Reply to Downton Abbey 2/16 thread *Spoilers*

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One thing that does bother me a little is that the American characters are always portrayed as loud and brash.  Well, except for Cora.  Stereotype much?[/quote]

They are loud and brash.  Cora was sent to the Continent to exchange family money for marriage to a peer.  Clearly Martha Levinson is into the London social scene as she wants to return for Rose's debut.   If the Levinsons are Jewish, as their name might suggest, this may have been an attempt to drop their Jewish roots.   This was not uncommon at the time. Look at Madeliene Albright, for example[/quote]

I do think Martha is drawn a little broadly.  Yes, we know Cora was a bucaneer and that Martha clearly enjoys having ties to England and the upper crust.  At the same time, she enjoys lampooning British reserve while singing the praises of American informality and egalitarianism.  (Sometimes literally singing -- remember, how she insisted on livening up the dinner that Cora and Robert gave in her honor by serenading Violet with "Let Me Call You, Sweetheart"?).  That said, though, there's no reason for her to be so gauche, and it actually makes the story a little weaker since it's hard to imagine how she was able to pass muster with the British elite and snag Robert for Cora.

In contrast, Madeline Albright's family history and her discovery of her Jewish heritage has nothing to do with social climbing at all.  Her grandparents and many members of her extended family were Holocaust victims.  It was in the wake of their being placed in concentration camps that her parents converted to Catholicism.  (She later became an Episcopalian when she married.)      [/quote]

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