1. Introduction

Downton Abbey is a British costume drama produced by ITV (Independent Television) in 2010. Almost the moment it came out, it received overwhelming praises from all the sides, and someone even take it as the best TV series after Pride and Prejudice made in 1995. Up to now, Downton Abbey has won numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries and a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding Movie. It earned the most nominations of any international television series in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards, with twenty-seven in total (after two series). By the third series, it had become one of the most widely watched television drama shows in the world.

With all above honors, the series certainly contain mentionable good characteristics: delicate scripts, complicated family story, well-developed characters and rollercoaster story plots. Applying these factors, it presents the whole British society before us. And upon it, we could take a bite of the gorgeous British culture in that age.

The series, setting in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey, depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era. The story starts from the big event-the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which took away the lives of inheritors to Downton estate. Therefore, the poor Crawley family had to find another male inheritor. The series, depicting the story of estate’s inheritance, show us the vivid ways of world under the strict social hierarchy and the emerging changes after the industry revolution. Other great events also came into effects towards Crawley family, such as the outbreak of the First World War, the Spanish influenza pandemic, and the Marconi scandal in the second series….

Mary Crawley, the eldest daughter of Lord Grantham, is one of the main characters of series. In series, Mary Crawley is defined as an intelligent, beautiful lady, whose tough exterior harbored quite a soft heart. Concerning about entailment, she has to seek her way to happiness. And as the most popular character, Mary Crawley has been discussed a lot by scholars and fans. Some of them compare Mary with Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice and find plenty of similarities between them. Obviously, Mary is confident, even a little arrogant and has a strong will, while she takes prejudice towards Matthew, who finally becomes her husband.

1.1 Research Background

As we’ve mentioned above, Downton Abbey no doubt has been the most watched series on ITV, and subsequently the most successful British costume drama. For those years, Downton Abbey has been catching millions of people’s eyes and raising our interests on ancient British culture. And for now, Downton Abbey has almost completed their production of sixth series with good quality, as always. It could not be denied that many aspects of Downton Abbey are worthy to study for its fine production. Numbers of researches also have been carried around the drama. However, quite few of them focus on the accents aspect. From my point of view, it’s such a waste to abandon this part, which definitely can be an emerging treasure. We can easily get the evidences supporting this from the fact millions of people are crazy about the pure traditional British accents. A large number of people start imitating British accents after watching this drama. Therefore, the gap between the needs and offers reminds me to carry this study. 

1.2 Objectives of the Study

The object of the study is the British accent of Mary Crawley in the former three series. This study aims to analyze the everyday conversation accents of Mary and figure out the features of her accents. Moreover, the study intends to explore the possibilities of characterization of Mary from the perspective of accents, for example, whether the accents conform to social background or social status. In other words, the study tries to uncover how the British accents could contribute to Mary’s role shaping, how people of certain class spread their will and idea through their accents. Another purpose of the study is to remind actors or people to improve their pronunciations and develop critical awareness towards their own accents.