On the eve of new Bridgerton (yay!) Kelly Meharg, a huge fan, delves into the Michael/Michaela gender swap and what it means for women struggling with infertility.
TW: Infertility
OPINION
Dearest gentle readers, tomorrow Bridgerton season four will drop on Netflix and I, for one, am absolutely jazzed about it.
I adore Bridgerton – it’s one of my go-to millennial comfort watches, I’ve read all of the books and I love the heaving-bosom Regency escapism about the series. Also, it’s sexy. Hehe.
I also absolutely love how creator Shonda Rhimes and her team have interpreted Julia Quinn’s original material, doing away with the time period’s lack of diversity and embracing open casting, imaging a Recency era where there were more colours than plain old white and interpreting relationships with a modern, relatable bent.
We have this to thank for Rege Jean Page and I will be ETERNALLY grateful because, Jesus Christ, a more perfect-looking man has never been made.
We’ve also had wonderful queer storylines introduced, most notably with this season’s leading man, second son Benedict, whose bohemian, arty ways lead him to open his mind in more ways than one, dabbling with bisexuality while he indulges in some rakish behaviour. It was a perfect addition and added some depth and realness to an already brilliant character.
But, and hear me out here, the biggest change from the source material happened at the very end of season three and will continue to have ramifications across the series and I’m sorry, I’m just not here for it.
They changed a character’s gender (if you don’t want spoilers, stop reading here!) and while on paper that sounds fine, it’s who they changed that I really just can’t get on board with.
Michael, Francesca’s eventual second husband, has been changed to Michaela.
Here’s what happens (in the books): at the beginning of Francesca’s book, When He Was Wicked, her first husband John dies, leaving her a widow at the age of 26. They had been struggling with infertility – made all the more harder by the fact that she’s a Bridgerton, and the rest of her family seem to breed like rabbits. Fuelled by her desire to have children (and undeniable desire desire) she remarries Michael, John’s cousin and heir, who has been in love with Francesca since well, forever, and is struggling with his own feelings of guilt, loss and love. They eventually marry, but continue to battle infertility for years.
It’s a romance that Bridgerton fans have long lauded as their favourite as the couple deal with complicated, real and relatable issues that modern couples face. Infertility still carries taboos, and it’s still not talked about enough.
So it’s kind of heartbreaking to see it, presumably, wiped from one of the biggest, and culturally relevant, shows on the planet.
Why remove such a relatable and important plot point? One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, and approximately one in four New Zealanders will experience infertility struggles.
Was it too messy to show on TV? Are women’s reproductive struggles too uncomfortable or unsexy? For a show like Bridgerton, that is so progressive and brilliant at not being restrained by the limitations and realities of history, how could they not have realised that changing this storyline that so many women, in particular, can see themselves in, seems like a dumb move.
Bridgerton showrunner Jess Brownell says of the swap, “The reveal of Michaela versus Michael, from the books, is something that I’ve been pitching from season one of the show. My approach to telling a queer story on Bridgerton has been to look to the books for thematic cues. I didn’t want to just insert a queer character for queer character’s sake. I want to tell a story that accurately reflects a queer experience, and the first time I read Francesca’s book, I really identified with it as a queer woman. Maybe not in the way Julia Quinn intended.”
She continues, “Her book is very much about [Francesca] feeling different, and not really knowing why. In the book, I think it has a lot to do with her just being an introvert, but as a queer woman, a lot of my queer experience, and I think a lot of my friends’ [experiences have] been about that sense of feeling different, and navigating what that means.
“There’s also a lot of research and thought historically about the choice of changing Michael to Michaela. I think it was important for me in planning a queer story to think about how we might be able to tell a happily ever after and show queer joy, which we don’t always get to see in period pieces. There are some good examples from history, without giving too much away, of women like Francesca, who are able to carve out happily ever afters.”
Two things can be true – queer love stories matter, AND infertility stories matter. They can – and should – co-exist in the Bridgerton world, and by changing Michael to Michaela, inevitably, Francesca’s infertility struggles are eliminated from their love story.
There are SO many other characters where a gender swap would have been awesome (lol imagine Hyacinth falling in love with a gal, that is FIRE or Cressida finding redemption with a lady from the country) where the show’s writers could have explored how hard it would have been to be queer in the 1800s and talked about valid issues and perspectives.
Why, though, did we have to sacrifice such an important plot point for this to happen?
Of course, fans of books that get turned into TV shows and movies are known for being annoyed about adaptations (don’t get me started on the travesty that was the Harry Potter movies). Indignation that your favourite plot point gets omitted is silly, but this one hits different.
What do you think?