Bridgerton's Muddled Attempt at Class Commentary

[The following contains spoilers for Bridgerton Season 4 Part 2.]

After three seasons of conventional Regency romance pairings between debutantes and eligible bachelors, Bridgerton's fourth season switches things up with a Cinderella story about class divides. When lovable himbo Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) falls for housemaid Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), their secret affair could ruin both of their lives. Sophie also gives us our first real look at working-class life in the Bridgerton universe — a topic the show predictably struggles to handle in a coherent manner.

Bridgerton has obviously never made a claim toward historical accuracy. With its rhinestone-studded Barbie ballgowns and Gossip Girl voiceover, it's an explicitly cartoonish riff on Regency romance. That being said, some narrative rules cannot be broken. Bridgerton's historical love stories only make sense if the show retains the rigid social hierarchy of 19th century England, resulting in a peculiarly mixed bag of sociopolitical world-building.

In this universe, racism evaporated in the late 18th century, following the coronation of Britain's first Black queen. A couple of generations later, British society is diverse and desegregated. Yet sexism and classism must continue unabated, because they're foundational to the plot of the original Bridgerton novels. The show's biggest conflicts revolve around matrimony and scandal, in a setting where women are defined by their ability to land a suitable husband and premarital sex can destroy a young lady's reputation.

Amidst all this, the Bridgerton family must tread a fine line as relatable protagonists, reflecting the values of their era while still seeming progressive enough to appeal to modern audiences. In Season 4, this overlaps with an amusingly rose-tinted view of life as a domestic servant.

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While some of the more villainous aristocrats are cruel to their staff, the Bridgertons are kindhearted employers. Their servants have a grand old time gossiping and folding handkerchiefs and baking cute little cakes, acting as a supportive Greek chorus for all the drama going on upstairs. Despite various subplots where Sophie risks homelessness or even jail time due to her precarious social status, the show can't depict a realistic level of domestic drudgery. To do so would risk touching the third rail of Bridgerton's world-building. We can't think too hard about why the main characters spend their whole lives going to balls and having frivolous romantic exploits, because then we'd have to acknowledge the weirdness of romanticizing the British aristocracy: a famously ghoulish and exploitative bunch.

Sophie is the illegitimate daughter of an earl and a housemaid, and she received an upper-class education during childhood. Then her father died, leaving her in the clutches of her abusive stepmother, Araminta (Katie Leung), who forced her to work as an unpaid maid. By adulthood, Sophie has accepted that she'll spend the rest of her life in service — but she does allow herself one night of freedom, sneaking into a masked ball where she meets Benedict. He falls for her at once, but since he doesn't know who she is, he then has to fall for her again, this time under her true identity as a servant. When circumstances lead her to start working for the Bridgerton household, it's only a matter of time before their affair comes to light.

The big midseason cliffhanger involves Benedict asking Sophie to become his official mistress. He's unprepared for how offensive this proposal will be, highlighting the unequal power dynamic in their relationship. From his privileged viewpoint, this is how rich men always formalize partnerships with "unsuitable" women. Yet for Sophie, it's a permanent sentence to second-class citizenship. Mistresses aren't welcome in polite society, and she'd have to spend the rest of her life hidden away in Benedict's country estate, excluded from the warmth of the Bridgerton family home. 

Per the rules of the genre, the female characters in Bridgerton always have more to lose than the men. Women must rely on their husbands for financial security, and they also face harsher repercussions for scandalous behavior. In Season 4, this power imbalance feels more drastic than ever before. The penultimate episode sees Sophie get arrested on trumped-up charges from her evil stepmother, who accuses her of theft. Lacking the means to defend herself, Sophie only avoids life in prison once Benedict and his mother, Violet (Ruth Gemmell), step in.

By this point, Violet has quietly endorsed Benedict's desire to marry Sophie, and with help from some other friends, they hatch a plan to rescue her from her stepmother's persecution. The eventual solution is to blackmail Araminta into labeling Sophie a legitimate heir (therefore transforming her into a suitable marriage prospect), but before that, they attempt to get Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) on board. If they can convince the queen to support Sophie and Benedict's relationship, then the rest of society will have to follow.

"Once upon a time there were royals living in a palace who wanted you to go away," says the queen's lady-in-waiting, Alice Mondrich (Emma Naomi), trying to draw a sympathetic connection between Sophie's outsider status and Queen Charlotte's early life. She goes on to defend Sophie on the grounds that "not every maid is humble or simple," arguing that Sophie won Benedict's heart through her unique charm and intellect. Alice is obviously catering to the queen's sensibilities here, but as sentimental music swells in the background, the show seems to support her underlying message: Unlike other servants, Sophie deserves to be elevated to a higher station. 

Sophie is indeed different from the other servants, not just thanks to her education, but because her protagonist status awards her a more complex inner life. Her servant friends (Hazel the maid; Alfie the footman) are simple, lighthearted folk, and their coworkers all seem happy with their lot in life. With her tragic past and inner turmoil and dramatic love life, Sophie faces more important problems than the cheerful staff bustling around the Bridgerton kitchens. 

As the season draws to a close, it's hard to swallow the idea that Sophie's peers just conveniently support her relationship. When she moves from servants' quarters into a guest room in the Bridgerton townhouse, and ultimately gets whisked away to her fairy-tale ending, wouldn't some of the other servants feel a smidge of resentment?

Hazel (Gracie McGonigal) and Alfie (David Moorst) will spend the rest of their days getting up at dawn to do other people's housework, while Sophie will bask in inherited luxury, a lifestyle supported by other people's labor. And no matter how you spin it, there's a strong implication that she earned this happy ending through personal merit.

Either we believe that Sophie's unique qualities make her a perfect match for Benedict (which is, of course, the foundation of literally any romance story), or we acknowledge that her upper-class background makes her a more acceptable choice to join the Bridgerton family. Several characters directly remark upon her impressive education and ladylike comportment, whereas a typical housemaid would definitely struggle with the culture clash of becoming a rich man's wife. So really, the finale sees Sophie settle down where she truly "belongs," among England's elite. Meanwhile the other servants "belong" below stairs, doing all the hard work behind Bridgerton's many tea parties and glamorous balls.

In general, Bridgerton succeeds by sweeping us up in pure romantic euphoria, discouraging us from thinking too hard about the show's foundation in a real historical era. That still holds true for much of Season 4, not least because Yerin Ha gives such a sympathetic and engaging performance. But the more we focus on the social stigma around Sophie and Benedict's relationship, the harder it is to believe that their problems can be neatly resolved.

After a full season of treating Sophie and Benedict's affair like a world-ending disaster, the show basically waves a magic wand and says that everything will be okay. We're not meant to worry about the inevitable controversy around Sophie's past as a housemaid, which will surely become public knowledge soon enough. Nor are we meant to care about all the other vulnerable servants who lack the safety net of a wealthy fiancé. For once, Bridgerton's happily-ever-after just isn't quite plausible enough to be satisfying, hand-waving a host of obstacles that were previously baked into the setting.

Bridgerton Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.