Bridgerton Is Like the Time My Friend Promised Me I Would Have Fun at a Frat Party and Then I Didn’t

In first grade, I read C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It boggled my mind. I loved that book for years. One side effect of the story included my enduring curiosity and passion for Turkish Delight.

I had never tried it, but it seemed to be the perfect dessert. After all, Edmund had rather easily shared information about his own family to the evil White Witch, just so he could have a bite.

When I finally had the opportunity to try Turkish Delight, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait. Carefully, I popped a piece of the sugar-dusted confection into my mouth.

This was when I realized that Edmund was a murderous sociopath who hated his brothers and sisters.

He basically turned them over for a plate of chalk.

This is also how I felt when I finally attended a party at a fraternity while a freshman in college. As I stood there, a cup of warm Natty Light in my hand, a group of drunken boys trying to backflip off the couch, their elbows knocking against everyone’s heads, I thought, There must be more.

But, alas, there was not.

A similar sense of burgeoning disappointment and unease surfaced as I watched Bridgerton for the first time. After the ravenous exultations of social media, the unceasing buzz about its swoon-worthy romance, its “risqué” scenes of intimacy, I waited, patiently, for a story that would knock my socks off.

The show joined the ranks of Turkish Delight and frat parties.

I just, like, didn’t like it. In fact, many scenes filled me with rage.

The primary issue driving my distaste was the tricky conundrum that I personally couldn’t stand any of the characters. As you might guess, this made it very hard to root for them.  

The main character, Daphne, quivers her jaw and dresses like a cupcake and cries in front of mirrors with her baby bangs. She easily receives Queen Charlotte’s favor, but still frets about being favorable.

When Simon Bassett, the Duke of Hastings, gallops into the park, I had to hold back a laugh. He’s supposed to be a witty, sexy bad boy with a heart of gold—I get it. But the actor, Regé-Jean Page, overacts in every scene. He exaggeratedly deepens his voice, he waggles his eyebrows, he smirks at empty corners of the room. There’s no subtlety to his acting. Instead, he struts into the ballroom, he grins at Daphne like the villains in those silent films who tie damsels to train tracks, and suddenly everyone in his vicinity swoons. I just wanted to laugh. His characterization was so overwrought that I could never sink into their purported romance. I didn’t want Daphne to be with someone so clearly tethered to a toxic façade of masculinity.

I’ve been told that Simon’s version of acting is genre-oriented—it is, after all, a soapy, theatrical, sex fest—but I remain unconvinced by this argument. I can appreciate a good soap opera. In my opinion, this was not it.

On the show, Daphne and Simon constantly agonize about each other’s lack of interest and all I could do was shrug my shoulders. Never, not once, did I feel invested. When they stand in their bedroom, their declarations of love falling from their mouths, I waited. But Simon’s “I burn for you” dropped on the floor. I watched as it shriveled and died upon impact. Daphne’s astonishment felt unearned and overwrought. This is the same girl who is labeled the “diamond of the first water” by the Queen, who wades through groups of eligible women like a sparkling cupcake, all eyes on her. Dear God, she had just turned down the Prince of Prussia. And now, here she was, acting like she couldn’t believe that this guy wanted to be with her?

In Norah Murphy’s Slate review, “Why Bridgerton’s Sex Scenes Are So Unsatisfying,” she articulates,

“With respect to actress Phoebe Dynevor, watching a tiny, conventionally beautiful woman act stunned by Simon’s wedding-night confession that he ‘burns’ for her left me unmoved. Of course he burnedfor the season’s It Girl who until recently gave him the cold shoulder! When said It Girl is already desired by everyone else, there is little emotional payoff to Simon’s admission.”

You want impact? Go read Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Read about Captain Wentworth returning to Anne after she turned down his proposal ten years ago. An isolated member of society, Anne truly believes she lacks any value. And here is her rejected suitor, looking at her with nothing but admiration, and proclaiming his love. Go read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Read about Mr. Rochester promising the entire world to Jane Eyre, who has known nothing but hardship and poverty, who has been bullied and mistreated her entire life. (Of course, this dude did trap his first wife in an attic rather than provide her with any sort of much-needed care, but, hey, different strokes for different folks).

My point being—I did not fall off my chair or clap my hands in glee.

When it came to the secondary group of characters, I hoped to find at least one ally. But they popped up like the unpredictable creatures in a game of Whack-a-mole, nosing their way into situations with exasperating personalities.

