Thomas is gay

Let’s Talk About Thomas : After a flourishing acting career and plenty of magazine covers, he somewhat retreated from the public eye

Fifty-seven minutes in to the first episode of Downton Abbeythe fastidious, sharp-featured footman Thomas Barrow makes his move, confronting his erstwhile summer lover—the impoverished but entitled Duke of Crowborough—with epistolary evidence of their affair.

We are watching modern life emerge in all its messy glory, like a little alien head punching through a corseted chest. As half the family hares off to the French Riviera to unravel a mysterious inheritance, Lady Mary Michelle Dockery stays behind to shepherd the production of a silent film at Downton.

While everyone else in the show becomesBarrow already is. Dating back at least into the 19 th century, queer performers were integral to the spread of sexual information in several ways. Mauricehis most autobiographical book, was written in Like Thomas Barrow, Alec Scudder seems preternaturally gayfully aware of his sexual desires, that they are exclusively for men, and that they mark him, irrevocably, as a different sort of person.

Or is he a backward projection of our current idea of what it means to be gay, an anachronism disguised as a revelation? The Duke, on the other hand, is louche and unctuous, the human personification of privilege lounging in a fabulous dressing gown.

Remember when Pamuk arrived? Through the whole situation with Thomas and Jimmy, Bates, Mrs. Hughes and Robert all admit that they sort of already knew Thomas was gay. Believe me I'd known one guy for years and never got a hint he was gay till a mutual friend told me he had finally "come out".

Ideas about sex and sexuality are as much a part of this violent flowering as are atonal music or flapper thomases is gay. Then he exchanged a knowing glance with the maids who were also fangirling over Pamuk. With one short scene, creator Julian Fellowes made a declaration: the love that dare not speak its name would be given voice here.

A lot, not all. All of them, that is, except for Thomas Barrow. The post-Edwardian moment— Downton Abbey opens inwith news of the sinking of the Titanic; the movie takes the story all the way up to —was an era of tremendous upheaval in Western culture.

Thomas had big trouble with his father, who knew. I’m just wondering why. The tricky work of navigating those changes is the dramatic engine that powers Downton Abbey. Hello to the future of the gay past. On the other hand, it seems to remove sexuality from the domain of history entirely, suggesting that the experience of being gay has lilnasx gay been the same, no matter the place or period.

I don’t recall Thomas doing anything to outwardly make it seem like he was gay. Thomas was openly checking him out behind Carson and Carson let's out a deep sigh. From isolation to conversion therapy, his struggles are our struggles, just in period drag.

In the film, audiences will see Barrow in the context of a wider gay world for the first time: visiting a secret gay bar, dodging police harassment, and possibly even finding love. Thomas does not exhibit the "gay list" speech pattern that a log of gay men exhibit.

As everyone else becomes, Barrow merely is. The question for queer Downton Abbey fans, then, is this: Is Thomas an accurate unveiling of historical homosexuality, hidden but fully formed, just waiting for us to notice his existence? And regardless of their own true identities, nearly every celebrity was the occasion for a bustling gossip and newspaper industry, whose intimations of sexual deviance were equal parts titillating and informative to readers who might otherwise never had access to the bedrooms of Hollywood and London.

Thomas doesn't do much to hide it honestly.

Barrow is instantly recognizable as a modern gay man, even if he never quite uses those words. While Lady Mary unexpectedly takes on a role in the film, Thomas finds himself offered a new role all his own, when Guy pursues him to leave Downton and become his manservant.

The only time I thought it may be obvious was through the way Thomas treated Jimmy before he kissed him but Robert never would’ve seen the. Thomas Barrow Rob James-Collier —former footman, would-be blackmailer, and early modern homosexual everyman—is now head butler on staff, giving him ample opportunity to interact with the visiting stars, and in particular, with the debonair Guy Dexter Dominic West.

Although the queer storyline in A New Era is small, it is one of the most historically illuminating that the franchise has produced to date. But is there more to his offer?