The Crimson Petal and the White (ep 3)

If you imagine the Victorian era as one where bitter secrets were kept hidden beneath a profusion of aspidistras (thank you Mr Orwell), utter despair masked under immaculate swathes of black mourning lace, and the sexuality of ‘respectable’ women so deeply buried they might as well be sewn into their bloomers, then The Crimson Petal and the White has all of that to a T.

There was less sex in this episode (and what action Rackham managed to get looked either extremely uncomfortable  - in an ancient, squeaky, lumpy single bed – or what was tantamount to necrophilia  - with a heavily sedated and emotionally traumatised wife) but it was an absolute corker nonetheless. My highlights included a fantastic black lace shrouded interchange between Agnes Rackham (Amanda Hale) and Mrs Fox (Shirley Henderson), whose eyes alone act the pants off most other people in the business. I also loved the echoes of Jane Eyre with Sugar moving into the spartan governess room in the Rackham household, overtly to look after his daughter Sophie, but really to be on hand for Rackham to shag at his convenience.  

But the fascinatingly complex and astute Sugar uses her position to look out for the interests of the distraught Agnes as well as her neglected, bedwetting daughter, who has barely been allowed out of the toyless, joyless attic all her life, rarely sees the light of day until Sugar takes her into the garden, and has never seen her ‘mad’ mother since the day she was born. Sugar finds and reads Agnes’s diaries in the airing cupboard where Sophie’s sheets are drying, thus discovering the truth about the sexual abusive perpetrated by Dr Curlow. Curlow is plotting to have Agnes institutionalised and Rackham is too weak and inept to stop it. I felt haunted with the notion of footbinding when we saw Agnes trapped in bed after being found with her bare feet ripped to shreds from scrabbling in the garden trying to bury her diaries. Blood from her bandages is seeping through and staining the white sheets. ‘If no-one reads my diaries,’ she says to Sugar, who she imagines to be her guardian angel, ‘how would anyone know I ever existed?’.

I’ll say no more in case you’re waiting to watch it on iPlayer but this was utterly gripping and I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds next week.

Posted by Inkface

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