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20th Century Britain, 20th Century Europe, Billy Crystal, Downton Abbey, Homosexuality, Hugh Bonneville, Jodie Dallas, Julian Fellowes, Lord Crawley, Rob James-Collier, The Children's Hour, Thomas Barrow, Three's Company
When Downton Abbey first appeared in the US, I have to admit that I got hooked along with half the country. That first season was such a great exploration of pre-Great War Britain, and even the credit sequence spoke to the rigidity of the great estates and the class system of the time. The acting was solid, the storylines were interesting (even poor Edith was interesting, despite being so useless that the show-runners couldn’t think of a realistic storyline for her in the second season), Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess was marvelous (a few months ago I had an image of her having to go through modern airport security, an utterly priceless idea) and above all, the show had Thomas.
Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier), the scheming homosexual second footman was absolutely the best thing about the show. But to understand my thoughts about him, we need to make a brief excursus into the history of homosexuality in film and television.
A Brief History of Homosexuality in Film and TV
Homosexuality has been depicted in film literally from the birth of the medium. But in the early 20th century, gay and lesbian characters were either pathetic objects of ridicule or threatening villains who had to be defeated for the good of society. By the mid-century, it was possible to depict gays and lesbians in a slightly more sympathetic light, although their sexuality could only be referred to obliquely. They had to be miserable and their stories had to end unhappily, but at least they weren’t inevitably villains. A good example of this is the 1961 adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, in which two single schoolteachers are ruined by a malicious accusation that they are lesbians. Martha (Shirley MacLaine), who is actually a lesbian, commits suicide at the end when Karen (Audrey Hepburn) refuses to reciprocate her affections. But the accusation of lesbianism was so shocking to audiences at the time that it was never said on-screen, only referred to obliquely, despite being literally the center of the film’s plot.
By the late 1970s, gays and lesbians were starting to be seen in a more sympathetic light, as comic figures, although storylines often undercut their homosexuality or left them single and lonely at the end of the story. Billy Crystal first rose to national prominence playing Jodie Dallas on the 1977 sitcom Soap. But Dallas, often cited as the first openly homosexual character on network television, winds up having a heterosexual one-night stand and fathering a child. The early 1980s sitcom Bosom Buddies featured newcomers Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari as heterosexual men living as women in a women’s apartment building because they can’t find affordable housing elsewhere, while Three’s Company showed the heterosexual Jack Tripper (John Ritter) pretending to be gay so he could live in an apartment with two women. So in these shows, homosexuality was openly referenced, but primarily as a source of highly stereotyped humor and in a way that reasserted the superiority of heterosexuality.
By the 1990s films had begun to offer more positive characters such as the Gay Best Friend and the Tough as Nails Lesbian. But they were supporting characters, and rarely allowed to have their own romantic story-lines, unless those stories were about their lack of relationships. At the same time, gay and lesbian film-makers began making films centered on gay and lesbians characters, often giving them the happy endings (so to speak) and romantic successes that they were denied in main-stream cinema and television. And now, by the 2010s, we’ve reach an era where gay and lesbian characters turn up in many shows and films, and their sexual and romantic lives are about as central to their storylines as heterosexual romance is to their straight co-stars’ stories. Modern Family depicts a gay couple’s domestic life together on a roughly equal footing with the other families in the series.
Rupert Everett, the trope-namer in My Best Friend’s Wedding
Back to Downton
So why did I like Thomas Barrow so much? Precisely because he was one of the bad guys on the show. His homosexuality was an important feature of his character, but it wasn’t the whole story. He was a lower-class man scheming to advance in the class-ridden Britain of his day just as much as he was a closeted homosexual seeking a deeper connection with another man. He was a homosexual villain but his homosexuality wasn’t the cause of his villainy. He and O’Brien (Siobhan Finneran) were the Downstairs Malcontents, and O’Brien didn’t particularly care about his sexual preferences as long as he was a useful ally in her own quest for social advancement.
