
been talking about. I do think the marriage mark, you know,
it's where all of our discussions started. It is the
(03:44):
heart of the show. It's the engine of the show.
The number of times in the writer's room we use
the words ambitious mamas Rakes and ambitious Mamma and the
young ladies. Yeah, it's all about the you know, those
are the players in the game of marriage mart You know,
I think in some ways you can think of it
a bit like a chess game, and everyone has their moves.
(04:07):
Some people can go diagonal, some people can go across
the board. People are watching from the sidelines. But yeah,
we were always thinking about you know, the balls aren't
just there to be pretty. They are the set piece
where all of our storylines crossed together. And it's not
just the story of you know, who's going to date who,
who's going to marry who. It's also the place where
(04:31):
all of society gathers to see and be seen, and
so you get every single storyline crossing there. And it
was a great setting for drama and for stakes and
play out all of our juicy setups. Yeah, I felt
like it's like it's the perfect way to begin to
peel the layers of Bridgeton and all that went into
(04:53):
taking this book series and putting it on screen. And
also I just was really taken a back how normal
actually the marriage market seemed to me. Well, I think
even I think people are deluding themselves if they think
we have any less rules today. I think we have
(05:13):
more equality obviously, and I think women were, you know,
much more at a disadvantage in the marriage mart era.
But you know all the rules we have about like
don't call, like calling then cool, You've got a text
and never double text, and like if you use like
an exclamation point in your text messaging, like that comes
off as a little bit desperate. And you know the
(05:35):
Tinder rules and the way that we present ourselves on Instagram,
like you only you know, don't post too many selfies,
but you've got to post enough to keep people interested.
Like there are just as many strictures and rules around
the way we present ourselves. We have our own maybe
not marriage mart, it's not all about marriage in the
same way, but we have our own dating mart. And
(05:56):
so I think I'm pre defending myself because I hear
Chris has heard that I think there's actually some positives
to the marriage mart and its outraged. So I just
want to make it clear that as a feminist, no,
I do. I think the marriage mart was better, but
I can admire that at least the rules were a
(06:17):
little bit more delineated and a little bit more clear.
Like I remember in my single days reading, you know,
like the titles that come out about like he's just
not that into you, or you know, then you get
the opposite book telling you to like just go for
him or whatever. There's all these mixed messages and at
least in this era, you really you knew how things worked.
(06:37):
You you know what to expect for the most part. Well,
I would say in the Bridgeton marriage market, there's a
lot of really attractive people to you know, it's pretty exciting,
I think. I mean, I like the suggestion that you
said that you know, the marriage markets like this game
of chest, and I really love the idea where everyone's
plotting their moves and also thinking ahead, like it's not
(06:57):
just in the moment, but also what your two moves
you know, further down the line, and things like that.
I think it's really neat analogy that works. Yeah, I
think we delude ourselves if we think we've got total
free choice today, because even today we meet people and
date people and partner people to marry people who within
our social network in some way, like and if we
move significantly outside that network and it was like, oh
(07:19):
my goodness, what are you doing? That's crazy And that's
not so different to the bidgeton. Yeah, so I can
see why people identify with it. Hearing you say it back, Hannah,
I think that all like the marriage mart all taking
place in a ballroom and everyone being there and getting
to know what's happening, Like you know, we now don't
really know what's going on, and we don't really you know,
if you meet someone at a bar, you don't really
(07:40):
know what their deal is. I guess checking out their
Instagram is our modern day version of like scoping them
out on a ballroom floor. But there's something I would
imagine nice about, like you have been at every social
engagement that everyone else has been, you know exactly how
that gentleman comports themselves or is he a job? You know,
(08:01):
and everyone kind of knew everything that was going on,
for better or worse. And there's a dark side to
that of course, that like you can't live your life
in private, and if you stick out from being exactly
what you're supposed to be. I'm sure that it was torture,
so no, let me reiterate, please edit this sin. I
do not think the marriage Mart is better. I think
(08:22):
it was completely restrictive. I mean, the entire point of
our time in the writer's room was like, how do
we explore the ways in which the marriage mart is
a prison for women? And I'm very much aware of that.
It is absolutely just an intellectual exercise that I find enjoyable.
Would I switch places with anyone in the marriage Mart?
Absolutely not. No, thank you, Jess. Why do you think
(08:44):
Shondaland loved playing in this playground of the marriage Mart? Yeah.
I think we've talked about this a little bit. I
think Shondaland does longing really well. And I think we've
talked about how on Scandal, Olivia Pope is in love
with the President and that creates a real obstacle to
them getting together, which creates real longing. On Grey's Anatomy,
(09:07):
Meredith Gray realizes her one night stands her boss, and
that is another great obstacle that provides real longing. And
you know, I think there are fewer and fewer obstacles
in modern life, which is a good thing. The more
people can choose who they want to be with the better.
But great television is not made on things being really easy,
(09:28):
and so the marriage mart and the regency era and
all of the strict rules around who can be with
who and how they can be with that person make
for some really fraught, sexy energy and I think it
is a very Shonda Land show for those reasons. I
know that Betsy and Chris and Shonda were all very
(09:49):
excited about the fact that Julia Quinn's books aren't perhaps
normal period pieces in that the women do have I think,
a lot more agency than an average woman in regency times,
again within what's available to them. You know, I loved
Doctor Hannah was saying something about how Daphne when she's
(10:10):
in the marriage Mart, her fan and her outfits are
her weapons. You know, Yeah, we really tried to show that.
You know, just like Olivia Pope is, you know, this
badass crisis manager, and just like Meredith Gray is an
incredible doctor who saves lives, Daphne is incredible at the
marriage Mart. She's cunning, and so she figures out how
(10:33):
to work it for herself, and so I do think
that that makes her a Shondolin protagonist in a period
appropriate way. And I know that Shonda and Chris and
Betsy all really took to the books for those reasons.
Let's go back to the beginning. So the London season
is where families descend on their London mansions to Parliament
(10:56):
and to party. The debutante presentation and mansion balls we
see in Bridgeton were phased out decades ago by Queen
Elizabeth the Second. But Shonda Rhimes's longtime producing partner Betsy
Beers and creator Chris Vandusen say, all of that emotion
wound up in the marriage market is as relatable today
as it was then. There are all these rules that
(11:20):
men and women of the time had to follow. They
knew what was expected of them, they knew how to behave,
they knew how not to behave. There's this idea that
the young lady is just kind of put in her
clothes and tied up in her corset and just put
out there in the marriage market like it's the most wonderful,
delightful thing, but it's actually not. It's actually the opposite.
