But she would have to have someone knock her up that month, or else the math doesn’t work. That’s not exactly a sure thing!
Well, if she arranged to get enough action, she could probably pull it off. And a month or two either way could be explained.
Aside: this was mentioned before but it’s aggravating to have Edith, Edna, and Ethel floating around, not to mention Rose ***AND ***Rosamund.
Don’t forget Tom and Thomas. Even their last names are fairly similar – Branson and Barrow.
Maybe she was planning to seduce Thomas. Didn’t she make some remark about how she could do something for him? So she gets Branson to promise he’ll marry her if she falls pregnant, and then uses Thomas to insure that she does.
Makes me wonder if she’s been pregnant before. She doesn’t even know if she’s fertile.
Or that Thomas has… other interests.
Yeah, I think it was established a couple of seasons ago that Thomas is gay. Didn’t he put the moves on the wrong person?
He is, but Edna doesn’t know that. I’m not sure anyone at Downton knows. Did O’Brien know? I can’t remember.
O’Brien definitely knew, she set Thomas up to think that Jimmy was interested in him. And when everyone found out about Thomas kissing Jimmy, absolutely no one seemed surprised that Thomas swung that way. Even Lord Grantham said something like “Well, everyone knew about Thomas.”
Since that was all before Edna was hired the first time and she wasn’t around long, she may very well not have heard that Thomas preferred men. Even if she had, I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean she would have ruled him out as a potential baby daddy – it would have been rather progressive for her to accept homosexuality as a real sexual orientation.
Pretty much everyone knows. Robert, Mr. Carson, Mrs. Hughes, Bates, Anna, Mrs. Patmore, Jimmy & Alfred know for sure and the others likely do as well.
Exactly. I think a common view of homosexuality included married men with children who would occasionally sneak off for something on the side. Even the most progressive people would have viewed this as an extremely “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. I don’t think anyone would have thought it would preclude someone from fathering a child.
Can someone remind me about Edna’s first position in the household and why she left? I can’t remember.
She was a housemaid. She was made to leave because she was making advances on Tom, and treating him like he was her equal. (remember that Tom was a chauffeur prior to marrying Sybil, but his marriage elevated his status)
As noted, it was Stopes, but what methods of contraception would be available to women that would be un-noticed by men? Would a diaphragm be available in England in 1922?
Condoms and withdrawal the man would know about. The rhythm method is a possibility. Was it widely known about?
Regards,
Shodan
According to this site: http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/companion.asp?id=18&compID=53
Condoms and diaphragms/cervical caps were available as early at 1880.
In “Married Love”, after the author is done ladling on buckets of flowery prose, euphemisms, metaphors and oblique references, she finally gets to the point of contraception, and comes down to one direct but not particularly helpful sentence:
Sheesh. Ya know one way to make it “easily obtainable,” Miss Stopes? Put it in your damn book!
I’m assuming she was dancing around information that she couldn’t put in the book without being prosecuted, perhaps for practicing medicine without a license.
Very likely, but it makes me wonder why (other than greed) she’d bother writing the book at all.
Tom would have noticed if condoms had been used, and so would not have been uncertain as to whether or not Edna was pregnant. I didn’t see any reference to diaphragms in the Married Love book. And how would Edna get hold of a diaphragm?
Unless this is a plot development - Isabel Crawley is going to change the doctor’s surgery into a birth control clinic, leading to confusion and laughs.
:eek:
Regards,
Shodan
Birth control clinics had been established in Britain at that point. Doctors and midwives also had access to supplies. It wasn’t easy, but women did have access to limited choices.