Anachrony in S.3 Ep.5

While watching Season 3, Episode 5 of Downton Abbey, I found myself focusing on the ways in which the episode related to Gérard Genette’s piece, “Order in Narrative”.  As Genette explains, there is the time of the story and then there is the time of the telling, which he calls narrative time.  The writers’ use of anachrony, or chronological inconsistencies, stood out to me from the very beginning of the episode.

While the narrative lengths of breaks between episodes are always seven days, the lengths of the gaps in the time of the story have varied a great deal.  Gaps between previous episodes have ranged from a few days to many months.  Since the length of the gap in “story time” between episodes is always different, I look forward to seeing how much time the creators will write-in before continuing the story in the next episode.  In this instance, while the break in narrative time was seven days, the gap in “story time” between Episode 4 and Episode 5 was only a couple of days, as evidence by the death of Lady Sybil at the end of Episode 4 and Lord Grantham saying goodbye to the visitors paying their respects at the opening of Episode 5.  I was happy to see that not much time had passed between Sybil’s death and the beginning of Episode 5.  This use of time gave the writers a great opportunity to develop characters and character relationships in the context of Sybil’s death, which was a highly emotional ordeal for most characters in the story.  For example, with Sybil’s death still fresh in the minds and hearts of the characters and audience, the writers were able to more fully develop the issues in Robert and Cora’s relationship.

My favorite example of anachrony in this episode occurred during the scene in which Daisy tried to teach Alfred how to do the foxtrot in the servants’ hall.  I assumed that this scene would simply be another goofy example of the awkward tension between Daisy and Alfred, but a short line from Daisy changes the feel and purpose of the entire scene.  When she shows Alfred how to hold his arms, she pauses and says that it reminded her of when Thomas tried to show her how to dance the grizzly bear.  This internal analepsis, as Genette would call it, takes the audience away from the present moment in the story and causes one to think back to a seemingly insignificant moment from Season 1.  Then, a close-up shot of Daisy is used as she says, “It was a long time ago.  A lot has happened since then”.  And in that short moment, the viewer is reminded of the many events that have occurred since Daisy and Thomas danced in the servants’ hall.  Personally, I thought of the war, William’s death, Matthew’s injury, Sybil and Branson, Lavinia Swire, and Bates’ trial, just to name a few.  In the tradition of a serialized narrative, all of these stories and events came together at once, connected by the common thread of Daisy’s memory.

There are numerous other examples of how the writers used the discordance between narrative time and story time to develop the plot.  Which were your favorites?