(11:41):
That point of view contrastic with actually watching the characters
just gives the story so many layers. That's Betsy Beers
the Golden Globe winning television producer behind Your Favorites, Grace, Anatomy, Duh, Scandal, Hello,
Betsy's also no stranger to producing a show with pent
up love, triangle, disaster situationships. Julia Quinn presents a number
(12:06):
of characters, all of whom are stuck in their world,
the women who are stuck in a position where they
have no alternative but to be married off to somebody
or to find the most appropriate marriage. And as Daphney
Bridgerton says, this is all she was born and raised
to do right. And I love the idea that, on
one hand there's a Daphney Bridgerton who's desperately trying to
(12:27):
do her duty, and over the course of the book
and the season, is this idea that she grows into
being her own woman. Contrasted with that there's Eloise, who's
you know, I think for a lot of us represents
a very modern point of view, which is, why is
this my only option? So Daphney may be in love?
(12:47):
Does she think it an accomplishment? What exactly she accomplishton
as I say, is probably that's ahead and having a
nice face in pleasant head an accomplishment. Do you know
what is an accomplishment attending univerity far a man I
could do that, you know, I said, I should have
to stand by and watch dammm hit proud, because some
man should like to admire a sister's face and head
(13:08):
and fill her up with babies. Daphne is the eldest
daughter in that family, and everything Daphne does will set
up her sister's chances for success or not for success.
Her marrying well allows Eloise, Francesca, Hyacinth to all make
to all have the opportunity to make just as good matches,
(13:32):
whereas unfortunately, if she marries lower than it brings some
sort of shame onto the family. So I think you
have to appreciate how much pressure Daphne is under. And
it's not just self serving. She is really trying to
do the best for her family. Every single woman, I think,
in the course of this story is confronting a different
(13:52):
sort of dilemma which comes out of the limitations of society.
There's a lot about that even now that I think
we all look at and say, we may not be
technically married off in the same way, but a lot
of similar pressures exist, and the pressures exist for the
men in this book too, which is one of the
things I think is wonderful about it, which is that
(14:13):
the men also are expected to create a particular life
for themselves, and when they do not follow that norm,
they are either shunned from society or they are punished
or shamed by their family. So you have Anthony, who
more than anything in the world, wants to be with
a woman who is not of his class, and he
(14:33):
cannot be with and he has to give that up
in order to do his duty. And you have Simon
who does not want progeny, does not want the family
line to continue, and that is such a shocking concept.
It's something he doesn't speak of. Although Daphne is not
someone like Eloise who is trying to forego the institution
(14:57):
of marriage, or really you make a an entirely new
path as a woman. The fact that she is a
woman who wants to have more than marriage, who wants
to have a career, she probably isn't an anomaly for
that era, and I don't think there were many women
who were even given the opportunity to imagine they could
(15:18):
have more than marriage. She's a leading lady of the
Shaunalin brand because She's conflicted and it's not simple, and
she's going through a process whereby the end of the
season she's consciously made a choice about what she wants
and who she wants to be, and that, to me
is an interesting and worthy heroine. I've always thought of
(15:41):
the first season as the education of Daphne Bridgerton. She
starts out as this picture perfect, wide eyed and innocent debutante,
and she grows into this woman who gets to shed
all the constraints society has held her too, and she
finally figures out who she really is and what she's
capable of. That vacation is really her arc for this
(16:02):
entire first season. She's finding her agency. And what we're
really saying is that this world, even though it's set
two hundred years ago, women were strategizing on ways to
find their agency and become their own person, even back
in eighteen thirteen. My first impression of Daphne was all wrong.
(16:23):
It was so wrong. I had her pegged as this
go along with society type of chick. Not considering the
marriage market is something Daphney not only wants to participate in,
she wants to excel in this game. There's this thing that.
I don't know who coined this term, but television critics
(16:45):
talk about competence porn being a type of thing many
viewers enjoy, and television I think Scandal and Gray's Anatomy
kind of fall into that. Like we love watching people
be really good at their job, we do, you know,
And that's why I think we love watching doctor shows
and lawyer shows, because it's really fun to see people
be hyper competent. And I do think that Bridgerton weirdly
(17:09):
falls into that. Like Daphne might not have a job
in the traditional sense, or rather in the modern sense
the way we think of it, but her job is
the marriage mart and following all of those rules. Instead
of just following them, she weaponizes them and makes them
her bitch, you know. And I think that it is
really fun to watch her be hyper competent at the
(17:31):
marriage mark. I dropped the mike Welcome back to bridgeton
the official podcast, I'm Gabby. I'm sitting here with Jess
(17:53):
and Hannah. Before the break, we heard how the market
drew Chris and Betsy's attention. Now we're getting into the
story of matchmaking and the reason for the season spouse shopping.
You know, it's really hard, I think for us to
understand the amount of pressure that was put on both
the women and the men of this kind of high
society world, particularly for women in Bridgeton. Really we get
(18:16):
a world where people are they knew who they are
and what's expected of them. They've been living in this world,
they've been brought up in it, and now's their time.
This is their moment. You know. This London life of
the season of the marriage market was a very public life.
It was not about doing things in secret. It was
about making your status in public and making your mark.
(18:36):
Eight balls eight balls. You know, if you didn't make
it in a season, you've got one season. It's about
six months going to all these balls. If you didn't
secure your match, then in the next season you're going
to be old hats. Everyone will be like why why
why did you not make it? Really, by the time
(18:57):
of twenty seven and im Regency England, as a woman,
it's over. The bloom is gone and you're moving into
old made status and the bloom is gone. The purpose
of this arrangement is to ensure I'm married my very
first season on branches four six bills six an you
must ten flowers. You know, when I first started studying history,
(19:17):
and as a graduate student, I wasn't yet twenty seven.
I was like, oh, of course, oh, twenty sevenths old.
Of course. Then I got closer to twenty seven, I
was like, oh, no, I think I'm not very comfortable
with that. And I got past twenty seven, I was like, oh,
this is ridiculous. Right, of course, you're still you know,
blossomy your thirties and onwards, you know. So, so my
own relationship to that idea that women really had to
get a match before they're twenty seven shifted as I
(19:40):
moved myself through through the ages. And you know, for
us today, these kind of relationships were about romance, about
making your own choice, about choosing whether or not you
want to get married or not have marriages, or you
know whatever. Like we've got so much freedom of choice,
that isn't really the case in this high society world.