James-Collier as Thomas Barrow
So Thomas was a wonderfully well-rounded character, sympathetic and unlikable all the same time. His storyline was an exploration of the emotionally-corrosive nature of the Closet, and as such it was tremendously refreshing. I loved the third season because of the way O’Brien slowly set Thomas up for his total ruination over a petty falling out, precisely because it revealed just how precarious it was to be a lower class homosexual in 1920s Britain. O’Brien used the rampant homophobia of the period to set a trap that she knew the love-starved Thomas couldn’t resist and in the second-to-last episode of the season, Thomas is facing certain ruin after his homosexuality has been revealed, and I was overjoyed.
I wasn’t overjoyed because I wanted to see Thomas punished because he was homosexual. I was overjoyed because I wanted audiences to just how brutal Western society was to homosexuals in this period. I wanted viewers to watch just how viciously destructive the Closet can be to so many gays and lesbians, because it’s one of the best arguments for why society needs to accept gays and lesbians. I wanted people to have to think about what Straight Privilege really looks like.
Instead, the series suddenly took a maddening veer into utter fantasy. Despite Thomas being completely exposed as a criminal (since homosexuality was illegal in Britain in this period), Lord Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) intercedes with the police to cover up Thomas’ crime. That in itself is not implausible, because early 20th century nobles frequently used their social and political clout to cover up scandals. But then he decides, purely out of the goodness of his heart, to allow Thomas to continue working at Downton, and in fact gives him what is essentially a promotion, despite pretty much everyone now knowing what Thomas is.
Hugh Bonneville as the eternally benevolent Lord Crawley
That is utter nonsense, in my angry opinion. Heterosexual nobles did not decide to overlook homosexuality in their servants, for the very simple reason that they couldn’t afford to do so. Their own reputation was very much at stake.
Here’s what would probably have happened in the real world. Word of Thomas’ homosexuality would have spread among the staff, if only because O’Brien is still angry. Eventually, word that Downton’s staff includes a known pervert would have spread to servants at other estates, because when the Crawleys have guests, the Downton servants would gossip with the visiting servants. The servants of the wealthy and powerful always gossiped with each other. This gossip was a complex phenomenon. Employers hated the fact their servants gossiped about them, but wanted to know what was going on at other estates, so they regarded this gossip as a two-edged sword. For the servants, gossip was a way to express displeasure toward harsh employers, and it represented one of their few forms of social leverage against the powerful men and women who employed and often exploited them. Reputation was a very important consideration in Edwardian England, and loss of reputation was a serious problem for the powerful.
So when Lord Crawley decides to forgive Thomas and continue employing him, even promoting him, inevitably word of this will get out. One of the servants will gossip at the bar or to a visiting servant and that news will start to circulate. People will wonder why Lord Crawley would protect a criminal and a pervert, and the answer is fairly obvious; Lord Crawley must be having sex with Thomas. So fairly quickly people will be whispering and joking about Crawley behind his back and his reputation is going to suffer serious damage.
Instead of exploring the real damage the Closet did to Thomas and thereby offering a demonstration of just how destructive Straight Privilege can be to homosexuals, Julian Fellowes instead resorts to a fantasy in which Lord Crawley gets to save Thomas by exercising both his Class and Straight Privilege and acting as a benevolent master. Crawley gets to be the hero because he’s upper class and heterosexual, so the message here is that the Closet really must not be so bad after all because the people at the top of the ladder won’t really ruin those beneath them. Fellowes has been accused of offering a view of the early 20th century through rose-colored Conservative glasses (a charge he has to some extent admitted to), and this whole incident with Thomas demonstrates just how much the show’s take on the period fails to engage honestly with its subject matter.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
Gosh, I never thought of it like this! You’re totally right though, I think.
I do still love the show, but that moment did jst with me and surprise me.
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But if they had done it historically accurate, don’t you think that many people would look on it as the program saying homosexuality is wrong and should be punished? They might offend a lot more people that way than they did by not being accurate. Either way, I still love the show and the Thomas character. I find myself hating him at times and cheering him on at other times.
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No, I think the show’s treatment of Thomas’ desires is sympathetic. In the third season, it’s quite clear that Thomas is the victim of O’Brien’s schemes and doesn’t deserve what she’s doing to him. So I think it would have basically made a villain into a suddenly very sympathetic and tragic character.
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I think it’s more that Fellowes wants Lord Grantham to be seen as a sympathetic character, and firing Thomas for his homosexuality would make Grantham the villain of the piece. This is a pretty common problem for creators of historical fiction; when a character who’s meant to be heroic would hold views that modern values see as abhorrent, and there’s a tendency to downplay or ignore those views to make him more palatable.. It’s why Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot is the only plantation holder in South Carolina who doesn’t own slaves, for instance.
