Bly Manor Peter Quints Story Reveals The Shows Biggest Problem

Bly Manor: Peter Quint’s Story Reveals The Show’s Biggest Problem

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Oliver Jackson-Cohen gives another standout performance in The Haunting of Bly Manor, but Peter Quint is poorly handled and could have been brilliant

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Bly Manor Peter Quints Story Reveals The Shows Biggest Problem

The Invisible Man star Oliver Jackson-Cohen gives another standout performance in The Haunting of Hill House follow up The Haunting of Bly Manor, but his character Peter Quint is poorly handled and could have been brilliant. His story is in fact the most glaring failure of The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Netflix recently released The Haunting of Bly Manor to rave reviews, with many critics claiming that Before I Wake helmer Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Turn of the Screw is even better than the director’s earlier adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s timeless classic The Haunting of Hill House. However, despite the effusive praise received by Bly Manor, the series isn’t without its problems.

The Haunting of Bly Manor follows in the footsteps of its predecessor by liberally adapting its source material, in this case, Henry James’ classic novella The Turn of the Screw. A lot of details are altered such as the novella’s possibly-imaginary ghosts, former groundskeeper Mr. Quint and governess Miss. Jessel, becoming the very real ghosts of doomed lovers Peter Quint and Rebecca. Depending on the reader’s interpretation the novella’s Quint and Jessel may just be projections of the disturbed protagonist, whereas in the series Rebecca becomes an ambitious would-be lawyer working as an au pair and Peter is an embittered lawyer’s assistant. Both are working-class and painfully aware of this, which is where the problems with The Haunting of Bly Manor start.

Peter (& Rebecca) Are Right About Britain’s Class System

Bly Manor Peter Quints Story Reveals The Shows Biggest Problem

Shortly after he’s introduced as a charming but potentially caddish figure, Peter bonds with Rebecca over their difficult experience of growing up working class in Britain. He notes that their employer, Henry Thomas’ Henry Wingrave, is unlikely to ever view them as more than ‘the help’, and claims that their class status will always hold them back in Britain. The thing is, he’s pretty much right. Henry never shows any signs of promoting either worker and is mostly absorbed in his own demons, meaning it’s unlikely either character could hope to “rise above their station“, as the saying goes.

British horror has a long history of confronting class divisions in the country, be it in the form of Lenny Abrahamson’s recent Sarah Waters adaptation The Little Stranger or the noughties’ regrettable ‘hoodie horror’ craze. The genre can be an effective way of depicting class struggle in heightened terms, whether it’s the aging aristocrat Dracula parasitically leeching off working-class people to survive or the haunting 2020 Oscar winner Parasite viscerally depicting the gruesome cost of contemporary capitalism on two unfortunate families. The problem with The Haunting of Bly Manor is that the series brings up Britain’s class division, but doesn’t address the fact that Rebecca and Peter are justified in their anger at an unfair system and deserve a chance at realizing their ambitions. Which illustrates a bigger issue with the series…

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Bly Manor Doesn’t Know What It Thinks About Class

Bly Manor Peter Quints Story Reveals The Shows Biggest Problem

Henry’s bizarre last line “where would we be, we wretched people, without the generosity of our betters?” might be the show’s most jarring allusion to class, intentional or otherwise. In the scene’s context, Henry may be referring to his brother’s willingness to forgive his wife’s infidelity, Dani’s willingness to sacrifice herself to save Henry’s daughter and nephew, and all the assistance Henry, Flora, and Miles have received from Dani, Jamie, Hannah, and Owen. But the phrase “our betters” and “wretched people” both come loaded with serious class implications in Britain, where references to one’s betters typical denote the landed gentry (or “the 1%”, in more modern parlance) and “wretched creatures” was a term used to refer to the starving Irish population during a famine caused by said British landowners.

It’s a glaring line at a time when recent horror hits like Ready Or Not and Us have told horror stories centered around class division, but this comment is only an indication of the show’s broader problems with class. The lady of the lake, Viola, receives an entire lavish period piece backstory that takes up an hour of The Haunting of Bly Manor’s nine-hour runtime. Peter, in comparison, receives one flashback to his mother demanding money from him, while Rebecca’s backstory as a working-class woman of color doesn’t receive any time in the spotlight. Viola is a rent-collecting lady of the manor who lives in fabulous wealth, whereas Peter and Rebecca are ordinary working-class people whose rich lives The Haunting of Bly Manor opts not to depict.

Hannah and Jamie also, no doubt, have interesting backstories that the series could have delved into, but instead, The Haunting of Bly Manor gives Dani’s love interest Jamie a brief speech to summarise her life story (despite her being one of the show’s romantic leads). Meanwhile, Hannah’s standalone episode focuses not on her unseen partner Sam, why they broke up, their relationship, or her pre-Manor life, but only on her time working for the Wingraves. The working-class characters are, quite literally, defined by being ‘the help’ just as Peter claimed, with even his brief backstory only existing to explain why he stole money from the real focus of The Haunting of Bly Manor, the Wingraves. And speaking of that flashback…

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Peter’s Abuse Backstory Is Terribly Handled

It’s understandable that a ghost story largely set in 1980s England would feature instances of sexual abuse, an endemic issue that plagued the nation at the time. However because of how little The Haunting of Bly Manor explains, the lone instances of abuse that are definitively implied to occur happen in Jamie and Peter’s short backstories and are inflicted by foster parents and working-class parents, a decision which is almost irresponsible given Britain’s actual history. Much of what made Britain’s reckoning with child abuse so hard for the nation to address in recent decades is the fact that from television presenter Jimmy Savile to accused royal family members Lord Mountbatten and Prince Andrew, many of Britain’s notable alleged abusers were prominent public figures who used their status to cover up their crimes. British horror cinema has made some commendable stabs at depicting this brutal period in the country’s history, with Matthew Holness’s deeply disturbing but tastefully handled Possum being a standout example of the genre addressing this sensitive topic with both grace and appropriately righteous horror.

In comparison, The Haunting of Bly Manor’s choice to depict only working-class abusers, particularly in a series that features a priest as a small child’s confidante in ’80s England, is woefully ill-timed and inaccurate. It’s fair to say that as a horror television series The Haunting of Bly Manor doesn’t owe its audience an accurate depiction of Britain’s issues with institutional abuse, but the issues with Peter Quint’s character illustrate a larger problem with Flanagan’s series. The show opts to include working-class characters, but only depicts them in relation to a wealthy family. It voices the legitimate grievances of characters like Peter and Rebecca, but then kills them off and focuses on sympathizing with a wealthy landlady’s tragic backstory instead of theirs. As epitomized by the character of Viola, The Haunting of Bly Manor wants to talk about Britain’s history, but its infatuation with big houses and lush costumes leaves the show unable to reckon with the reality of class division in the country and its human cost.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bly-manor-peter-quint-story-biggest-problem/

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