TV William and Ettie Weston

[Fallenbelle]

Nov 17, 2014 18:04:13 GMT Hodge said:

Nov 17, 2014 17:37:10 GMT Fallenbelle said:

Yeah, watching the episode just now, it's pretty evident that she's way more into him than he is for her.  The more I think about it, I just don't think it was an accident that his past met his future, romantically speaking.  Ettie represented a wilder past, and Julia a more respectable future.  But it's interesting that Julia isn't your typical Victorian ideal of womanhood either...so she's not entirely a madonna either.  Maybe she does represent the future where women are quite frankly neither extreme, and all fall somewhere on a continuum in-between.  

Ettie is certainly more into William than he's into her and I put that down to his job and his religion. It would be improper for him to take a prostitute, now madam, as a lover and that's what Ettie wanted. However I don't think William appreciates totally 'respectable' women. Respectable women are boring, they represent current mores and society and William believes himself to be a man of the future. The women he's attracted to aren't necessarily totally improper or nonconformist but they do have a, for want of a better word, wilder streak. They think for themselves and will do whatever they want but can still blend in to society when they need to. I think this is a bit of a conundrum for William because he'd like a wife and children but I don't think he wants the usual Victorian 'little wife and kids' kind of life.

Agreed on the ethical implications on courting a prostitute/madam-that issue was a non-starter for him. Especially by this time when he was more respectable and upwardly bound. But, he clearly cared for her and was attracted to some aspects of her-perhaps similar characteristics with showed themselves in Julia and any other of the women he had attractions to over the course of the series. Except for Enid-she represented the Victorian female ideal, and he was bored by her. Sure, she made a telescope which turned him on, but she wasn't really doing other things like that, and wouldn't really discuss it with him. Beauty and brains turn him on.  She wasn't BAMFY enough for him. 

But I think the relationship served a purpose that it offered him the family life he thought he craved, but saw that that alone was never going to cut it.