Furienna wrote:
Corriea mattina wrote:
10/05/17 6:43p Downton Abbey Furienna I posted a ton on this DA Storyline on this Site! Other Posters were abominable towards Lady Edith Crawley! I was appalled! She had very few defenders and they wish she was Dead! I 'm so happy at the Final Outcome when she took over the Sketch Magazine. Edith changed so much! Finally! Corriea Mattina
I believe that the problem is that it took a while for Edith to come out of her shell. She spent a long time just being jealous of Mary, and it made her look unsympathetic to some viewers, even if Mary often was a bitch to her, which should have made her the sympathetic one. And there was the whole deal with Edith's letter about the whole Pamuk situation, which the haters will never forget. But as the years went by, Edith started to get a life outside Downton and her aristocratic circle. She matured and grew as she started to work for the magazine, while Mary got worse again after she came out of mourning Matthew's death. It is funny though that Edith managed to become a marchioness, so she will now outrank Mary on the social scale.
Edith, like Tom, grew closer to her child after losing their loves whereas Mary retreated into herself. I always felt that even as Edith came out of her shell with the magazine, Mary continued to view her sister as the same person she was before the war, and that moment when Edith came back for Mary's wedding to Henry was the real eye-opener for her when she saw who her sister had become.
Mary was definitely intent on ruining Edith's happiness when revealing the truth about Marigold to Bertie. Her attempt at a defense by thinking Edith would have told Bertie was futile - she did not do what Robert and Tom did, and that was talk to Edith first. I'm still surprised no one in the family brought up that Mary could've been in Edith's situation had her luck been different with Pamuk, and even then there was the notion of being "damaged goods" and having a dark secret, which they both endured.
While I was glad it was Mary who reunited them later, I was disappointed at how it played out. In my own opinion Mary ought to have been so moved by Edith's speech about shared memories that her guilt should've made her determined then and there to fix what she did, and that she could've gone to Brancaster in person after honeymooning with Henry. Still, at least she did express a desire to be on better terms with Edith in the future, and hinted as much to Henry. I think her friendship and support is what Edith always wanted from Mary.