It was hard to watch."Īnd a fourth wrote: "Just remembered why I did not particularly love the first book of the Bridgerton series and re-read the rest of the books all the time.! The book should have come with a trigger warning and now that it's going to be on a show, all the more! tw: marital rape of husband by wife."Īs well as acknowledging that the sex scene is, in fact, rape, a comment piece in Vox by writer Aja Romano explains Simon's use of the word “can’t” instead of “won’t” means that Daphne, who has been given little to no sex education, is also unable to give informed consent when they first have sex.
"And we watch her grow into this woman who gets to shed all of the constraints society has held her to, and she finally figures out who she really is and what she's capable of." Viewers react to the 'Bridgerton' scene controversy:Ī third added: "Trigger warning: rape The #Bridgerton rape scene needs to be acknowledged as one. "I've always called this first season of the show, if it had a subtitle, it would be, 'The Education of Daphne Bridgerton.' That incident really goes along with that overall - that overarching theme that she starts out as this picture-perfect, wide-eyed, innocent debutante," Van Dusen told the outlet. He continued to explain that the scene is part of Daphne's journey from an innocent debutante to a woman who knows what she wants and what she's capable of doing to get it.
And we did discuss it, a lot, as far as how to approach it and how to handle it." Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Van Dusen said: "We had a lot of conversations around that specific incident in the book. The book The Duke and I came out 20 years ago and since then, society's understanding of consent has changed-which has now raised questions as to why series creator Chris Van Dusen decided to keep the so-called " Bridgerton rape scene" in the show. Why was the 'Bridgerton' rape scene included?
In Julia Quinn's book, The Duke and I, which season one is based on, the scene is slightly different than on screen: Simon comes home drunk and Daphne, feeling an "intoxicating surge of power," takes advantage of him and leaves him with "complete loss of speech, this choking, strangling feeling".