Here’s CNN.com Health on eclampsia: http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/28/health/eclampsia-5-things/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
He needs to be pushed to that level over and over until he stands in a different place.
I live in a modest 160-year old farmhouse. I bought it at auction from the heirs of the family who settled the land (I don’t know how long ago - just because the house is 160 years old doesn’t mean it was the first home the family had). The farm had 500 acres. Should someone vaguely related have been able to come along and tell this family they didn’t need all those acres and the right thing to do was to donate it or make a park out of it? No. This land was their’s, to do with as they saw fit. Now that I own it, let say someone came along and told me I didn’t need my house and 14 acres - I could board my horses and live in town with my dogs. They want to make my house into a living history museum, for example. After all, schoolchildren need to learn about local history. It’s my duty to give up my farm. Screw 'em. I paid for it, I busted knuckles doing plumbing, doused myself with paint, lived with a leaky roof. This is MY HOME.
You’re all right about Thomas. The sex for advancement just got lodged in my mind when Thomas was sleeping with the guy in the first season who he hoped to be employed with.
StG
You can go ahead and think that there’s some parallel between your life and the Earl of Grantham’s, but there really isn’t. She’s his heir’s mother, so she’s an insider. If you had a mother or a daughter or your daughter’s mom-in-law living with you, all of them would have the perfect right to tell you that you should be using your assets to do good for the people around you instead of hogging up much, much more than any human being could need. Because of the way the title and the estate are arranged, Grantham himself talks about having it all in the nature of a trust. And Violet is doing the right thing by reminding him over and over that he’s full of shit. I don’t care if it’s HIS HOME or not, regardless of the number of capital letters. She’s a full member of the family and it is very much her place to push him in the direction of being of use to the society—she’s not someone off the street. She, through her son, represents Grantham’s own future, so it’s completely within her purview to to tell him that he is making the wrong choices.
And none of these standards even apply. Many estates were completely seized by the Crown during wartime to be used as military installations, hospitals and the like. It’s nothing like Grantham slaving away at a job and earning his pennies and eking out a living to buy a house. Everything he has is at the mercy of the Crown.
Violet is doing the right thing by pushing him to do something useful with his fortune. And if Grantham is having growing pains over it, he needs to be pushed until he gets over them. Grantham isn’t just a home owner, he’s a man who has inherited wealth to an extent that few people in history have enjoyed. Not only did he do nothing to earn it, likely no one in his family earned it through anything other than pillage, theft, and murder. And he’s not even managing it well. He’s a completely waste of space who’s tying up societal assets for no good cause.
** Acsenray** - I think you mean Isobel in place of Violet, the dowager countess.
I’m a strong believer in property rights. The farmers that owned my land before me inherited it, as did their parents, etc. It was still their farm.
StG
Yes, I do.
This really has nothing to do with property rights with respect to the government forcing you to do something you don’t want to do. It has to do with a member of your family telling you that you are acting like an ass. And regardless of any property right, your family never loses that right. This isn’t a matter of law. It’s a matter of morality, and in such matters, rights aren’t really an issue.
Eactly, and Isobel was clearly acting like an ass. Cora had every right to tell her to go fuck off and mind her own damn business. Which is what she did in her own passive-aggresive way. Isobel is not Matthew, she does not represent the future of Downton, Matthew does and he doesn’t share her vision. Her intentions may be good, but half the time she comes off as an obnoxius self-rightous know-it-all. She’s not the only Crawley that does either.
The difference is that Isobel is far more often right than anyone else is. Being an obnoxious self-righteaous know-it-all ass can be justified when you’re actually trying to get a bunch of idle, overprivileged wasteoids to take action to help people. And if that causes friction, then so be it. It’s right of Isobel to make the Crawleys feel uncomfortable about assuming that their lifestyle is justified given the world they live in.
I might have more sympathy for the right to enjoy inherited wealth in the family if they didn’t cold bloodedly disinherit (save maybe for some trinkets and scraps) daughters and second borns for 100% circumstances of biology and birth ordinance. There’s nothing remotely fair or egalitarian or meritocratic about the system, or, to paraphrase a line from *Unforgiven[//I], “deserves got nothin’ to do with it”.
Which the Crawleys did for generations by providing jobs, education, and medical care for the people of the village. Who do you think funds the Downton Cottage Hospital or supports the village school? Until the 20th century staff positions at houses like Downton were highly coveted, the servants could count on things like hot food and proper beds when most of the working classes couldn’t.
Hm yeah. The virtues of feudalism are cold comfort. There’s are many reasons why we don’t accept that any more. And there are many reasons why the world that the Granthams lived in has almost completely died out.
Yeah. There’s no reason Daisy should not have the same opportunities as Lady Edith. Instead Daisy gets almost no education, works really hard from morning to night and gets treated like dirt by nearly everyone. Lady Edith, meanwhile solely by virtue of birth, sits around doing nothing all day but whining that she has nothing to do.
All the Crawleys serve to do is illustrate what a rotted system they represented.
Anyone remember a maid from the first series who learned how to type and moved on to a secretarial position elsewhere? I wish they’d bring her back, just to show the possibilities for women at this time.
Yeah, her name was Gwen. I wish they’d bring her back too.
I’ve done gone and watched all of season 3. Life is so empty now, I can’t believe I have to wait until September for more 
Yep, that was Gwen. She went to work at the local phone company. And Daisy may have had a shit job, but she was getting an education from Mrs Patmore at the same time. Cooks, especially “fancy” cooks like Patmore were well payed. Daisy’s still not at that level, but now she has the skills to get a position in a smaller house or a hotel if she wants. Housemaids could work their way up to being a housekeeper or lady’s maid, but most weren’t in it for life. Most maids were farmers daughters sent away for a few years to earn money and learn housekeeping skills before they got married. Almost like a working class version of finishing school.
Where does Red Dwarf figure into this? 
When last seen, Gwen was a Wildling girl above the Wall–giving John Snow thoughts unsuitable to his vows. Just as Ser Richard now has feelings for another upper-class chick. A poor one–but she has dragons!
In Downton Abbey, remember that The Departed have gone to A Better Place. Where they don’t have to struggle with Lord Fellowes’ incoherent scripts…
one of the doctors mentioned a treatment (morphine?) but the assumption was that they didn’t have whatever it was available. You’d think house calls of that era involved a certain amount of emergency medicines but I don’t know what doctors carried with them.
I kinda wondered why they didn’t do a variant of CPR. the technique that we know came later but there were certainly earlier versions of it.
We ALL profit, or not, from the circumstances of our birth. To demonize the Crawleys is to demonize ourselves. Because there are human beings alive today who don’t even have access to fresh water, let alone a decent education. I guarantee you that there are people in your own home town who don’t have a roof over their heads, or money to fix their car. And yet, we’re so privileged and spoiled that we spend our time prattling on about a t.v. show instead of helping them.
In the lottery known as life, we got lucky.
Not exactly. Our servants just ask “Would you like fries with that?” instead of “More claret, m’lord”?