Lowering Our Standards: Let’s Talk About Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 3

Contains spoilers for Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 3. If you’ve seen other season 6 episodes, let’s keep the discussion just on episode 3 to avoid spoiling anyone else.

Each of us has some kind of standard, right? Even if we don’t want to admit it, there’s something in our minds that says this is the way I live, whether it’s a $40 SoulCycle class or the ability to curl up with Netflix and takeout without worrying about the cost.

The standard is what you save until last, even after you’ve cut back on all of your other expenses. It’s the thing you keep holding onto, to the point of financial foolhardiness. It’s me putting the cost of my annual vacation on a credit card. (It’s all of us putting holiday expenses on credit cards.)

In the case of Sir Michael Reresby, maintaining standards means continuing to present himself as the master of a great house, even though he has sold most of his furniture and artwork and has fired the majority of his staff. He sits in a shabby room with his laundry drying next to the fireplace and waits for his old life to come back, complaining that everything else “got more and more expensive” in the meanwhile.

His life is what many of us fear; that over the next twenty years everything we value will become too expensive, and we’ll have to let our standards go. We’ll cut the vacation but not the Netflix, or pull back on the SoulCycle but keep the takeout. We’ll sell our furniture, move into a smaller apartment, add another roommate. We’ll think to ourselves this is the way I live, even though it is no longer true.

It’s easy to read the Sir Michael story as a discussion of the older generation, the one that still assumed all successful adults lived in well-furnished homes with enough extra space to host guests and watch them go up the stairs after another successful party. The “myth of the merry middle class,” as Caitlin MacDougall put it; Sir Michael isn’t middle class, but I still thought of Caitlin’s essay as soon as he started fantasizing about the parties he used to throw.

And yes, part of the “can you believe Millennials…” conversation is about two generations, often parents and their adult children, with two very different sets of standards.

But the thing about the younger generation is that we saw everything happen to the people ahead of us. It was not lost on me that you could lose your retirement savings, or your career, or your home. I was also right there watching costs rise, from healthcare to college to housing.

So in my case the question isn’t “will I ever get a well-furnished house of my own.” It’s “how long will I be able to live in my apartment before it becomes unaffordable.”

It’s “if previous generations weren’t able to maintain their standards over time, I won’t be able to either.”

Of course if Sir Michael can’t afford to hire staff, then Thomas is less likely to get a well-paying job commensurate with his experience, as we discussed last week. Edith’s magazine, meanwhile, is understaffed to the point where firing one person requires three people to work all night, assumedly unpaid unless you count sandwiches.

When standards get lowered in the home, they also get lowered in the workplace. Or vice versa.

What are your standards? Can you think of the pieces of your life that would be the hardest to give up? Have you already lowered your standards in order to pivot into a new career or move into a more affordable living situation or handle an unexpected emergency expense?

Are we all waiting for the day in which we become Sir Michael?

Or is there a more optimistic way to look at this narrative?

Previously: “Climb Down From That High Horse:” Let’s Talk About Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 2

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