Wouldn’t she now be labeled……..
Already marked but here’s an extra warning. Here there be spoilers.
I know what you’re thinking, “this is a post about Lady Danbury’s hat.” Just hear me out, it’s cute.
Jokes aside, let’s move on to what the post is really about.
So I’ve been thinking, and I don’t know if this has already been discussed so forgive me if it has been, but I want to talk about a pretty big issue on the show cutting out Francesca’s miscarriage for it being to dark and morbid.
This all takes place in the early 1800 during the Regency era, season one I believe in the beginning they say it’s 1813 so by this time it’s about 1817. During this time period fertility is very important, every Lord needs to have heirs and it’s the woman’s responsibility and duty as a wife to produce those heirs for them. So fertility is extremely important in society.
The Bridgerton family would be prime targets by people in society because Violet Bridgerton has successfully had eight children A,B,C,D,E,F,G, and H, so society would see the Bridgertons as a highly fertile family. Then you add in each of their love stories so far and where they are at the time of Sterling’s death. All of the Bridgertons who are married at this point, have had children. Daphne and the Duke, Anthony and Kate, Colin and Penelope, so this would add credibility to the thought that the Bridgertons are the perfect family by means of reproduction. The men’s seed is strong, and the women’s wombs fertile.
So now we have the issue with Francesca. If they kept her miscarriage in as part of the story, society would probably look at it as the stress and the grief of losing her husband caused her to also lose the baby, but the change of removing the pregnancy all together turns this into a different narrative. That narrative being, Francesca within the course of her marriage has failed to even conceive a child for her husband. Correct me if I’m wrong here please, but during that time women were often blamed for issues regarding fertility, so as far as society is concerned, wouldn’t Francesca now be labeled as barren, especially considering all of her other siblings who are married have children? This would actually make things worse for Francesca, it would change societies view of her, and would greatly reduce her chances of finding another husband, because now as she is potentially barren, the eligible suitors would now be steering clear of her. As we heard from Lady Araminta, it’s hard for a widow with two daughters to find another husband, but I’d imagine for a barren widow it would be near impossible.
Obviously we know where Francesca’s story is headed, and this isn’t really a historically accurate show based on Regency England. I’m just kinda thinking that the show runners didn’t think it through very well with the whole “it’s too dark and morbid” thing, because isn’t the alternative of her believing she failed as a wife, believing she probably can’t have children at all (something she was already agonizing over), and any chances of finding another husband are now next to zero just as bad? A woman in her position during that time would basically just be like “well my life is over.”
Thoughts?
Edit: just wanting to add, since people keep stating “they’ve only been together for a year.” In the Regency Era, women were expected to get pregnant almost immediately, with their first child expected to be born around the 15th month mark. So with in that time a pregnancy would have been commonly expected. And because she was of a high ranking noble family, she would have actually been under more pressure not less, because for high ranking members of society it was more important for them to have heirs. She wouldn’t necessarily be considered barren due to such a short marriage before he died, what I’m more referring to is there would actually be gossip about it and the possibility.