Daisy Jones & Landon

!!There are spoilers for the show Daisy Jones & The Six in this post!!

When reading Victorian literature, I never really consider that some of the issues discussed or brought to light are still relevant in pop culture. Watching the TV show Daisy Jones & The Six (after reading the book of course), I realized just how relevant Victorian literature can be. Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s poem, “The Marriage Vow,” begins with the short statement “the altar, ‘tis of death!” (Landon 1). Unlike the Romantics, Landon gets right to her main idea through this exclamation and sets the framework for the rest of the poem. By providing a comma in between the altar and death parts of the exclamation, she leaves the readers with a pause that provides them a split second to wonder if it is a love poem.

Brandon goes on to continue that it is “the sacrifice of all youth’s sweetest hopes,” (2). When reading this line, I was utterly confused and surprised that marriage takes away youth because my parents got married young so I always viewed it as a good thing. However, after watching a young marriage in Daisy Jones & The Six which is set in the 1970s, this line made more sense. In the show, Billy Dunne is a musician who marries his wife Camilla at a very young age because she is pregnant. Due to this marriage, Billy ends up falling even deeper into his drug use and when his band goes on tour, he ultimately ends up in rehab and misses the birth of his daughter. In the show, his hopes of becoming a musician that he had when he was young are taken away because of marriage. Looking at it from a lens of a career or life-long dream being sacrificed for a marriage, Landon’s point is brought out but also complicated as in the show it is a man that gets stuck giving away his hopes while his wife, and unfortunately not well-explored character, seems to be content. However, this also furthers Landon’s point about how “It is a dreadful thing for woman’s lip,” (3). Having a very one-dimensional wife character in the show, this shows Landon’s point that marriage binds someone and it is dreadful for a woman as after marriage, her autonomy is gone. 

Also in the show, Camilla, the wife feels trapped but as mentioned, it is not explored through her eyes. However, it is explored through the eyes of Daisy Jones, someone who falls in love with Billy Dunne. She and Billy make music together and are deemed “soulmates” but because Billy is married, they can never be together. At the end of the show and book, one of the last things Camilla says is something along the lines that Billy cannot leave her and will not because she is his wife. Right there, Landon’s point about marriage “binds the victim, not the will” (9). Even though Camilla knows Billy is in love with someone else, they are still stuck in the marriage regardless due to family ties and having children. Landon’s point is still very relevant, marriage ties people together and takes away the autonomy of women even in the 70s and today. Unfortunately, there have been countless women in my life who had lost their will to their husbands. Landon fought to change marriage through the works of poetry, and yet, there are still issues almost two hundred years later.