I think its perfectly fair to watch gentleman jack and dislike Mariana- she's being portrayed at a particularly low point in her life and her actions can be quite manipulative and judgmental. It's entirely fair to see how she treats Anne and think "that's pretty toxic :/"
And you're not wrong.
But I think it's important to remember that most of us, in those days, would have been Marianas. Most queer women were not Anne Listers or Ann Walkers. Most of us would have spent our lives in a miserable closet, forced into marriages to men for financial security and to avoid ridicule or slander or worse. When Mariana says she resents Anne for implying that she really had a choice, she's not wrong. Anne is enormously financially privileged and that is the only thing that allows her to be as openly queer as she is. The rest of us? The working and middle class people that we are? Don't fool yourselves. We'd have been lucky to have been in Mariana's position, with a well off husband who looks the other way when our lover comes calling.
Mariana is the most realistic character in this show for most of us. Maybe we all wouldn't have acted like she does, certainly. But her position is absolutely the one most of us would have been in had we lived in her time. Internalized homophobia and all.
I have deep empathy for that.
