**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
I recently finished the 1795/1796 storyline, and as I’ve done since I started my journey of watching the show from beginning to end, I wanted to write an impression of the storyline. Needless to say, I have a unique one.
Generally, everyone sees Barnabas, Angelique, and Josette as the main focal points of this storyline, but I saw something totally different that shocked me. I have seen this story (almost completely) many times, and for the first time going through its entirety, I was amazed with what I took away from it.
Yes, Barnabas is my favorite character of the show, but during this time to really put him in the spotlight, I couldn’t help but focus equally on another character that often is thrown under the carriage so to speak and her story arc–Victoria Winters.
Criticism and nitpicking are often the general reaction to her in this plot-line, but I will argue this. I found her story to be just as important as the origin story of Barnabas, and if you will hear me out, I truly believe I can prove this.
Not only will I make my case for her, but I will also address and defend many of her decisions and actions to the end. This article, in no way, dictates that I was bored or not involved with what was going on with Barnabas. I am only pointing out some things I observed that I feel are often overlooked. I believe that bringing this up might change some minds as it did mine.
Please keep in mind, this is only my opinion, but one that I feel is worthy to share. So, without further wordiness from me, let’s begin our court session here, and hopefully I will be a much better defender than Peter Bradford.
OPENING ARGUMENTS
Now, let’s take a quick look at Victoria’s progression since the beginning of the show.
Victoria was an orphan with no roots or foundation to build her life upon, and she left her foundling home alone to begin a new job as a governess to a family she had never met. She left everything familiar behind to do so. In addition, she also set out to discover her roots, as she knew they were somehow linked closely to the town of Collinsport–the town she would now call home.
After many conflicts and tragedies that made her realize that she didn’t need to discover her roots to have an identity, she found resolve within herself. Victoria realized that she was a strong, independent woman who had always taken care of herself, and that her destiny lied within the walls of Collinwood. Knowing facts about her past couldn’t and wouldn’t change who she had become, so she abandoned her search to discover where she came from. That didn’t matter anymore.
Where she was and her relationships gave purpose to her life. Soon after coming to this realization came another big change that she was ready to accept–marriage and owning her own home.
She became engaged to Burke Devlin, and she selected the home that they were going to live in, taking steps needed to make it theirs. However, the plans she made would be interrupted again by another tragedy–her fiancé’s sudden and unexpected death from a plane crash.
Victoria held her head high throughout, and although her heart was broken, she kept her focus on everything that was important to her without distraction. She devoted her love to the child that she was in charge of caring for, David Collins, who was really going through a dark and frightening time before and after Burke’s death.
David spoke often of the ghost of a little girl named Sarah who appeared and warned him of many dangers about Barnabas. Determined to contact Sarah to end David’s deep torments and paranoia, the family decided to hold a seance to find answers. However, during the seance, Victoria would meet her ultimate test as her body was instantly switched with a woman named Phyllis Wick from 1795. Victoria was now stuck nearly two centuries prior to her own with people she had never met, yet had very persistent resemblances to those she knew in her own time.
SWALLOWED BY THE PAST IN A SEA OF FAMILIAR FACES
In the beginning, Victoria’s main purpose was to be the audience surrogate, allowing us to meet the Collins family through her eyes and experiences. One might think, as I did, that she would be reduced to this role again and her character progression would be put on hold as she would take a backseat to the 1795 generation of characters. This, as I found out, was very wrong.
When she arrived at the door of the Old House, she quickly discovered that she was trapped in another time. The faces were very familiar, but the personalities were very different, with the exception of Barnabas, being that he was still the same Barnabas she knew.
She was in a time she was unfamiliar with, with people she didn’t know, and her reception was not a warm one at all. The lines of fantasy and reality seemed to blur for her as she was trying to understand what had happened. Was this a dream? Was she really in the 18th century? How could this have happened?
Needless to say, she never had time to sit and really think about it and figure it out. In order to survive, she would have to use all of her strengths and play along as if she had truly come from this time period. She had no money, no clothes other than what she was wearing, and no way to get back home.
Although this term has been grossly misused over the past two decades, Victoria’s was truly a tale of genuine “survival horror”. The first test she would have to face would be accepting the reality of the past.
