Opinion Could Sophie Baek be ‘just a maid’? ‘Bridgerton’ Season 4 declares ‘life is meant to be lived,’ omits just who gets to live it

This season shifts its focus primarily to the beloved, “rake-ish” Benedict Bridgerton, who has benefited from four seasons of generous character development. In contrast to his duty-bound older brother, Viscount Anthony Bridgerton, or the younger, sensitive Colin, Benedict is a man of the arts, a “free spirit”.

Having spent another summer exploring the depths of his artistic and personal liberties, our leading man must now balance his individuality and freedom with the weight of being a Bridgerton man. His return to high society, and thus his willingness to marry, albeit at his mother’s insistence, becomes the headline of this season. How could a Bridgerton man ever resist the most powerful of forces – his mother? And what are the stakes, really, for a wealthy landowner whose “struggle” is whether to continue his sexual explorations or settle into a comfortable marriage?

This theme of freedom creeps through each character’s motivations in the four episodes that dropped last Friday (January 30). “Life is meant to be lived,” the season declares repeatedly, but it becomes increasingly clear that this philosophy applies only to those with the privilege to live it. Violet Bridgerton, the matriarch, must now allow herself to pursue a new romance, albeit discreetly, while her daughter-in-law, Penelope Featherington, yearns for some of the anonymity she enjoyed as the fictitious Lady Whistledown before she was unmasked. Lady Danbury seeks the freedom to travel and step away from her duties as the queen’s primary confidante. But the protege she has identified, Mrs Mondrich, newly elevated from the working class, seeks to dictate the terms of her own involvement in high society.

Despite a Queen at the helm, all the women in this version of Regency-era England find themselves trapped by patriarchy, and their identities are defined in relation to the men in the picture. Even as the show acknowledges this dynamic, it never quite escapes it: Each woman’s arc remains tethered to her relationship with fathers, husbands, brothers, or suitors. Thus, Benedict’s explorations of his identity, read by society as debauchery, could tarnish the reputations of his two unmarried sisters, regardless of their own individual actions or identities as women.

Never mind then his identity as the queerest sibling (that we currently know of, amidst heated anticipation that a queer storyline is in store for at least one other Bridgerton sibling). That the man is not yet ready to give up being free, or stop exploring his sexuality at the season’s start, is a given, as is the fact that he must be married at the season’s end. But what becomes of his queerness, or his proclivity for non-monogamy? Does that get explained away as the fleeting curiosities of an unfettered soul?

Our renaissance man is uninterested in his many suitors, whom he describes as displaying “no animation, no zest for life, no personality.” The Lady in Silver, who does catch his eye, inevitably meets his criteria for “not like other girls” – she is not looking for a husband, cannot dance, and is merely hoping to enjoy herself for a night.

However, Sophie Baek, the lady in question, is no noblewoman. She is a maid of the Penwood family, which has just returned to society and is attending the ball. For the plot’s sake, she is also no ordinary maid, but one who reads extensively, can talk at length about art with Benedict, sews, and mends. The show seems unable to imagine a working-class woman worthy of love without endowing her with aristocratic refinement.

Her dismissal from the Penwoods triggers the “Great Maid Wars”, with the family poaching maids across the ton to make up for her absence. This event plays out as comic relief in a new Lady Whistledown column, until its very personal stakes to the Featherington family are revealed. The displacement and the livelihoods of the maids become mere plot devices, a backdrop to the romantic drama unfolding upstairs.

Sophie also happens to be the illegitimate daughter of the late Lord Penwood, who was raised as his ward and relegated to maid status after his demise. This presents two dilemmas, of which one the show will certainly address. Benedict’s proposition that she be his mistress, possibly mirroring her mother’s circumstances, puts her in an unsavoury position, betraying all her efforts to escape the prison of her birth, even if Benedict knows nothing of it just yet.

The other, and perhaps more troubling, question is whether her partial noble lineage would matter at all for the plot if she had been portrayed as the child of working-class parents. Would Benedict’s love story work if Sophie were simply a maid, with no secret aristocratic blood? The inclusion of this detail suggests otherwise, that class barriers can only be crossed when they turn out not to have existed in the first place.

All these questions only shine a light on Benedict’s identity and privileges as a wealthy, landowning cisgender man. For him, his proposition is merely an extension of his identity, the unconscious reflex of a man contending with the weight of his name or his position as the most eligible bachelor in town. For Sophie, however, this proposition from a wealthy promiscuous man, free to accompany whomever he chooses, could tarnish her reputation completely.

Bridgerton has always traded in fantasy, but this season’s treatment of class reveals whose freedom the show truly values, and whose stories matter only insofar as they serve the romances of the wealthy. When the show insists that life is meant to be lived, it omits the question, lived by whom? And on whose labour does that living depend? In a season ostensibly about breaking free, and with four episodes to come, the servants seem to remain exactly where they’ve always been: in the background, waiting on someone else’s happy ending.

The writer is sub-editor, The Indian Express. anagha.jayakumar@indianexpress.com