Victoria and Albert are now married and enjoying everything there is to love about marriage. But nothing was easy back in the good ol’ days—especially if you wanted to avoid pregnancy.
The beginnings of a marriage are always complicated, but when the wife has a life purpose and the husband doesn’t, it can be a problem.
In fact, at one point Victoria goes to work and tells Albert to play the piano for her. That’s not what he had in mind—that’s a hobby. She then tells him that she’s going to have him walk her into dinner instead of her uncle, except that, because of precedence, her uncle has that honor; Albert doesn’t even get to be her equal. So, Victoria works to change that by giving her uncle’s wife a title. She’s a very smart lady.
Slavery is also an issue in this episode. Queen Victoria was against the practice, as was Albert, but she refused to speak out about it at an assembly. However, Prince Albert feels very strongly about the issue and decides to speak out himself. He’s nervous, but he doesn’t waver in his commitment to the cause and his speech is a triumph!
His brother, Ernst, wants to be with the Duchess of Suffolk, even though she’s married. Albert, who is incredibly morally upstanding, is so mad at his brother about it that he asks him to leave. It’s very sad.
In the servants’ world, the baker and the hairdresser are slowly falling for each other. He finds out she went to a dangerous part of town called the Seven Dials, and later goes there himself to fix things for her family.
He makes her a monogram out of chocolate and leaves it on her bed.
Albert and Victoria are so in love and enjoying their bedroom, but the virgin governess, who has a room with a connecting door, walks in on them—and Victoria proceeds to ask her for advice on birth control. For a girl who was clever enough to give her husband space to speak his mind on important issues and to get her way with dinner, it’s bizarre to me that she wasn’t smart enough to ask a married woman with a limited number of kids how to prevent pregnancy.
The governess tells her to jump up and down 10 times.
Keri is a professional chatterbox who loves watching TV & movies, reading about pop culture, and gawking at any craziness on the internet. You can follow Keri on Twitter.