The most common criticism of Eloise Bridgerton’s storyline is that it appears to undermine everything she stands for. Throughout both the books and the show adaptation, Eloise is characterized by her frustration with the limited roles available to women. She rejects marriage, motherhood, and the expectations of society so vehemently that many viewers and readers interpret her eventual marriage to Sir Phillip Crane as a betrayal of her character. However, this interpretation misunderstands both Eloise’s characterization and the nature of feminist resistance within patriarchal institutions. Eloise does not reject marriage because she looks down on love; she rejects marriage because she refuses to have her identity reduced to being a wife and mother. Her eventual choice to marry does not represent surrender to the patriarchy but rather an attempt to reclaim agency within a system designed to deny it.
This distinction is crucial because Eloise’s critique has never been directed at love itself but at the institution through which love is mediated. In Regency era England, marriage functions as a patriarchal structure that transfers women from the authority of their fathers (or in her case, elder brother) to the authority of their husbands. Women’s legal, economic, and social identities become inseparable from their marital status. When Eloise rejects marriage, she is not rejecting companionship. She is rejecting the expectation that companionship requires the surrender of her individuality.
It is important to acknowledge from the outset that the Eloise of the novels and the Eloise of the series adaptation are not identical characters. Significant aspects of her characterization have been altered, expanded, and modernized to suit audience preferences. Nevertheless, the central conflict remains the same. Eloise desires freedom. She wants the same intellectual opportunities, independence, and respect afforded to the men around her. What frustrates her is not necessarily the existence of marriage but the reality that, for women in Regency society, marriage often becomes the entirety of their identity.
Throughout the series, Eloise repeatedly expresses her fear of being reduced to a wife. She observes how women are expected to dedicate their lives to securing a husband, producing heirs, and maintaining a household. Her resistance stems from the fact that these expectations leave little room for individuality. She wants to be recognized as a person first. Consequently, when Eloise rejects marriage, she is rejecting what marriage represents within a patriarchal society rather than the possibility of partnership itself.
This distinction becomes especially clear in the books. Eloise’s decision to leave home and correspond with Sir Phillip is not born from a sudden desire to conform. Rather, it emerges from an uncomfortable realization about her own life. After Penelope Featherington marries, Eloise looks around and discovers that she is alone. Her siblings have established families of their own. With the exception of Gregory and Hyacinth, everyone has moved forward into a new stage of life. Eloise remains a spinster living with her mother and youngest siblings.
Although it is importantly to acknowledge that this is a life she chose for herself. Deciding something does not mean it fulfills one’s deepest desires. Moreover, this completely disregards her growth as a character, the life she envisions for her self at eighteen, when she debuts, is vastly different from the one she wants at twenty eight, the age she marries in the books.
When fans criticize Eloise’s decision to marry they are treating the opinions she holds at eighteen as immutable truths rather than the beliefs of a sheltered young woman who has yet to experience much of adult life. To deny her the possibility of changing her mind is to deny her the complexity afforded to other characters. For instance, her brother-in-law, Simon Basset, had also never intended to marry and have children before meeting Daphne Bridgerton.
Growth does not require abandoning one’s principles; often it means applying those principles to new circumstances. The twenty eight year old Eloise is not less of a feminist than her younger self. She is simply older, more experienced, and more aware of the gap between ideological desires and human need. Abstaining from marriage has not brought Eloise any closer to equality with her brothers. Society still does not view her as their equal. The freedom she sought remains inaccessible. Instead, she finds herself increasingly isolated, watching the people she loves build lives that no longer include her in the same way they once did.
This realization is not a rejection of her principles. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that loneliness is not liberation. Eloise comes to understand that refusing marriage has not freed her from the constraints of her society. It has merely left her without companionship, romantic love, or a family of her own. What she mourns is not the loss of independence but the possibility that she may never experience the forms of love available to everyone else.
The show adaptation offers similar possibilities for character development. By this point in the story, Eloise has witnessed several examples of love that challenge her assumptions. She sees Penelope, her closest companion and intellectual equal, marry and begin a family. She watches Francesca, her younger sister, lose her husband and grieve not only the loss of a partner but also the future they planned together, including their desire for children. As Francesca struggles, Eloise is forced into the unfamiliar position of supporting someone through a pain she cannot fully understand. Such experiences inevitably complicate her understanding of marriage.