There's a choice within a small pool of people, carefully
selected pool, And if you're seen as the toast of
(20:03):
the season, then you want to make the best match
you can. If you don't do it within the season
and you're back again the next year, then you probably
lost the opportunity to make that match. Let's get back
to the rules, Hannah, you said that Jess said something
that kind of pew to your interest. Yeah. I like
Jess's insights into the writer's room and this idea that
(20:24):
they were trying to write from the perspective of women
in this marriage mark, and also to make it ensure
it we didn't feel like a prison, Like, how are
women trying to negotiate what seems to us to be
kind of very strict set of rules about who you
can be seen with, where you can go. You know,
we need to remember that it's only a particular group
of society. This is women who've got money and title
(20:46):
that they carry with them, so they bring a real value,
but marriage is really important to them. To be unmarried,
it's a pretty horrific future for most of these women.
So there's a really high stakes at play in the
marriage market. I think some of this things that people
find most shocking for modern women is that you couldn't
really just kind of walk up to a guy and
(21:06):
say hi, who are you and sort of start flirting
with him. There had to be some sort of formal
introduction between a man and a woman But it's not
saying that women didn't have any power, because actually they
have always had the power to say no. So if
a man came up and said, would you like to
dance with me Gabby at the next you know, quadrille
or something, you could say no, thanks, I'm fine, So
(21:28):
you could turn him down. You had the power to
turn him down, the power of refusal. How was the
dance card replicated today? Do you think? Do you think
it's like a comment on Instagram? Is it? So? The
dance card is really important because there's only a certain
number of dances that are going to happen at a
ball and they're not your sort of three and a
half a minute dance that we'd have today to Taylor
(21:50):
Swift or whatever. It's you know, ten minutes of dancing,
twenty minutes of dancing with somebody. So you might have
a dance card with about eight dancers that evening, and
as a woman, that is the control you have over
how your night's going to go. You've got to figure
out who to say yes to, who to say no to.
(22:10):
If you dance twice with somebody, then that is going
to be a statement of real interest and intent. Everyone's
going to be talking about that the next day. Everyone
is going to be in the newspapers if you dance
more than once with one particular person. So you've got
to organize your night quite carefully. So it's your secret
diary really for how your night's going to unfold, and
(22:31):
it's your gamble on what's going to happen that evening.
There was there a part of it that in a
way was a status symbol, Like it wasn't just for you,
or would a girl who filled her dance card show
it off as a way of like I'm trying to
accuit it to like likes on Instagram. You know, it's like, well,
I got eight dances tonight. I got every slot filled out,
(22:53):
so I'm hard shit. Like certainly, not being approached to
dance is like having no friends on Instagram or whatever.
Like it's you know, that's the situation you don't want
to be in. I think it's probably pretty easy to
fill your dance card, but do you want to fill
it with the right kind of rake? Haven't you the
right kind of hero? And the key is more than
(23:14):
one dance? Like that is the gold standard of the
successful evening is if he danced twice with the person
that you know, hopefully in Avigcy very much, you're gonna
end up marrying. Right, two dances leading to marriage, but
no more than two. Right, If you dance three, then
you were like in the scandal sheet the next day,
well three is hotting up? Quiet, Okay. I remember reading
(23:39):
when we were doing research for season one, you know,
reading about what some of the benefits of marriage were,
and we talk on the show about how like marriage
is the only end for a woman and so it's
like the only goal she's able to have. But it
wasn't just about the husband and the children. As I
understand it, marriage afforded a woman the ability to have
(24:01):
male friends, to go out freedom. It's freedom partly because
our romantic stories focus on the run up to marriage,
we never really hear about what happens to women after that.
And yeah, of course there are some horrifically unsuccessful marriages
and some really sad stories, but there's also lots of
(24:22):
really happy ones, and also lots of marriages that afford
women with a huge amount of power and privilege. There's
a spending power that comes as a wife because your
husband is responsible for all of the money, so although
to us that feels like you're giving up your economic freedom.
Actually it's also a root to economic freedom because you
can buy whatever you like, and your husbands it's responsible
(24:44):
for the bills. And so there is a kind of,
you know, a way of looking at that that is
about a kind of a privileged position for women. And
also you have a power like if you are the
wife of a duke and the duke has all this
authority in society extends to controlling seats in the House
of Commons, to having lots of money, to having the
(25:05):
ear of the royal family, then as his wife, you
share that power. You become a hostess in your own right.
You have access to all of those same circles. And
you know, there's a reason why you talk about the
ambitious mammas in Bridgeton, because they are the ones who
are also exercising their authority over the marriage market. And
there is nothing more important to this elite society than
(25:27):
getting these marriages right, and it's the women who run that.
And then also there's a sexual freedom after marriage for women.
So there's a sexual freedom in marriage, and there's also
an opportunity for women to pursue affairs outside marriage, you know,
if they do it in the right terms, which we
could talk about the first another time. Yeah, and I
(25:48):
remember reading about that, like as long as they don't
get caught, as long as you don't get caught. Yeah,
that's the key. Oh yeah, I will say though, as
we were talking about, you know, the marriage mark being
like a chess game earlier to it seems like the
way the real way to win the chess game is
either to make like a real love match and be
really happy, or to marry very well and then have
him die and be a widow. That's the advice I
(26:11):
always give, because then you get all the freedom and
independence and you run shit, right, unless there's like another
cousin who takes over the estate or something. Right, Yeah,
I'm like, why does Mariana want Colin so bad? He's
a baby? That is always the advice I would give
is to find a very rich, old husband and hope
(26:34):
it doesn't lasted very long, and then you have complete
freedom and oh, you have such an amount of power
and you could be Lady Danfrey for fifty years, you know,
live in your life as you like. That would be
my chess game. What about the suitors coming over the
next day, what was appropriate, what was too much? I
(26:55):
mean in bridgertain dudes came by with puppies, and that
that was a bit more surprising to me. Well, I
think the flowers and the puppies are of bridgeton visual imagination,
the visual extravagance with Bridgeton. But that's not to say
that suitors wouldn't give love tokens. I mean museums are
(27:16):
full of little tokens of admiration and love, from patchboxes
and snuff boxes to little paintings to love letters. I
love finding a love letter in the archives because sometimes
you don't know it's from an anonymous sender, and you
don't quite know like what the story is behind it,
so you could just make it up in your heads,
which you're not meant to do. Its historian by the way.
