Downton Abbey As “Parvenu-cracy’

“All of the Grantham daughters’ situations are a product of their status as hybrid creatures – all are the daughters of an heiress who cannot in turn be heiresses themselves. They are prevented from becoming their mother, and they know it … The story, then, is of an American matriarchal fortune wearing the court dress of a British patriarchy, and resenting it in ways it cannot quite express.”