Likewise, Benedict, the sibling to whom Eloise is arguably depicted as closest, serves as evidence that unconventional people can still find meaningful relationships. Benedict has never fit neatly into society’s expectations, yet he ultimately finds love without sacrificing himself. For Eloise, this raises an important question: if her brother can pursue both authenticity and companionship, why must she believe the two are mutually exclusive?
At the same time, the people Eloise once considered her equals are moving into different stages of life. Penelope is married and has a child. Their friendship remains, but it is no longer the same. Eloise increasingly occupies a liminal space, neither fully participating in society nor fully escaping it. Her growing sense of isolation reflects a reality many women experience: watching friends build romantic relationships and families while feeling left behind themselves. Which is perhaps this is why Eloise resonates so strongly with many readers and viewers.
Speaking from personal experience, I understand her reluctance toward marriage. Growing up, I watched as the women around me suffer emotional and physical abuse at the hands of their husbands. Those experiences taught me to associate marriage with danger rather than security. Like Eloise, I learned to value independence because dependence on a man unreliable. And yet, despite those fears, there are moments when I look at my friends and their relationships and feel envy. I want what they have. I want someone to love and someone who loves me in return. I understand the ache of watching friendships change as people begin building lives with partners. Independence can be fulfilling, but it does not erase the human desire for connection.
I feel similarly about children. On a practical level, I do not want them. I do not want the physical sacrifices of pregnancy or the lifelong responsibility of raising another person. Yet when I spend time with my nieces and nephews, I sometimes feel an overwhelming sense of loss for something I have never had. I find myself grieving possibilities that I simultaneously reject. Human desires are often contradictory, and Eloise’s character captures that contradiction remarkably well.
Eloise’s feminism is compelling precisely because it emerges from fear as much as conviction. She has witnessed the consequences of marriage for women around her and therefore associates marriage with confinement. Yet she remains vulnerable to the same desires for intimacy, companionship, and belonging that motivate everyone else. The tension between those impulses is not a flaw in her characterization. It is the source of her humanity.
Life with Sir Phillip offers her something fundamentally different from the marriages she spent years criticizing. Phillip’s home is already unconventional. Eloise is not entering the carefully curated world of the marriage mart she spent years mocking. She is stepping into a chaotic, imperfect family that needs her as an individual rather than as a social ornament. In many ways, Phillip’s home offers her more freedom than Mayfair ever could. Unlike the men of the ton, Phillip does not expect Eloise to perform femininity according to society’s standards. He values her intellect, appreciates her eccentricities, and accepts her as she is.
For Eloise, marriage to Phillip is not about becoming a wife in the eyes of society. It is about finding a person with whom she can be entirely herself. After a year of correspondence, she believes she has found someone who understands her in ways few others do. With Phillip, she is no longer performing for the ton or attempting to satisfy expectations she never believed in. Instead, she is choosing companionship on her own terms.
Ultimately, Eloise Bridgerton’s marriage does not invalidate her feminism nor does it represent the triumph of patriarchy over feminism. Rather, it exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism itself. Feminism is not the rejection of marriage, motherhood, or domestic life; it is the refusal of coercion. The question is not whether a woman marries but whether she is free to choose marriage without sacrificing her personhood. Feminism is the belief that women should have the freedom to choose those things, or reject them, without their worth being determined by that choice.
Ironically, some of the criticisms towards Eloise’s storyline reproduce the same restrictive logic they seek to challenge. A patriarchal society tells women they must marry. So the audience, in turn, insist that a truly feminist woman must remain unmarried. Both positions impose limitations on women’s choices. Eloise’s story rejects both. Her freedom comes not from categorically rejecting marriage but from choosing it for herself.
Eloise’s story ultimately argues that autonomy and love are not mutually exclusive. Her marriage is meaningful precisely because it is chosen by her. After years of fearing that marriage would erase her identity, she finds a relationship that allows her to remain herself. In that sense, her ending is not a surrender to the patriarchy but a reclamation of agency within it.