(27:39):
But you know, there's a whole world of jewelry, of
gifting jewelry. There's a bit of a strange thing about
giving things with people's hair in it. So giving a
token of your hair as a love token, and then
someone would work that into a piece of jewelry. So
sometimes it gets a bit icky. Puppy or bust. I
don't need the hair of jewelry puppy Lady Caroline Lamb
(28:05):
sent Lord Byron some of her pubic hair as a
love to in real life. In real life, Oh my God,
made fetched me some shares. Oh my god, that's a lot.
This generation of sex praised. We'll be right back, welcome back. Okay.
(28:44):
So we've talked up the toast of the season. We've
nibbled on the pressure to get married for all involved parties.
But what about the women who already made a lane
for themselves, the ones like Madonellaqua and Sienna who play
on their own terms and own businesses among the ton,
(29:06):
but aren't officially seen as the air quoting here the
marrying type, I asked Julia Quinn, author of the Ridgetine
book series. Julia obviously had our own reasons for being
drawn to the inner workings of the marriage market. Among
them were the lives of characters who were ruined spinsters,
(29:29):
all other things I heard in my maiden days. Here's
Julia scene when Anthony says like, not every woman is
a lady or something, and there's Sienna. Someone must guard
my poor sister from the box and pinks. I'm sure
how virtue remains free of any kind of definement. Daphne
is fortunates. Every woman is not afforded such gallant protection.
(29:50):
Every woman is not a lady, of course, not my lord.
It's like, oh my god, I'm like you drunk, why
would you say that? But that's sort of you know,
society is set up at that time. You know, there
are there are women and there are ladies, and men
really divide them into two groups. They're the women you marry,
and then they're the other women, and you treat them differently.
(30:11):
I think some would say it's still that way today,
across the gradient of dating and extended engagements, and which
ends up being harmful and a disrespect to both groups
of women. The women you marry not having any clue
what to expect. I mean, she's denied this knowledge, which
(30:31):
it's shameful that she doesn't know these things. And then
the women you don't marry are treated like they're not
worthy of certain types of respect. It's so distorted. You know,
we're so involved with the Bridgertons, and we love them.
They have this incredible wealth and privilege, and yet we
still like them because they're good people. But then we
still have Sienna, and you can be like, well, wait
(30:52):
a minute, these good people are still managing to inflict
some kind of harm on someone else. You actually seem
to be really intrigued with how Shondaland fleshed out the
fire between Antony and Sienna. You know, the writers of
the series just gave her this whole story that you know,
they started with a blank slake. Sienna is very briefly
(31:12):
in The Viscount Who Loved Me, although she's called Maria there,
and it's just you know, she's the person in the
books who Anthony was with before he finds Kate. So
she is not a major character in Julia Quinn's world,
but we of course wanted to broaden that world and
look at what life was like for women who were
not quote unquote ladies. And I love it because I
(31:34):
feel like it really provides a counterpoint to the rest
of the characters. I love that we get to see
Sienna a woman who is charting her own course outside
this society that we've become so invested in. I love
what a realist she is. Yeah, there's I mean, the
root of the Mistress is a very difficult one for
(31:57):
someone like Sienna because sometimes there was a happy ever after.
Occasionally there's a happy marriage at the end of that
kind of affair. There's a handful of cases where the
eligible duke does end up marrying his mistress, but more
often than not, that's not the story. The mistress has
cast aside in favor of a more eligible match, and
(32:17):
her reputation is ruined her choices to become the mistress
of somebody else. I want to just go back to
a thought that I'd put a pin in earlier. All
this talk of relating to men and women from two
or more centuries ago makes me think of matchmaking as
it plays out in church online, across continents, and in
(32:40):
social clubs today. It also makes me think back to
my conversation with Adua and Oh playing a widowed woman
hawking the duke across the social season chess board. Adua,
in playing this role, found that the marriage mart was
a really fascinating way for people watching today to appreciate
(33:01):
the depth and backstory of the female characters of Bridgeton.
I think it's a really complicated thought, actually, because I
think that all of those women, even Lady Bridgeton, they
are strategizing within really narrow parameters. Yeah, you know, they
are strategizing, they're finding the angles. Eloise's angle is I
(33:26):
don't want to get married. I don't want to do it.
And actually I'm a younger sibling, so the pressure is
not on me in the same way that it is
on Daphne. She's the first girl and her mother is
a widow and there's eight kids. She knows that she
needs to support the family, So how does she make
it the best choice that she can make within the
(33:47):
narrow configuration of what's available to her and within her
love and sense of duty towards her family, which means
she's going to do it. Yes, she's going to do it,
you know, because that's also her personality. So I think
it's fascinating. I think if you are not in a
position where you can make all the choices, you have
to strategize hard. In any society, you have to box clever. Yes,
(34:12):
I think you're watching a lot of elegant boxing clever
from a lot of people, and it looks like it's
pretty and it's skippy boo bah, it's not. It's life
and death. At some level. We're going to get more
into the life and death of romance. In a later episode,
but for now, dear listener, like, subscribe and share. I'm
(34:35):
Gabrielle Collins. Our editor is Chandler Mays. Our producers are
Chris van Dusen and Lauren Homan. Thanks for listening. Bridgetin.
The Official podcast is a production of shandaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(34:58):
Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your favorite shows.
Bridgeton The Official Podcast is a partnership between Shondaland Audio
and iHeartRadio. I would love for us to on this
episode kind of get into that I don't know how
many people are really familiar with the marriage market, and
that it was a real thing, and that in so
many sorry, that was perfect, the marriage market cooling, that's
(00:25):
the marriage I think it's fad acts, but maybe that's
my husband right. Welcome to Bridgerton the Official Podcast. I'm
your behind the scenes guide Gabrielle Collins, and I'm historian
Hannah Craig. I'm television writer Jess Brownell and on this
(00:46):
episode we are going to talk about why I actually
think the marriage mart sounds amazing. There's an asterisk, though,
sort of. Last episode, we took our first steps behind
the scenes of Bridgerton by visiting the show's historic locales
with production designer Will Hughes Jones and showrunner Chris Van Deusen.
(01:07):
We thought the physical setting of Bridgerton would be a
fun way to peel back some of the layers of storytelling.
On this episode, we're going for the heart the marriage market.
We are talking about the political dance of advancing family
fortune and rights, and I'm not talking about the underbelly
of this game. Everyone here is of age and has agency.