But it is a shame that they chose to do it that way…it’s a whitewashing of history that ultimately is disrespectful not only to gays and lesbians living in early 20th century England, but also modern viewers, who the show feels can’t be challenged or made to think.
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That’s a fair assessment.
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It seems like historical fiction is more willing to play with cultural differences between the main characters and the presumed culture of their readers than historical films and TV are. (So the main characters of a film set in the classical world are more likely to speak and act like 20th century upper-middle-class Californians or Londoneers than the main characters in a novel with the same setting are to do so). Many who try to portray different cultures don’t succeed, but that is because the work is hard and few novelists are trained historians with the language skills and library resources and time to assimilate the culture they are studying from within.
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Yes, I think you’re right about that. Movies have to appeal to a wider audience than books do, so film-makers probably tamp down on those cultural differences.
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Soap was on in the 80’s not in the 70’s. You are wrong about what you said. Ever see
the pics of how fags are in front of kid at stupid gay pride parades? walking naked in front of them…They are all mentally ill an child molesters. Screw you for supporting them.
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Actually, if you check Wikipedia, you’ll see Soap premiered in 1977, exactly when I said it did, and ended in 1981. So it barely made it into the 80s.
As far as your other false claims about gays, I’ll just point out that high levels of homophobia have been proven to correspond to high levels of homosexual desire and internalized self-loathing.So I hope you eventually find peace with your homosexual desires and find the courage to come out of your closet. It’s a much less scary place than you think it is.
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Shut your whore mouth you vile bitch before someone shuts it for you.
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I’m sorry you hate your sexuality so much that you feel a need to threaten others. I’ll keep you in my prayers.
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A well argued piece and you’ve pointed out a running pet peeve I have with Downton Abbey – its very ahistoricity. It’s OK to take liberties for the sake of the narrative but it still has to remain true to the reality of the period its set and Downton sadly fails in this account. It’s also not helped by Fellowes insisting that Downton is accurate and well researched when even there are problems with the logic behind the plotlines from the very beginning.
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I honestly think that the real issue is that Fellowes has a very conservative view of the period, and doesn’t want to admit that reality didn’t fit with his ideas.
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Agree but I think its more than conservative. He certainly has his hang-ups and agendas and they find themselves into the programme. Hence too why you have critics who have said that the Crawleys behave more like nouveau riche or a middle class family from Pinner rather than real, bona fide aristocracy.
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Fellowes likely means all the physical paraphernalia in an Edwardian estate, from furnishings to attire to tableware to hairstyles to exteriors and landscaping, all of that is accurate b/c there’s no risk involved. But at the social level of interaction the problems would enter thick and fast. Maybe if you’re too accurate in areas that we already have false ideas about, then the story would just be rejected for being too accurate! You can’t push people too far without losing them entirely. I’ve noticed this with discussions on capitalism. So many utterly mistaken ideas on capitalism have now been rendered ‘true’ that you can’t have a clear discussion of it. Even the premises are rejected thanks to ideology. Homosexuality still has not been fully accepted, likely for two reasons. Militant gay rights activists turn people off the same way militants do re climate science or any other such cause. ‘Militancy’ almost invites the interpretation that the cause has been overstated and needs reining in. Politicization of an issue rarely helps the victims. The second reason is the Left’s love affair with radical Islam is importing Islamic bigotry in many areas (women, gays). Look for Western cultural critics blaming conservatives for attitudes that the Left & Islam have revived.
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That’s a clever trick you’ve pulled there, blaming homosexuals for homophobia. It nicely lets conservatives off the hook–they’d accept gays if it weren’t for the fact that gays are so mean to them. I guess they’d also stop trying to deny women control of their own bodies if women were just nicer to them. Those poor conservatives, they can’t control their own feelings because other people are always making them angry at other people.
Sorry, pal, it’s conservatives who decided gays were unnatural, long before gays thought to ask for the right to exist. Militancy emerged out of the Right’s unwillingness to allow gays, blacks, women and others a place at the table. A lot of what you’re calling militancy is just asking for equality. To people with privilege, requests for equality always look like attacks.