REALITY BITES
Because of the courtship of Barnabas, she had a pre-conceived notion that the 18th century was a time of unrequited romance and passion. Women were held in such high regards from their men. The world truly revolved around their pleasures and the notion of “whatever it takes to make her happy”.
Before she was sent back, Victoria had become so enraptured by this romanticism that she lived in an almost fantasy world, doing everything she could to bring this past into her present. When she arrived, she soon lost her rose-colored glasses and saw the way things really were. Men were hateful and cruel to their women. Women were punished if they were insubordinate to the men of the house. Marriages were arranged for possessions and wealth. Children were merely born so that heirs would be made to pass on the wealth acquired over the parents’ lifetime. Victoria was truly left with no hint of how to survive in such a cruel time, and she had to dig deeply through the mires of her ill-conceived romantic fantasy to learn how to live among this generation of the Collins family. In addition, she had no experiences or role models to learn from. In life, we often adapt fiction as part of our reality because of the advantages it gives us over circumstances.
For as long as history has been recorded and stories have been written, men and women have adopted fictional characters as a means to help them cope with the struggles of real life. Fiction gives us a means to experience circumstances of actions and relationships without actually getting hurt by our surrogate character’s choices. Whether it’s revenge, romance, friendship, severed family ties, or whatever the need may be, fiction generously provides us that outlet and experience to draw from. We learn from our favorite characters’ strengths and triumphs as well as from their failures that result from their weaknesses. Fiction gives us that security and empowerment that we can draw from because we’ve gained experience in life situations by living them through characters we identify with and adopt as our “other half” or completion.
Why is this relevant? Because Victoria had nothing like this to draw from. This was something that had never been done, and there was no one that Victoria could look to or draw from to gain confidence and control of the situation she was in. She truly had to rely on her own inner strength and wit to face and overcome these sudden unexpected changes.
IN A NEW YORK MINUTE
Imagine everyone that you knew and had grown fond of suddenly turning into a different personality altogether, as if affected by the Mr Hyde potion. In this time, everyone so closely resembled their 20th century counterparts, and Victoria had to find a way to maintain herself when they all treated her cruelly. Did she take their cruelty like a typical servant girl would? None whatsoever.
Despite her humility, she quickly let it be known that, although merely a servant among them, she would stand up to them and not accept their abusive behavior. Within a few episodes, she slapped Nathan Forbes twice for trying to take advantage of her. Victoria sternly forced Abigail, a senior member of the Collins family, out of her room for assaulting her, stealing her clothes and jewelry, and accusing her of being a witch. Reverend Trask, who was revered as a high man of God, was slapped hard in the face by Victoria because he tried to touch her. Now, was she being too aggressive and asking for what happened to her? In my opinion, absolutely not.
This was Victoria’s “fight or flight” response, and she proved herself to be a fighter. She still remained humble and maintained her innocent and gentle nature throughout, but again, she was tested time after time with situations that triggered this response. Victoria chose to fight when necessary and to walk away when necessary. In my eyes, this showed amazing strength and resolve to make these decisions based on such extreme circumstances without having any type of experience, real or fictional, to influence her choices.
Were they always the right choices to make? Sometimes not, but she always demonstrated good reasoning behind her decisions and tried to make things right if bad consequences resulted from them.
A NEW HOPE
As mentioned earlier, Abigail accused Victoria of being a witch. It can be debated somewhat of her reasoning behind this, but, to me, it seemed clear that Abigail, like the Reverend Trask, used “God” as a means to justify their own sadistic desires to punish others to make themselves feel superior.
What led me to this conclusion was the fact that they knew the truth, and yet set up false witnesses to lie about Victoria. As long as they themselves weren’t telling the lies directly, it justified their actions. So, in my opinion, it wasn’t Victoria’s actions that caused her to fall into this situation. Before she had even said a word to Abigail, she was already pre-conceived to be a witch, and Abigail would use every means necessary to have her arrested and punished like one.
Trask was all too eager to seize the opportunity to do the same. Using his position as doing “God’s Work”, he shamed others for defending her, even threatening legal and supernatural punishment to those who saw no evil within Victoria. So, regardless of how you feel of Victoria’s actions, she never stood a chance in the beginning because Abigail and Trask were determined to see her punished and put to death.