(01:33):
So much hasn't changed, just kind of the Veneer has,
and so I think that's what we can get into
in this episode. The whole idea of matchmaking and the
marriage market is such a great way to get into
the centerpiece of the show. Also a really great way
to get to know you too a little better, Hannah,
being an expert in eighteenth and nineteenth century humans. Yes,
(01:56):
I am, and I think talking about ray months is
the great way to get into Bridgeton. And even though
Jess can't tell us that much about season two, I
think we can be pretty sure there's going to be
romance and love. So everyone. If you'll remember Jess as
a writer who cut her teeth on Scandal or is
the saying cut your gums? No, Well, she helped to
give us season one of Bridgerton, which is streaming on Netflix,
(02:19):
and she's the keeper of season two secrets. You know,
I actually just booked my flight to London for season
two production. Oh all happening. It's beginning. The sets are
going up, the actors are getting ready. We are about
to start filming Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah. When we
talked with Golda, she said she had gone in for
(02:41):
like an eight hour dress and wig fitting. Wow, and
saw Luke Benedict. Yeah, there's a Benedict Luke and a
call in Luke. Yeah. So it sounds like it's exciting. Yeah.
I did my own sort of costume fitting. I had
to buy some roll sweaters and coats. I'm coming from
(03:02):
Los Angeles, where my wardrobe is T shirts and jeans.
So what is the weather like? They're La Hannah. It's
pretty cold and dank and drizzily and all the other
onesful wets we've got for rain. Dank really does not
sound appealing. It Isn't there a cozier way to say
that things are wet and gloomy? No, I could give
(03:23):
you the full dictione. When you get hit, Jess, you're
gonna need a lot of different words for rain. Yeah.
And of course, Jess, you are giving us our first
I think true tour of the bridgetin writers room this episode. Yes, absolutely,
I'm really excited to pull up that proverbial seat we've
been talking about. I do think the marriage mark, you know,
it's where all of our discussions started. It is the
(03:44):
heart of the show. It's the engine of the show.
The number of times in the writer's room we use
the words ambitious mamas Rakes and ambitious Mamma and the
young ladies. Yeah, it's all about the you know, those
are the players in the game of marriage mart You know,
I think in some ways you can think of it
a bit like a chess game, and everyone has their moves.
(04:07):
Some people can go diagonal, some people can go across
the board. People are watching from the sidelines. But yeah,
we were always thinking about you know, the balls aren't
just there to be pretty. They are the set piece
where all of our storylines crossed together. And it's not
just the story of you know, who's going to date who,
who's going to marry who. It's also the place where
(04:31):
all of society gathers to see and be seen, and
so you get every single storyline crossing there. And it
was a great setting for drama and for stakes and
play out all of our juicy setups. Yeah, I felt
like it's like it's the perfect way to begin to
peel the layers of Bridgeton and all that went into
(04:53):
taking this book series and putting it on screen. And
also I just was really taken a back how normal
actually the marriage market seemed to me. Well, I think
even I think people are deluding themselves if they think
we have any less rules today. I think we have
(05:13):
more equality obviously, and I think women were, you know,
much more at a disadvantage in the marriage mart era.
But you know all the rules we have about like
don't call, like calling then cool, You've got a text
and never double text, and like if you use like
an exclamation point in your text messaging, like that comes
off as a little bit desperate. And you know the
(05:35):
Tinder rules and the way that we present ourselves on Instagram,
like you only you know, don't post too many selfies,
but you've got to post enough to keep people interested.
Like there are just as many strictures and rules around
the way we present ourselves. We have our own maybe
not marriage mart, it's not all about marriage in the
same way, but we have our own dating mart. And
(05:56):
so I think I'm pre defending myself because I hear
Chris has heard that I think there's actually some positives
to the marriage mart and its outraged. So I just
want to make it clear that as a feminist, no,
I do. I think the marriage mart was better, but
I can admire that at least the rules were a
(06:17):
little bit more delineated and a little bit more clear.
Like I remember in my single days reading, you know,
like the titles that come out about like he's just
not that into you, or you know, then you get
the opposite book telling you to like just go for
him or whatever. There's all these mixed messages and at
least in this era, you really you knew how things worked.
(06:37):
You you know what to expect for the most part. Well,
I would say in the Bridgeton marriage market, there's a
lot of really attractive people to you know, it's pretty exciting,
I think. I mean, I like the suggestion that you
said that you know, the marriage markets like this game
of chest, and I really love the idea where everyone's
plotting their moves and also thinking ahead, like it's not
(06:57):
just in the moment, but also what your two moves
you know, further down the line, and things like that.
I think it's really neat analogy that works. Yeah, I
think we delude ourselves if we think we've got total
free choice today, because even today we meet people and
date people and partner people to marry people who within
our social network in some way, like and if we
move significantly outside that network and it was like, oh
(07:19):
my goodness, what are you doing? That's crazy And that's
not so different to the bidgeton. Yeah, so I can
see why people identify with it. Hearing you say it back, Hannah,
I think that all like the marriage mart all taking
place in a ballroom and everyone being there and getting
to know what's happening, Like you know, we now don't
really know what's going on, and we don't really you know,
if you meet someone at a bar, you don't really
(07:40):
know what their deal is. I guess checking out their
Instagram is our modern day version of like scoping them
out on a ballroom floor. But there's something I would
imagine nice about, like you have been at every social
engagement that everyone else has been, you know exactly how
that gentleman comports themselves or is he a job? You know,
(08:01):
and everyone kind of knew everything that was going on,
for better or worse. And there's a dark side to
that of course, that like you can't live your life
in private, and if you stick out from being exactly
what you're supposed to be. I'm sure that it was torture,
so no, let me reiterate, please edit this sin. I
do not think the marriage Mart is better. I think
(08:22):
it was completely restrictive. I mean, the entire point of
our time in the writer's room was like, how do
we explore the ways in which the marriage mart is
a prison for women? And I'm very much aware of that.
It is absolutely just an intellectual exercise that I find enjoyable.
Would I switch places with anyone in the marriage Mart?
Absolutely not. No, thank you, Jess. Why do you think
(08:44):
Shondaland loved playing in this playground of the marriage Mart? Yeah.
I think we've talked about this a little bit. I
think Shondaland does longing really well. And I think we've
talked about how on Scandal, Olivia Pope is in love
with the President and that creates a real obstacle to
them getting together, which creates real longing. On Grey's Anatomy,
(09:07):
Meredith Gray realizes her one night stands her boss, and
that is another great obstacle that provides real longing. And
you know, I think there are fewer and fewer obstacles
in modern life, which is a good thing. The more
people can choose who they want to be with the better.