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Fellowes early on has claimed that Downton is well researched and accurate and that would mean all aspects from the props to the costumes and crucially to the attitudes of the time which are radically different to today. With all due respect, I do not buy the idea of the narrative being rejected for being too accurate. Upstairs, Downstairs both the 1970s and the recent version as well as Call the Midwife and Home Fires manage to be more or less true to the realities of the time it was set and yet viewers have not rejected these programmes.
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It’s a shame that Fellowes didn’t try to make the series as a whole more historically accurate, especially this plotline. He didn’t hold back when Ethel, a maid, was fired without a reference for sleeping with an officer. He very accurately portrayed how, when she had a baby, no one was willing to help her because she wasn’t married. If you want to see an historically accurate depiction of homosexuality and how it was perceived, watch episode 3 of season 3 in “Call the Midwife”. A man is caught kissing another man, and is subsequently arrested and sentenced to “treatment”. His family is ostracized (including his wife) and there is definitely no happy ending. It’s set in the 1950s, so it’s not the same time period, but it gives you a good idea of what would actually have happened to Thomas.
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The 50s in Britain (and the US) was an especially harsh period for gay men. There was a very strong drive to persecute gays in the post-war years.
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Excellent post – indeed, the resolution to that story line is less about being honest to the time period and characters, and more about saving face in today’s hypersensitive culture. If you are going to have a gay villain, you’d best be sure to demonstrate somehow that you are still pro-gay, even if it means introducing an absolutely unrealistic plot outcome such as this. It’s the modern world invading the integrity of story telling.
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Yes. I think trying to thread that needle was beyond Fellowes’ ability
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It’s not only with that story line where the modern world invalidates the integrity of the narrative. It’s something that Fellowes’ does time and again and its very apparent even at the very beginning.
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And it’s fairly consistently about making the unpleasant parts of conservatism less harsh.
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Exactly and its also crowbarring modern sensibilities which in effect paints a very false and misleading picture of the past.
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That’s just a given with historical shows, isn’t it?
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True with some worse than others.
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I agree.. I utterly fell out of my chair when Crawley said “Thomas doesn’t choose to be the way he is” .. That concept was DECADES away from being so quickly grasped in that time.. especially to a man who sneered at Catholics and ex-prostitutes in his mansion.
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Yeah, totally ahistorical attitude.
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One of the problems I’ve always had with “DOWNTON ABBEY” as Fellowes’ need to grasp at historica inaccuracies in order to make his protagonists – especially his upper class characters – sympathetic and heroic to the audience.
Winston Graham had utilized this same writing device with one of his main protagonists, Ross Poldark.
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Yeah, a lot of what happens on the show is possible, but highly unlikely. It’s certainly not a good representation of what was typical.
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Or worse still twist the repellent attitudes exhibited by the upstairs women (Mary, Cora, Violet, Edith, Rose) as something positive and worth applauding.
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I both agree and disagree … I like that the show portrayed a sympathetic view towards Thomas’ sexuality, even going so far as to say that the entire house secretly knew. The line about Crawley getting repeatedly hit on at Eton is still my absolute favourite in the whole series.
But it would have been nice at the same time to get a better view of the stigma and oppression and violence that homosexuals of the time faced. Perhaps they could have turned it back onto Jimmy and asserted that he was making false claims because he was closeted (in a not-atypical “your word against mine” situation, thereby allowing the Thomas character to continue through the series. They could then have effectively lynched Jimmy, who was a new character who had less consumer support and was showing himself to be an easily influenced and closed-minded man.
Gossip could flow as much as it liked then, but if the proof was that they turfed Jimmy out, then that’s what will appear fact and offer some protection to Crawley’s character, while at the same time feeding the necessary plot bunnies. Just my take on it, of course.
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I think you are half right. Yes it was weird to have Thomas back because of the homophobic era in history but that does not mean that it must have happened to every single household in Britain. The logic is Lord Crawley wanted to save one of his servants as he treated him like a family (yes still a servant), he was one more liberated person (married to Cora, more American). I also thought that there was a possibility that he had a bit of fun with Thomas and he helped him to save himself from more scandals (already out if Thomas is in jail). I am not sure how the Downton Abbey writers wanted to explore with the storyline so that could be the reason. Also Thomas character was loved by many who watched and the producers let him stay in the show. I think maybe that is why he was not cast away. Anyway, it is just a show, not a real history lesson 🙂
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Downton Abbey had a consistent problem with the show downplaying the conservatism of the era, perhaps because Fellowes is a Conservative and wasn’t comfortable being honest with the past.
