The Duchess of Chatsworth

The Duchess of Chatsworth
My wife and I watched “Mama Mia” together Friday night, and after she went to bed I watched “The Duchess” alone, going to bed after midnight. The former was silly and not my cup of tea, but the latter was better than I expected: It had more substance than an upper class costume drama, which is what I expected. This was the case because of the woman involved and her wrestling with male dominance in the person of her husband, William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire. She was a proto-feminist in the 1780s and he was an aristocratic slug that never did appreciate the woman he had for a wife and companion.
Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightly) was hooked up with Cavendish (Ralph Fiennes) by her ambition mother (Charlotte Rampling) who did all the negotiating on her daughter’s behalf. If that name Spencer rings a bell it is because Georgiana was the Great Aunt, several generations removed, of Princess Diana, who was also from the House of Spencer. The Duke may have been a social prize, but as a human being he was hardly a bargain. Very early into the marriage she started complaining to her mother that he enjoyed the company of his hounds more than her society and rarely deigns to talk to her at all. Other than for sex and their steady diet of social occasions, he paid little attention to her. The Duke of Devonshire was a stuck-in-the-mud Tory, an unthinking aristocrat who thought introspection was beneath his dignity, and a man who never engaged in self-criticism, which was unbecoming to a man of his social standing. Wit and charm were frivolous virtues as far as he was concerned; they were not a bedrock need in his personality and played no part in his duties. Poor Georgiana was stuck with this brick of a man and boorish lover. But his word was law and she knew it. Her gripes about him were certainly justified and she did manage to carve out her own niche in high society. She became what we today call a celebrity. It worked for her until she butted heads with the Duke, to discover how poor her options as a woman were against the patriarchal bulwark of the English Aristocracy.
There is a famous painting of the Duchess by Thomas Gainsborough. It shows a handsome woman dressed to the nines, which is how we see her in the movie. She was known as “The Empress of Fashion” and was a real style-setter. She supported the forward-looking Whig party and was a good friend of Charles Fox and Charles Grey, both of whom took a turn as Prime Minister. She was a notorious gambler and could drink most men under the table. Grey became her lover and she bore him a love child, a little girl. He persuaded her that the American Revolution was but a prelude to one about to occur in France, ideas that the Duke ridiculed as sheer nonsense. In his view the social hierarchy would go on forever, with men like himself still in charge.
The Duke married Georgiana, not for her wit, social graces, or influence on fashion, but as a pumpkin eater—to be perpetually pregnant until she provided him with a male heir. In the first nine years of marriage, she had two daughters, two still births, two miscarriages, and raised one girl he sired with a servant girl who had died. But no male heir, something he was obsessed with. After being estranged from him due to a live-in mistress, he literally raped her one night and that intercourse led, finally, to the birth of a male heir.
Ralph Fiennes plays Cavendish as insensitive and totally locked into his historic prerogatives as Duke. When Georgiana tried to strike a deal with him—he could have his live-in mistress, so she should be able to have her lover, Charles Grey—but he responded with, “I don’t make deals. I don’t have to.” Naturally, the double-standard had to prevail. When she attempted a secret rendezvous with Grey at Bath, the Duke showed up with her mother in tow. He gave her an ultimatum: Give up Grey or you will never see your children again, plus, “I will destroy Grey’s political ambitions, too.” Her mother, who represents previous generations of women who long ago have knuckled under to patriarchy, just shook her head and walked away from her daughter without a word. But, understandably, Georgiana cannot abandon her kids and she doesn’t want to blunt Grey’s political ambitions. When she went home to Chatsworth, the Cavendish estate, the Duke displayed a tiny bit of kindness toward her. The movie doesn’t deal with her life beyond this point.
Keira Knightly did as well with this role as she did with “Pride and Prejudice.” She was able to turn up her emotional range when it was called for. She looked good too, in all the fancy gowns and hairdos. The marital tensions she and Fiennes generated are quite convincing, and the movie relies heavily on their dual performances. The two are center stage most of the time.
One curiosity about “The Duchess” is there is nary a mention of Christianity in the film; we never see a clergyman throughout the tale, unlike a Jane Austen story. The narrative stays away from religion completely, staying strictly on the secular and social levels, rather refreshing for an English biography.
The film is now available on DVD.