But great television is not made on things being really easy,
(09:28):
and so the marriage mart and the regency era and
all of the strict rules around who can be with
who and how they can be with that person make
for some really fraught, sexy energy and I think it
is a very Shonda Land show for those reasons. I
know that Betsy and Chris and Shonda were all very
(09:49):
excited about the fact that Julia Quinn's books aren't perhaps
normal period pieces in that the women do have I think,
a lot more agency than an average woman in regency times,
again within what's available to them. You know, I loved
Doctor Hannah was saying something about how Daphne when she's
(10:10):
in the marriage Mart, her fan and her outfits are
her weapons. You know, Yeah, we really tried to show that.
You know, just like Olivia Pope is, you know, this
badass crisis manager, and just like Meredith Gray is an
incredible doctor who saves lives, Daphne is incredible at the
marriage Mart. She's cunning, and so she figures out how
(10:33):
to work it for herself, and so I do think
that that makes her a Shondolin protagonist in a period
appropriate way. And I know that Shonda and Chris and
Betsy all really took to the books for those reasons.
Let's go back to the beginning. So the London season
is where families descend on their London mansions to Parliament
(10:56):
and to party. The debutante presentation and mansion balls we
see in Bridgeton were phased out decades ago by Queen
Elizabeth the Second. But Shonda Rhimes's longtime producing partner Betsy
Beers and creator Chris Vandusen say, all of that emotion
wound up in the marriage market is as relatable today
as it was then. There are all these rules that
(11:20):
men and women of the time had to follow. They
knew what was expected of them, they knew how to behave,
they knew how not to behave. There's this idea that
the young lady is just kind of put in her
clothes and tied up in her corset and just put
out there in the marriage market like it's the most wonderful,
delightful thing, but it's actually not. It's actually the opposite.
(11:41):
That point of view contrastic with actually watching the characters
just gives the story so many layers. That's Betsy Beers
the Golden Globe winning television producer behind Your Favorites, Grace, Anatomy, Duh, Scandal, Hello,
Betsy's also no stranger to producing a show with pent
up love, triangle, disaster situationships. Julia Quinn presents a number
(12:06):
of characters, all of whom are stuck in their world,
the women who are stuck in a position where they
have no alternative but to be married off to somebody
or to find the most appropriate marriage. And as Daphney
Bridgerton says, this is all she was born and raised
to do right. And I love the idea that, on
one hand there's a Daphney Bridgerton who's desperately trying to
(12:27):
do her duty, and over the course of the book
and the season, is this idea that she grows into
being her own woman. Contrasted with that there's Eloise, who's
you know, I think for a lot of us represents
a very modern point of view, which is, why is
this my only option? So Daphney may be in love?
(12:47):
Does she think it an accomplishment? What exactly she accomplishton
as I say, is probably that's ahead and having a
nice face in pleasant head an accomplishment. Do you know
what is an accomplishment attending univerity far a man I
could do that, you know, I said, I should have
to stand by and watch dammm hit proud, because some
man should like to admire a sister's face and head
(13:08):
and fill her up with babies. Daphne is the eldest
daughter in that family, and everything Daphne does will set
up her sister's chances for success or not for success.
Her marrying well allows Eloise, Francesca, Hyacinth to all make
to all have the opportunity to make just as good matches,
(13:32):
whereas unfortunately, if she marries lower than it brings some
sort of shame onto the family. So I think you
have to appreciate how much pressure Daphne is under. And
it's not just self serving. She is really trying to
do the best for her family. Every single woman, I think,
in the course of this story is confronting a different
(13:52):
sort of dilemma which comes out of the limitations of society.
There's a lot about that even now that I think
we all look at and say, we may not be
technically married off in the same way, but a lot
of similar pressures exist, and the pressures exist for the
men in this book too, which is one of the
things I think is wonderful about it, which is that
(14:13):
the men also are expected to create a particular life
for themselves, and when they do not follow that norm,
they are either shunned from society or they are punished
or shamed by their family. So you have Anthony, who
more than anything in the world, wants to be with
a woman who is not of his class, and he
(14:33):
cannot be with and he has to give that up
in order to do his duty. And you have Simon
who does not want progeny, does not want the family
line to continue, and that is such a shocking concept.
It's something he doesn't speak of. Although Daphne is not
someone like Eloise who is trying to forego the institution
(14:57):
of marriage, or really you make a an entirely new
path as a woman. The fact that she is a
woman who wants to have more than marriage, who wants
to have a career, she probably isn't an anomaly for
that era, and I don't think there were many women
who were even given the opportunity to imagine they could
(15:18):
have more than marriage. She's a leading lady of the
Shaunalin brand because She's conflicted and it's not simple, and
she's going through a process whereby the end of the
season she's consciously made a choice about what she wants
and who she wants to be, and that, to me
is an interesting and worthy heroine. I've always thought of
(15:41):
the first season as the education of Daphne Bridgerton. She
starts out as this picture perfect, wide eyed and innocent debutante,
and she grows into this woman who gets to shed
all the constraints society has held her too, and she
finally figures out who she really is and what she's
capable of. That vacation is really her arc for this
(16:02):
entire first season. She's finding her agency. And what we're
really saying is that this world, even though it's set
two hundred years ago, women were strategizing on ways to
find their agency and become their own person, even back
in eighteen thirteen. My first impression of Daphne was all wrong.
(16:23):
It was so wrong. I had her pegged as this
go along with society type of chick. Not considering the
marriage market is something Daphney not only wants to participate in,
she wants to excel in this game. There's this thing that.
I don't know who coined this term, but television critics
(16:45):
talk about competence porn being a type of thing many
viewers enjoy, and television I think Scandal and Gray's Anatomy
kind of fall into that. Like we love watching people
be really good at their job, we do, you know,
And that's why I think we love watching doctor shows
and lawyer shows, because it's really fun to see people
be hyper competent. And I do think that Bridgerton weirdly
(17:09):
falls into that. Like Daphne might not have a job
in the traditional sense, or rather in the modern sense
the way we think of it, but her job is
the marriage mart and following all of those rules. Instead
of just following them, she weaponizes them and makes them
her bitch, you know. And I think that it is
really fun to watch her be hyper competent at the
(17:31):
marriage mark. I dropped the mike Welcome back to bridgeton
the official podcast, I'm Gabby. I'm sitting here with Jess
(17:53):
and Hannah. Before the break, we heard how the market
drew Chris and Betsy's attention. Now we're getting into the
story of matchmaking and the reason for the season spouse shopping.
You know, it's really hard, I think for us to
understand the amount of pressure that was put on both
the women and the men of this kind of high
society world, particularly for women in Bridgeton. Really we get
(18:16):
a world where people are they knew who they are
and what's expected of them. They've been living in this world,
they've been brought up in it, and now's their time.