From the wide crop of needlessly irritating characters, Daphne’s younger sister Eloise consistently positioned herself at the very top. Self-absorbed and utterly lost in the sauce, she spent the majority of her screen time pouting and yelling and pretending to write in her notebook. Look, misogyny is hard. I’m one of those people who would never ever time travel because I am a woman and history has, historically, persecuted and oppressed the female population. I can barely manage splashing through all of the toxic garbage that hits me on a day-to-day basis now, in 2021, so why on earth would I ever want to stop by the Regency era? So, yes, I do harbor some sympathy for Eloise. But she is firmly ensconced in the upper tiers of society. Her family looks upon her with affection and amusement.

That girl is going to be fine.

She has all of the resources to spend her days in her bedroom writing and unlooping the dramatic stories running in a frenzy through her cerebral cortex. Virginia Woolf was barely scraping by until an aunt died and left her a significant inheritance, allowing her to live comfortably and devote all of her time to do just that. Emily Dickinson was a recluse, but also belonged to a wealthy clan in Massachusetts, which really did make all the difference. They were able to write. Eloise can write.

If you want to know hard, Eloise, talk to the Brontë sisters, who had to care for their ailing father while working on their tortured epics.

The only character who garnered my empathy, who prickled my interest, was Marina. She is bullied by her hosts, the Featheringtons, who treat her with nothing but disdain, yet she maintains conviction in her actions. She keeps her head held high, even though her extended family does nothing but try to convince her that she’s worth nothing.

But the show isn’t truly interested in Marina.

Instead, it follows Penelope Featherington, her alleged ally, who brutally betrays her after a fight. As part of a family in dire financial straits, Penelope knows, intrinsically, what gossip can do to the carefully-constructed status of a household. She knows that a woman’s tarnished reputation is ruined forever. There are no second chances for women lacking finances and family resources and support. She knows this.

But she betrays Marina’s trust because she has a crush on the same man and she destroys her.

Infuriatingly, the show does not seem to regard Penelope’s actions as worthy of any real or sustained condemnation. It basically shrugs and forgets. I spent the rest of the series seething, distraught. Marina almost dies, alone, and she barely survives. Her distress is acute. Throughout the first season, I kept wishing that she had been the main character. She was a multifaceted, strong individual who deserved better writing and better acknowledgement from the story itself.

And then, of course, the scene that ruined the entire show for me. Many viewers and critics seem to ignore that this moment even happened, which is equally damaging and galling.

Daphne assaults Simon.

When she realizes that he can, physically, have children, she forces him into having nonconsensual sex.

While speaking to Bustle, Dyvenor assesses the writing in a way that clearly demonstrates the nonchalance with which the show treats the scene. She says, “It’s where Daphne really finds her power. It’s a give and take in a way, like, ‘You did this, so I did that’…It’s that murky thing in relationships of being in a marriage and [figuring out] what [is and isn’t] consensual.”

Well, Dyvenor, it was nonconsensual.

In the Vox piece “Bridgerton has a rape scene, but it’s not treated like one,” Aja Romano writes, “One bad moment of uninformed consent does not justify a moment of nonconsensual sex. And depriving Simon of his consent to both sex and fatherhood, even at the moment of climax, is still rape.”

Romano breaks down the historical silencing of Black men, offering up much-needed context:

“The fact that the rape victim here is both male and a person of color makes it even more egregious that the show is glossing over the incident. Men are often considered silent victims of sexual assault, and Black men in particular are often made scapegoats for sexual violence, which further erases the status of Black male victims of sexual assault. In this context, the show’s emphasis on Simon as the instigator of Daphne’s choice basically paints him as being responsible for his own rape. This aligns with the broader cultural gaslighting of Black men and the shifting of blame away from the white men and women who enact violence upon them.”

This is an unforgivable moment. But Bridgerton hand-waves away the violence, trying to position the assault as nothing more than a battle of wills, a moment of melodramatic tension and “passion.”

After this scene, Daphne has the audacity to be angry at Simon, refusing to budge in her growing resentment. And, as Romano mentions, the show sides with Daphne. It firmly places the blame on Simon, the man who “selfishly” refuses to provide his wife with children even though she desperately wants them. It is chilling.

Even worse, it is Simon who must change. It is Simon who apologies to Daphne. As the camera zooms in on the birth of their first child, I almost pushed my laptop onto the floor.

In the end, Bridgerton is a poorly-crafted narrative that allows its white characters to find happiness at the cost of the humanity of its characters of color. Marina and Simon deserved more. They deserved respect and bodily autonomy and the grace of a story that did not sweep aside their own wants and motivations so that their white peers could get the happy ending.

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