As I’ve said many times in this blog, there’s no such thing as ‘just a tv show’. Film and television are incredibly powerful teaching tools–I deal with this constantly in my own teaching work. Students resist hearing what actually happened when a popular movie or tv show had primed them with a fantasy of what happened.
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I think this is a great article and would love it if the author (or someone else) would make the effort to include it in the Wikipedia article about Downton Abbey. I enjoyed the show but felt very uncomfortable with the treatment of Thomas and the points here resonate and do a good job of exposing what I think is a tendency of the authors to idealize, sanitize, or otherwise create a positive image of the hierarchy and bigotry of the period. Lord Grantham would not have been so benevolent – nor able to be so benevolent – it is fairy tale. And the danger – I found myself thinking, “Well, it must not have been all that bad.” – even though I consciously know – it was a brutal social structure. So anyway – inviting someone with the skill to insert this as a reference for “Homophobia in Downton abbey” – in the wikipedia article (there already is a “anti-catholic allegations” and “anti-Irish allegations” section).
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Sound like a job for you!
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Lord Grantham night well hush up the scandal, since it happened in his house , but there is no way he would keep Thomas under his roof. As you say doing so would do him and his family real social harm.
I can only assume that they didn’t want to lose the actor.
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I think Fellowes wanted to cling to his fantasy of a benevolent ruling class.
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Benevolent perhaps, but by their lights not ours.
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I think some are missing the point. Thomas’ sexuality is “outed” long before the narrative here discussed would indicate. As Mrs. Patmore tells Daisy, at one point, “Thomas is not a lady’s man.” The staff knew the situation, but with Edwardian-era discretion, they didn’t magnify it. The idea that Lord Grantham intervened on Thomas’ behalf only to preserve Grantham’s own reputation is not well founded. Grantham also was willing to risk some of his reputation when his own daughter’s (Mary’s) indiscretion was to become “outed.” Maybe if you’d watched further seasons, you’d have had a different opinion. I feel for Thomas, but your characterization of very different people, living in a very different time, coupled with your having dropped the series, might just mean your judgment is a bit myopic. Of course, this show is a dramatization, with some artistic license, but it actually treats Thomas’ situation empathetically, especially when Thomas reveals his nobility (noble character, that is) in taking a beating for a man who had no interest in him and was even willing to bring Thomas to ruin had others not intervened. Thomas later becomes a character with whom an audience can sympathize as they see that he is a tormented soul, one who would be very different (kinder?) had he lived in a later time.
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It would probably be more accurate to say the rest of the staff suspected, but didn’t know and were willing to give Thomas the benefit of the doubt as long as he ‘behaved himself’.
When he sexually assaults a sleeping James, I know that’s not quite fair but that’s certainly how it would be taken, the reaction at all levels should have been a full fledged Gay panic. Frankly Thomas would have been lucky to be out on his ear without a character! Lord Grantham and Carson probably would have prevented James from going to the police for the sake of the family and Grantham might have given Thomas travel money to go far away, like America or Australia to prevent any scandal from getting out. But he would definitely have been out of there!
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I think the show’s treatment of the outcome of the scandal retroactively ruined Thomas’ character, as well. You pointed out that he’s a sympathetic homosexual villain, but that his homosexuality is not what makes him a villain. I would even venture to say that his homosexuality is what makes him sympathetic. He did a lot of bad stuff, but the audience can excuse it because they understand what’s at stake. He killed a guy in season 1? Yeah, but that guy set a trap for him, then blackmailed him, and could easily use what he knew to ruin him at any time. He had to be taken out of the picture (plus, that guy kind of had it coming, anyway). He’s kind of an asshole to everybody? Yeah, well, you’d be distant, too, if you had to listen to your friends talk about their business without being able to be open with them about your own desires and heartbreaks. Not to mention that any one of them might be plotting to expose you just because they’re salty about something (see O’Brien in season 2). But then they went and removed the danger that they worked very hard to give us a real sense of by making Grantham totally cool with Thomas being gay, and actually rewarding him for being outed. Now, he’s just a guy who straight-up murdered a dude in season one, and is an asshole to everyone for no reason.