This is their moment. You know. This London life of
the season of the marriage market was a very public life.
It was not about doing things in secret. It was
about making your status in public and making your mark.
(18:36):
Eight balls eight balls. You know, if you didn't make
it in a season, you've got one season. It's about
six months going to all these balls. If you didn't
secure your match, then in the next season you're going
to be old hats. Everyone will be like why why
why did you not make it? Really, by the time
(18:57):
of twenty seven and im Regency England, as a woman,
it's over. The bloom is gone and you're moving into
old made status and the bloom is gone. The purpose
of this arrangement is to ensure I'm married my very
first season on branches four six bills six an you
must ten flowers. You know, when I first started studying history,
(19:17):
and as a graduate student, I wasn't yet twenty seven.
I was like, oh, of course, oh, twenty sevenths old.
Of course. Then I got closer to twenty seven, I
was like, oh, no, I think I'm not very comfortable
with that. And I got past twenty seven, I was like, oh,
this is ridiculous. Right, of course, you're still you know,
blossomy your thirties and onwards, you know. So, so my
own relationship to that idea that women really had to
get a match before they're twenty seven shifted as I
(19:40):
moved myself through through the ages. And you know, for
us today, these kind of relationships were about romance, about
making your own choice, about choosing whether or not you
want to get married or not have marriages, or you
know whatever. Like we've got so much freedom of choice,
that isn't really the case in this high society world.
There's a choice within a small pool of people, carefully
selected pool, And if you're seen as the toast of
(20:03):
the season, then you want to make the best match
you can. If you don't do it within the season
and you're back again the next year, then you probably
lost the opportunity to make that match. Let's get back
to the rules, Hannah, you said that Jess said something
that kind of pew to your interest. Yeah. I like
Jess's insights into the writer's room and this idea that
(20:24):
they were trying to write from the perspective of women
in this marriage mark, and also to make it ensure
it we didn't feel like a prison, Like, how are
women trying to negotiate what seems to us to be
kind of very strict set of rules about who you
can be seen with, where you can go. You know,
we need to remember that it's only a particular group
of society. This is women who've got money and title
(20:46):
that they carry with them, so they bring a real value,
but marriage is really important to them. To be unmarried,
it's a pretty horrific future for most of these women.
So there's a really high stakes at play in the
marriage market. I think some of this things that people
find most shocking for modern women is that you couldn't
really just kind of walk up to a guy and
(21:06):
say hi, who are you and sort of start flirting
with him. There had to be some sort of formal
introduction between a man and a woman But it's not
saying that women didn't have any power, because actually they
have always had the power to say no. So if
a man came up and said, would you like to
dance with me Gabby at the next you know, quadrille
or something, you could say no, thanks, I'm fine, So
(21:28):
you could turn him down. You had the power to
turn him down, the power of refusal. How was the
dance card replicated today? Do you think? Do you think
it's like a comment on Instagram? Is it? So? The
dance card is really important because there's only a certain
number of dances that are going to happen at a
ball and they're not your sort of three and a
half a minute dance that we'd have today to Taylor
(21:50):
Swift or whatever. It's you know, ten minutes of dancing,
twenty minutes of dancing with somebody. So you might have
a dance card with about eight dancers that evening, and
as a woman, that is the control you have over
how your night's going to go. You've got to figure
out who to say yes to, who to say no to.
(22:10):
If you dance twice with somebody, then that is going
to be a statement of real interest and intent. Everyone's
going to be talking about that the next day. Everyone
is going to be in the newspapers if you dance
more than once with one particular person. So you've got
to organize your night quite carefully. So it's your secret
diary really for how your night's going to unfold, and
(22:31):
it's your gamble on what's going to happen that evening.
There was there a part of it that in a
way was a status symbol, Like it wasn't just for you,
or would a girl who filled her dance card show
it off as a way of like I'm trying to
accuit it to like likes on Instagram. You know, it's like, well,
I got eight dances tonight. I got every slot filled out,
(22:53):
so I'm hard shit. Like certainly, not being approached to
dance is like having no friends on Instagram or whatever.
Like it's you know, that's the situation you don't want
to be in. I think it's probably pretty easy to
fill your dance card, but do you want to fill
it with the right kind of rake? Haven't you the
right kind of hero? And the key is more than
(23:14):
one dance? Like that is the gold standard of the
successful evening is if he danced twice with the person
that you know, hopefully in Avigcy very much, you're gonna
end up marrying. Right, two dances leading to marriage, but
no more than two. Right, If you dance three, then
you were like in the scandal sheet the next day,
well three is hotting up? Quiet, Okay. I remember reading
(23:39):
when we were doing research for season one, you know,
reading about what some of the benefits of marriage were,
and we talk on the show about how like marriage
is the only end for a woman and so it's
like the only goal she's able to have. But it
wasn't just about the husband and the children. As I
understand it, marriage afforded a woman the ability to have
(24:01):
male friends, to go out freedom. It's freedom partly because
our romantic stories focus on the run up to marriage,
we never really hear about what happens to women after that.
And yeah, of course there are some horrifically unsuccessful marriages
and some really sad stories, but there's also lots of
(24:22):
really happy ones, and also lots of marriages that afford
women with a huge amount of power and privilege. There's
a spending power that comes as a wife because your
husband is responsible for all of the money, so although
to us that feels like you're giving up your economic freedom.
Actually it's also a root to economic freedom because you
can buy whatever you like, and your husbands it's responsible
(24:44):
for the bills. And so there is a kind of,
you know, a way of looking at that that is
about a kind of a privileged position for women. And
also you have a power like if you are the
wife of a duke and the duke has all this
authority in society extends to controlling seats in the House
of Commons, to having lots of money, to having the
(25:05):
ear of the royal family, then as his wife, you
share that power. You become a hostess in your own right.
You have access to all of those same circles. And
you know, there's a reason why you talk about the
ambitious mammas in Bridgeton, because they are the ones who
are also exercising their authority over the marriage market. And
there is nothing more important to this elite society than
(25:27):
getting these marriages right, and it's the women who run that.
And then also there's a sexual freedom after marriage for women.
