LADY VIOLET BRIDGERTON
ANTHONY BRIDGERTON
LADY VIOLET’S SON
SIENA ROSSO
BRIDGERTON/LADY VIOLET, HER SON ANTHONY AND THE SIENA ROSSO AFFAIR/THE BEGINNING
HERE IS A CRUCIAL PART OF THE ASTRID ESSED ANALYSIS ABOUT
THE RELATIONSHIP OF LADY VIOLET AND HER SON ANTHONY
THE SIENA ROSSO AFFAIR
SEE
INTRODUCTION
Bridgerton series is about the Bridgerton aristocratic Family in the Regency Era and
describes the happenings of the eight Bridgerton children and their mother and matriarch Violet Bridgerton
LADY VIOLET AND HER RELATIONSHIP WITH HER SON ANTHONY
Most important:
Lady Violet loves Anthony deeply, but their bond is strained by a number of factors:
By the death of the patriarch and father of Anthony, Edmund, his wife Violet is so
deep in mourning, that Anthony has to take full responsibility for not only the Estate and Household [as the head of the family], but also as the ”caretaker” and surrogate father of his younger brothers and sisters
When Lady Violet resumes her tasks as matriarch again, she is still mourning, often not
realizing that Anthony, even though he is the judicial head of the family, needs the
love of his mother too.
While she is tender towards her 7 children,especially daughter Daphne, she often treats Anthony, unintentionally, with severe harshness, coldness and even cruelty, by consistently
scolding him and pointing mercilessly on his duties [making cruel remarks like ”O my dear son, your father should have been soooo disappointed], without giving him room for
a break or even mourning his dead father [by saying ”Stop mourning, it’s ten years now, while she herself takes all the time for mourning]
So Anthony thinks mistakingly that his mother only uses him in his role as Viscount and loves him less then the other children.
REASONS FOR VIOLET’S HARSHNESS, TENDING TO CRUELTY
Firstly
Violet doesnt realize her own harshness and as far as she sees it, she thinks she must harden
Anthony for his role as patriarch of the family in a relentless social Regency Era, where one
misstep could cause social death
And that threat of social death, especially concerning the marriage chances of
her daughters, is the reason for her harshness against Anthony in a time, that missteps
were not forgiven
So, because of that situation, she is extremely strict against him, culminating in cruelty, which hurts him deeply, especially given her tenderness to her other children.
She also fails to see his needs because of her deep mourning.
Then there is the unequal position of men and women.
As head of the Family, Anthony is also the legal head of his mother.
And as a strong willed woman, Violet finds it hard to accept, that her own
child is now her legal ”boss”
Then, as an eldest son, Anthony bears all the responsibility for the family.
How immense the burden is for an 18 year old boy is something that Lady Violet doesn’t realize at all, until much later.
She forces him [as is his task as head of the family] to arrange the marriage and the debut of his sister Daphne and of course he makes some mistakes, but Lady Violet, instead of
understanding that he has to learn from his mistakes, jumps on him like a tigress defending her offspring [in this case Daphne] and
scolding him without mercy.
THE SIENA ROSSO AFFAIR
A deep wound for Anthony is also that while Daphne is allowed to marry for love, his mother
coldly commands him to break up his love affair with opera singer Siena Rosso.
[Eventually it’s Siena herself who ends the affair, but triggered by Violet’s and the Ton’s fierce resistance, leaving Anthony heartbroken]
While of course Lady Violet wants him to be happy too, to her defence must be said, that
a marriage between an aristocrat and an operasinger was a no go area in Regency Time, since
opera singers not onl;y were of another social class, but were also considered
as immoral women.
Such a marriage would ruin the marriage chances of his sisters, so Violet had no choice.
But in the light of her severe strictness against him and his scolding for even innocent
mistakes he makes, her fierce resistance against his affair [which she considered as a mere ”infatuation] must have hurt him deeply, a fact Violet didn’t realize at all.
But at the end, Violet realized the sharp pain she unintentionally inflicted on her son and
made tearful apologies to him, saying:
””I am so sorry it was you who was with your father that day. And I am sorry for everything that happened in the days that followed. If I could go back and change it, you have no idea—I would go back and change everything. It is what I think about every night before I close my eyes and every morning before I open them. It will never go away.”
This is a heartbreaking, beautiful moment for Violet in which she
overcomes herself, for in Regency Era, parents rarely offered their
apologies to their children.
But she was capable to do so, due to her deep love for her son.
Her love for him was there all along, but due to her own deep mourning,
the strict social pressures in Regency Era, the fact that her son was her
”legal boss” [what was hard for a strong willed mother to accept],
the fact that they both were ”commanders in chief] [Anthony the legal head of the Family and his mother as the guardian of the family values and the head of the household], the fact that she had to fight for the marriage chances of her daughters and sometimes had to fiercely oppose her son [which gave him the impression that she only cared about her daughters, especially Daphne, which was not the case] brought fierce tensions in their relationship.
Violet wounded Anthony sharply, although unintentionally.
By offering excuses their bond started to heal and they finally became mother and son again.
TO BE CONTINUED!
ASTRID ESSED
MORE TO WRITE ABOUT BRIDGERTON AND THE SIENA ROSSO AFFAIR!
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