I get that they didn’t want Crawley to be a homophobic villain, but they sacrificed Thomas’ well rounded and relatable character to make the straight white guy unrealistically benevolent. And i don’t see why they felt the need to do that. They showed Crawley with very historically conservative views when he refused to fight the estate entailment in season 1, for fear Grantham Estates would fall into he hands of females (even his own daughter!) so why try to turn him into Mighty Straight Whitey in season three?
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I’ve been watching some Downton Abbey, my mother being an enthusiast, and it’s completely ridiculous. The daughters marry utterly unsuitable men , or worse have illegitimate children. Below stairs not only is a footman gay but a valet is convicted of murder, and later his wife, a lady’s maid is accused of same! (What is it with the Bates?) And everybody is copacetic! Any one one of these scandals would have caused domestic meltdown and probably flights abroad, people were NOT all right with such things in the early 20th century!
On the other hand the upset over Rose marrying an aristocratic Jew is exaggerated. Lord Sinderby’s concerns about his grandchildren losing their Jewish identity is understandable but Lady Flintshire’s cry that her daughter will be ostracized is nonsense. Thanks to Edward VII Jews had been however reluctantly accepted by the aristocratic classes. Lady Rose isn’t going to miss any invitations because of her marriage. Dorothy Sayers, writing a mystery novel at exactly this time has characters make a few comments that certainly are anti-Semitic by our standards but nobody is particularly shocked by Christine Levy’s marriage and the concern over Freddy Arbuthnot’s courting of Rachel Levy is purely religious and on the Jewish side. The Arbuthnots don’t miss any invitations either.
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Isn’t the Countess of Grantham from a Jewish family? The character’s father’s name was Isadore Levinson.
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Yes,Lady Grantham says as much.
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Does this author write for CNN… it’s not a report it is a prejudice commentary
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No, I write purely for myself. And you’re right that I’m commenting on Fellowes prejudice in favor of the aristocracy and failing to depict them honestly.
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I think it’s really difficult to guess what would have happened in reality,. Specially when it comes to such intimate subjects as sexuality. Sure, we know what the law said, but do we know what common people thougt about it in their private lives? Do we know how many nobles of the time kept in secret the same-sex desires of family or staff? The thing is, if everyone sweeps it under the rug, how do we know?
The other employees suspected Thomas from a long time. Why would they gossip now if they didnt before? Its not like they have solid proof either. Calling the police would just get more unwanted attention. And firing Thomas would help little now, except giving fuel to yet more scandalous gossip. Thomas wasnt a newcomer, he had worked for the Crawleys for 15 years or so. Hard for Lord Grantham to justify that,.
The case of Hazel was different. She had sex with the officer, not just a kiss, and got pregnant as result. There was no way to cover up that, nor the fact that she was a well-known prostitute.
As far as the law goes (and correct me if Im wrong), wasnt the death penalty for buggery abolished in 1861? And the first London gay pub opened in 1912. So attitudes towards homosexuality may have been warming up, even if homophobia would later get a resurgence in the 50’s.
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We know a LOT about how gay men were treated in this era. We have the police records and we know about the various scandals that were talked about. Obviously we can’t prove that at some house some noble might have overlooked his valet’s homosexuality, but once it became a police matter, I think it’s wildly optimistic to imagine that Thomas wouldn’t have been sacked. We also know that the British aristocracy were absolute bastards to their employees, routinely dismissing servants for minor infractions and for personal matters such as unmarried pregnancy. Lord Grantham’s routine benevolence is as much a fantasy as Peter Pan is.
There were gay bars in the late teens and 20s, but they were very disreputable places. And they operated in seedy parts of large cities, which is a very different social context than the rural estate of a nobleman.
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Yes! Thank you for this. I Iike watching Downton but the unrealistic storylines sometimes are so ridiculous. For this and other reasons the original Upstairs Downstairs is my favorite TV depiction of this time period.
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Overall, I’d say that U/D is more plausible historically. It certainly doesn’t valorize the rich the way DA does.
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