Miranda Hamilton’s war against England

citoyenne:

I love Black Sails’ Lady Miranda Hamilton, because she is unapologetic and has the autonomy of a Jane Austen or Mary Wollstonecraft heroine. The witty, educated, literary, flirtatious salon hostess turned dissenter and rebel – that’s a trope I would like to see more of on television.

Miranda would have been at the centre of political and artistic life in London. She was wealthy, assumably respected despite the rumours of her affairs, and happily married. History is full of women trapped in horrible, violent, stifling marriages, but that of Miranda and Thomas seems to have been a true marriage of minds, based on actual love (in whatever form) as well as mutual respect and admiration.

Black Sails is preoccupied with narrative and story telling, and the power of a good story is frequently used to shift alliances and to create villains.

In the eyes of England – imperialist, patriarchal England, Miranda would be at her most admirable as an accomplished hostess, an undesirably intelligent woman perhaps, but she adhered to and upheld the rules of society, and if she ever deviated she did so quietly, in private. For instance, although she wants James to accompany her in public, she only kisses him in the carriage, once they are out of the public eye. She knows exactly what she is allowed to do, but also how she can discreetly manoeuvre her way to obtain something forbidden.

When James initially announces that he and Miranda will not settle in Europe, we get the sense that he intends to raise hell when he reaches New Providence. He does not. Instead he adapts and becomes the very thing he swore to fight and reform. In Nassau, Miranda becomes increasingly reckless and restless, meddling in the politics of the place by forging alliances, confronting and initiating sex with the pastor and she continuously urges James to keep Thomas’ legacy alive by evoking change, even if it is just change for the two of them. In England, James was the plain spoken lieutenant and she the witty, much admired and much adaptable socialite, but in Nassau their roles are reversed. James becomes the figure of adoration (or at least fear) and Miranda the rational dissenter, forever sparring the arguments of others, those of the pastor, the Guthries and James.

Why did Miranda settle in Nassau? She could have severed all ties to James, even spoken out against him to save her own skin, throwing herself on the mercy of Lord Alfred Hamilton. Less drastically, she could have started a new life in Amsterdam or Paris with the help of Lord Ash. By assuming a new identity (which she does anyway), she could have lived modestly but comfortably as a governess, teaching music, literature, languages. She could have hid behind a personae, like James does with Flint, but even as Mrs Barlow, the pious, Purcell-loving recluse, she is very much the Miranda Hamilton she has always been, even if she does not fully realise it herself. Miranda settles in Nassau after making a ‘hard choice, to achieve the least awful outcome’, to use the wording Lord Ash later employs to excuse his own treachery. Miranda’s chooses to leave civilisation but to keep her integrity, an act of open rebellion against society. Miranda Hamilton declares war on England.

She has not yet realised the extent or the danger of her rebellion when she urges James to ask for a pardon. She laments the lack of company, art and music, and pleads with him to return to civilisation. James furiously refuses to take her advice and accept a pardon, stating that it would be equivalent to apologising to England. ‘The moment I sign that pardon,’ he gnarls; ‘the moment I ask for one, I proclaim to the world that they were right. This ends when I grant them my forgiveness not the other way around.’

While on their way to Charlestown, Miranda confesses her astonishment to James on finding that Abigail has grown up. ‘It’s like she’s some sort of clock that’s finally struck its chime and woken me from this dream we’ve been living, reminded me how many years separate me from a world I still think of as home. How unrecognizable the woman I am now would be to the woman I was then,’ she states. As viewers, we are invited to view this as a poetic way of showing for just how long Miranda and James have been exiled, (and perhaps suggesting that mourns her own childlessness), but when James replies that he still recognises her, it is not just a kind reassurance, it demonstrates how little they have changed, despite everything. They are recognisable to each other because they are cut from the same cloth, because their integrity is still intact, because they tirelessly refuse to capitulate, because they are allies in the war against injustice and England.

Miranda inevitably realises the extent of her rebellion, because of the clock, her clock, which now stands in the home of Lord Ash in Charlestown. It is at this moment that she realises how her values and those of the civilised world are at odds, how her autonomy makes it impossible for her to return to society. Civilisation comes at too high a price. Having been uncharacteristically quiet for the duration of their visit, Miranda raises her voice at a critical point. She demonstrates that at a moment when James is prepared to compromise, she is not. Compromise is capitulation, and capitulation is out of the question. 

Miranda, James and Lord Ash have all had to make hard choices, but unlike the former, Lord Ash lost his integrity the moment he de facto capitulated to Lord Alfred Hamilton by aiding him vilifying James. Lord Ash considered the least awful outcome to be one where society persevered over scandal, where England triumphed over degenerates and the status quo was upheld. ‘You wish to return to civilisation,’ he scorns, ‘that is what civilisation is.’ Lord Ash stands for civilisation, Thomas, in allegedly forgiving the treachery of his friend, stands for civilisation, Miranda and James stand for justice, integrity and freedom.

Miranda, which was as her most admirable to England as a polite socialite, raises her voice and becomes this raging, furious rebel, which makes her all the more admirable to the viewers. We half expect James to interfere, to cut Lord Ash down then and there, as the camera zooms in on his face as the truth dawns on him, that he was almost tricked into capitulating to his greatest enemy. In a furious monologue which would not be out of place if delivered by James, Miranda states that she wants to see the Charlestown burned to the ground, and as she does so, she pleadingly turns to James.

We were initially told stories about the mysterious Mrs Barlow’s hold on Captain Flint and how she made him kill on her behalf. Later we hear her blaming herself for letting James know Lord Alfred Hamilton’s whereabouts, we hear her blaming herself for being an instrument in their murder. In truth, there is no way she could have resisted letting him know which ship he was on, it would not have been in her nature. As she tells James when they first meet: ‘Great men aren’t made great by politics. They aren’t made great by prudence or propriety. They are, every last one of them, made great by one thing and one thing only, the relentless pursuit of a better world.’ Miranda has an agency of her own and no means of quitting it. The narrative of Black Sails depicts Miranda’s transformation from villain, to an understandably bitter intermediary to murder and finally, in Lord Ash’s dining room, to an autonomous rebel, outright promising destruction.

As Lady Hamilton, the hostess and socialite, she was tolerated. As Mrs Barlow, a nondescript exiled Englishwoman, she was tolerated. She might even have been tolerated in Charlestown, had she been submissive and repentant. As a plain spoken, vengeful – and more importantly, rebellious woman in open dissent of the values of civilised England, she could not be tolerated. Had she agreed to Lord Ash’s plan, or fallen to her knees pleading for him to concoct another, less vile, she would have lived. But here we have an educated, cultivated, intelligent woman who once knew and followed the rules of society, who refuses to capitulated her integrity, who still thinks of England as home. A treason not to be borne! Lord Ash acted to protect the status quo, but Miranda acts to protect herself in the face of hypocrisy, and this is what kills her. Miranda was a free spoken Englishwoman and her persistently unapologetic existence put her at constant war with civilisation. She was shot because she stood too close to Lord Ash, too close to England. She refused to offer her country forgiveness of its treatment of her and was executed for her rebellion.

‘The danger here is real,’ she warns James in London. In Charlestown she finds herself in fearless in opposition. Miranda dies because she has realised that she is at war, because a  rational, autonomous, dissenting woman is too dangerous an enemy for England to let live.