So there's a sexual freedom in marriage, and there's also
an opportunity for women to pursue affairs outside marriage, you know,
if they do it in the right terms, which we
could talk about the first another time. Yeah, and I
(25:48):
remember reading about that, like as long as they don't
get caught, as long as you don't get caught. Yeah,
that's the key. Oh yeah, I will say though, as
we were talking about, you know, the marriage mark being
like a chess game earlier to it seems like the
way the real way to win the chess game is
either to make like a real love match and be
really happy, or to marry very well and then have
him die and be a widow. That's the advice I
(26:11):
always give, because then you get all the freedom and
independence and you run shit, right, unless there's like another
cousin who takes over the estate or something. Right, Yeah,
I'm like, why does Mariana want Colin so bad? He's
a baby? That is always the advice I would give
is to find a very rich, old husband and hope
(26:34):
it doesn't lasted very long, and then you have complete
freedom and oh, you have such an amount of power
and you could be Lady Danfrey for fifty years, you know,
live in your life as you like. That would be
my chess game. What about the suitors coming over the
next day, what was appropriate, what was too much? I
(26:55):
mean in bridgertain dudes came by with puppies, and that
that was a bit more surprising to me. Well, I
think the flowers and the puppies are of bridgeton visual imagination,
the visual extravagance with Bridgeton. But that's not to say
that suitors wouldn't give love tokens. I mean museums are
(27:16):
full of little tokens of admiration and love, from patchboxes
and snuff boxes to little paintings to love letters. I
love finding a love letter in the archives because sometimes
you don't know it's from an anonymous sender, and you
don't quite know like what the story is behind it,
so you could just make it up in your heads,
which you're not meant to do. Its historian by the way.
(27:39):
But you know, there's a whole world of jewelry, of
gifting jewelry. There's a bit of a strange thing about
giving things with people's hair in it. So giving a
token of your hair as a love token, and then
someone would work that into a piece of jewelry. So
sometimes it gets a bit icky. Puppy or bust. I
don't need the hair of jewelry puppy Lady Caroline Lamb
(28:05):
sent Lord Byron some of her pubic hair as a
love to in real life. In real life, Oh my God,
made fetched me some shares. Oh my god, that's a lot.
This generation of sex praised. We'll be right back, welcome back. Okay.
(28:44):
So we've talked up the toast of the season. We've
nibbled on the pressure to get married for all involved parties.
But what about the women who already made a lane
for themselves, the ones like Madonellaqua and Sienna who play
on their own terms and own businesses among the ton,
(29:06):
but aren't officially seen as the air quoting here the
marrying type, I asked Julia Quinn, author of the Ridgetine
book series. Julia obviously had our own reasons for being
drawn to the inner workings of the marriage market. Among
them were the lives of characters who were ruined spinsters,
(29:29):
all other things I heard in my maiden days. Here's
Julia scene when Anthony says like, not every woman is
a lady or something, and there's Sienna. Someone must guard
my poor sister from the box and pinks. I'm sure
how virtue remains free of any kind of definement. Daphne
is fortunates. Every woman is not afforded such gallant protection.
(29:50):
Every woman is not a lady, of course, not my lord.
It's like, oh my god, I'm like you drunk, why
would you say that? But that's sort of you know,
society is set up at that time. You know, there
are there are women and there are ladies, and men
really divide them into two groups. They're the women you marry,
and then they're the other women, and you treat them differently.
(30:11):
I think some would say it's still that way today,
across the gradient of dating and extended engagements, and which
ends up being harmful and a disrespect to both groups
of women. The women you marry not having any clue
what to expect. I mean, she's denied this knowledge, which
(30:31):
it's shameful that she doesn't know these things. And then
the women you don't marry are treated like they're not
worthy of certain types of respect. It's so distorted. You know,
we're so involved with the Bridgertons, and we love them.
They have this incredible wealth and privilege, and yet we
still like them because they're good people. But then we
still have Sienna, and you can be like, well, wait
(30:52):
a minute, these good people are still managing to inflict
some kind of harm on someone else. You actually seem
to be really intrigued with how Shondaland fleshed out the
fire between Antony and Sienna. You know, the writers of
the series just gave her this whole story that you know,
they started with a blank slake. Sienna is very briefly
(31:12):
in The Viscount Who Loved Me, although she's called Maria there,
and it's just you know, she's the person in the
books who Anthony was with before he finds Kate. So
she is not a major character in Julia Quinn's world,
but we of course wanted to broaden that world and
look at what life was like for women who were
not quote unquote ladies. And I love it because I
(31:34):
feel like it really provides a counterpoint to the rest
of the characters. I love that we get to see
Sienna a woman who is charting her own course outside
this society that we've become so invested in. I love
what a realist she is. Yeah, there's I mean, the
root of the Mistress is a very difficult one for
(31:57):
someone like Sienna because sometimes there was a happy ever after.
Occasionally there's a happy marriage at the end of that
kind of affair. There's a handful of cases where the
eligible duke does end up marrying his mistress, but more
often than not, that's not the story. The mistress has
cast aside in favor of a more eligible match, and
(32:17):
her reputation is ruined her choices to become the mistress
of somebody else. I want to just go back to
a thought that I'd put a pin in earlier. All
this talk of relating to men and women from two
or more centuries ago makes me think of matchmaking as
it plays out in church online, across continents, and in
(32:40):
social clubs today. It also makes me think back to
my conversation with Adua and Oh playing a widowed woman
hawking the duke across the social season chess board. Adua,
in playing this role, found that the marriage mart was
a really fascinating way for people watching today to appreciate
(33:01):
the depth and backstory of the female characters of Bridgeton.
I think it's a really complicated thought, actually, because I
think that all of those women, even Lady Bridgeton, they
are strategizing within really narrow parameters. Yeah, you know, they
are strategizing, they're finding the angles. Eloise's angle is I
(33:26):
don't want to get married. I don't want to do it.
And actually I'm a younger sibling, so the pressure is
not on me in the same way that it is
on Daphne. She's the first girl and her mother is
a widow and there's eight kids. She knows that she
needs to support the family, So how does she make
it the best choice that she can make within the
(33:47):
narrow configuration of what's available to her and within her
love and sense of duty towards her family, which means
she's going to do it. Yes, she's going to do it,
you know, because that's also her personality. So I think
it's fascinating. I think if you are not in a
position where you can make all the choices, you have
to strategize hard. In any society, you have to box clever. Yes,
(34:12):
I think you're watching a lot of elegant boxing clever
from a lot of people, and it looks like it's
pretty and it's skippy boo bah, it's not. It's life
and death. At some level. We're going to get more
into the life and death of romance. In a later episode,
but for now, dear listener, like, subscribe and share. I'm
(34:35):
Gabrielle Collins. Our editor is Chandler Mays. Our producers are
Chris van Dusen and Lauren Homan. Thanks for listening. Bridgetin.
The Official podcast is a production of shandaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(34:58):
Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your favorite shows.
Host
Gabrielle Collins
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