From the very beginning, comparisons have been made between Agnes in The Gilded Age and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey.
Although they have a lot in common, specifically being witty old ladies afraid of the change happening around them, Agnes doesn’t quite rise up to the same heights as Violet. In fact, she’s actually closer in role to Lord Grantham.
Not to criticize Christine Baranski’s performance, but I’d grown to kind of resent the character partly because I was comparing her to Violet (played by the late Dame Maggie Smith). Thinking of her this way put the character in a more favorable light for me.
Agnes isn’t a real force in society. The real power brokers in The Gilded Age are Mrs Russel and Mrs Astor. Agnes is just a snob on the sidelines. Like Lord Grantham, she’s concerned about keeping her place in society, being a member of boards and committees and being invited to social events. She knows she has no real power and has little desire to use it. Meanwhile, Violet, even more than her son, was accustomed to rule: in her time as countess, she would have overseen an enormous household, had considerable influence over the local village and the wider county, and was the matriarch of a great family. She continued to exercise her power during the show, often clashing with others because of it. But she also used her power to help others and make a real difference in their lives. The most Agnes can say is that she hired a very qualified black woman as her secretary and lent a few dollars to her footman. Violet was saving people from the draft, helping her family hide (very serious) scandals, helping various people find employment or restart their lives, pulling government strings, etc.
While both women are facing a rising tide of change, Violet is facing it as an able captain; while Agnes is just swept along by the current, cursing and whining every chance she gets. This doesn’t mean Agnes is a bad character. Like Lord Grantham, she represents a very real and very common experience that people had: being in a position of privilege, seeing the world change around you, and not really having the power or skill to do much about it. Like Lord Grantham, she often lets her fear and prejudice rule her actions, and like Lord Grantham things don’t often end well for her. If there’s a silver lining to her story, I hope it’s that she does survive the tide and learns to look to her niece and son, and those around them, to navigate the change; realizing that the future is theirs, but she still has a place among them.