Hairpin Costume Drama Club: Wives and Daughters

by Danielle Roderick

Welcome back to Costume Drama Club! Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

1. Never borrow against your expectations. It means you’re part cad.

2. The woman with the huge hat is probably a bitch.

3. Scarlet fever is the worst, and it ruins even the most romantic of engagements.

4. The English countryside is full of small houses to store a secret wife or mistress in.

5. Cynthia is a very romantic name. Hyacinth means you’re a twat.

We’ve all watched Wives and Daughters, we all were horrified when Hyacinth ate all of Molly’s snacks. Here’s what writer Andrew Davies had to say about that:

When I read it in the book, I was thinking that she was eating it up herself so that Lady Harriet’s kindness wouldn’t be seen to have been wasted. But all the women who were working on the production said, no, that this is a big symbolic event, and that Mrs. Kirkpatrick is going to eventually consume all of Molly’s happiness. It’s a symbolic kind of eating.

He also thought Osborne was gay.

He was the character who gave me the most problem with the script, because when I read the book, I thought: “My God! This is the first gay character in 19th-century literature!” Then I thought: “No, it couldn’t be.” You get the feeling when Osborne comes on that the revelation about him is going to be that he’s gay, because in the book he really is quite effeminate in his manner. He seems to be a caricature of a gay character. He’s always talking about the opera, he’s very good with older ladies, he has a very close relationship with his mother, he can’t stand his father. The secret French wife and the child seemed a bit unlikely to me, and so I tried to make him more Keatsian — not a drooping spirit, but a passionate, poetic character, who just had the bad luck to have a growing and fatal illness.

Things I didn’t know about this production:

1. That Wives and Daughters was Gaskell’s last novel, and was left unfinished. In her notes, though, she totally meant for Roger and Molly to live in a big house and make babies. (The trousers in Africa were not included).

2. That this was the big follow up project after the success of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (which took years to sell because nobody thought it was interesting). Sue Birtwistle and Andrew Davies, costume dramz dream team.

3. When you look up Sue Birtwistle, she also has an alternate title, because she is a real Lady. Lady Eyre. LADY EYRE.

4. And then you remember that AJ Langer, Ray Anne from MSCL is Lady Courtenay because she is also a real Lady.

5. And have you heard about Lucy Worsely? There’s quite the write up about her in the Nov. 21 New Yorker. Here’s a clip of her doing Henry VIII’s grocery shopping.

Back to W&D.

1. Molly Gibson needs to read Simone Eastman’s advice on boundary setting.

2. Spinster women are really quite charming.

3. It’s great to be the girl who likes plain things, except that it might mean your crush gets blinded by a well-accessorized woman who knows how to flirt and wear lipstick. Thus, to get him to fall in love with you again, you have to do yourself up right and attend a fancy ball where you are very much admired, and your hair looks like it was shaped with bear fat.

4. Rosamund Pike’s hair! Some fine Hairpinner out there understands this. Please explain:

As we gorge on movies before the New Year, shall we try a little Mapp & Lucia? I know little about it, but it looks certifiably grand. And if you need something to snack on while gearing up or down for the holidays, Auntie Mame is a must (the Rosalind Russell version, or course.). It will soothe all your woes, and covers about five decades of clothes (but you know this. What Hairpinner hasn’t seen Auntie Mame?).

Danielle Roderick will dress up if you will, and writes as Carla Fran at Millicent and Carla Fran.