Their cynical and sadistic natures were to blame for her being thrown on the mercy of the pitiful legal system that existed at that time in Collinsport. As if the lying, humiliation, and torture from Trask and Abigail wasn’t enough, Victoria would soon find her most painful test was still to come.
Every member of the Collins family except Barnabas turned against her. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal that Victoria must have felt. Although she knew that these people were very different than those she knew in her own time, she still couldn’t help but associate their familiar faces with their counterparts as they all betrayed her one by one. However, none hurt her worse than Josette’s misguided betrayal.
Maggie Evans was Josette’s counterpart in Victoria’s time, and Maggie was Victoria’s best friend. Imagine your life being threatened because of something that you did not do, and your best friend turns on you, says horrible things to you, and tells you that they will never rest until you are dead. That is a gut-wrenching and heart-breaking scenario for her as Josette said those very words to her. Was this all there was to Josette’s determination to see her suffer and die? No.
Throughout Victoria’s time at Collinwood during her own century, she had known Josette Collins as the protective spirit that would never let anything happen to her. As many times as Victoria’s life was threatened, Josette’s spirit always protected and comforted her. Imagine this one hope that you held on to being ripped away from you. Your one supernatural protector you knew would always be there was now in the image of your best friend turning its back on you and telling you that it wanted you to die. As I saw it, this moment was Victoria’s baptism by fire.
How did Victoria react after Josette was finished with her? She still tried to give warnings to save Josette’s life from the tragedy she knew was in store for her on Widows Hill. Although Angelique’s witchcraft dominated over her warnings, Victoria chose to find it within herself to overlook this betrayal and attempt to save each member of the Collins family from history’s recorded fates, regardless of the consequence to her. Victoria’s last hope had been ripped away from her, but she did what she always does best–she drew hope and purpose from within herself.
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR UNREPENTANT SOUL
Because of her shared romanticism with Barnabas in her own time, Victoria had immersed herself in the history of the Collins family, and she was very knowledgeable of what was recorded. However, as we found out, Joshua had altered what had happened during this time to avoid any scandal that could plague future generations had the truth been recorded.
Victoria had no way of knowing this, so she interpreted the situation such that history was being re-written, and felt she had no choice but to save as many members of the Collins family that she could. Knowing that she couldn’t accomplish this from her prison cell, Victoria used an opportunity given by her jailer, Peter Bradford, to escape. Her goal was to rescue the surviving Collins family , find out the source of evil within the walls of Collinwood, and maintain her own innocence. During her escape, she was shot during a struggle, yet she kept moving to accomplish what she had to do.
Victoira took refuge in the Collins family mausoleum to remain hidden and have her gunshot wound treated as best as possible by servant Ben Stokes. While there, Victoria had a premonition of little Daniel Collins’ life being threatened. From the history that she knew, Daniel was to be the father of the future generations of the Collins family. She wasted no time.
Peter Bradford had left her a pistol to defend herself since she was in no condition to fight off anyone who may discover her. Hearing Daniel’s cries outside the mausoleum, she opened the door and saw a man strangling the boy. She gave warning that she would pull the trigger if he didn’t stop, and the rogue, Noah Gifford, ignored her warning. Victoria pulled back the pistol hammer and fired, fatally shooting Noah in the back. She took Daniel and fled to Collinwood, where Naomi Collins had compassion on her for saving Daniel and gave her sanctuary.
While there, Victoria discovered the true identity of the witch, Angelique, and she and Naomi made plans for her to escape and expose Angelique. However, this plan was sabotaged by Lt Nathan Forbes, who led Naomi away to the tower where Barnabas, now a vampire, was hidden. With Naomi gone, he drew Victoria out of hiding and turned her back into the hands of the jailers. Now why didn’t Victoria run away again?
It’s simple. She accomplished what she had set out to do, and that was to save the Collins family, even if it meant her own life, and she discovered the identity of the witch. She did what she could to save herself, but her primary goal was to save Daniel and expose the source of evil, and she succeeded. Now she was ready to face the consequences of the choices she made to accomplish this.
On the day of her execution, she walked bravely and quietly to the gallows, and rightfully so. She would die proudly, not as a victim of ignorance or false accusers, but as someone who showed amazing strength during each horrific test she had to face. She would die as the woman who saved the lives of many that had not been born yet. For that, she was not sorry, nor did she have a repentant soul. If saving many lives meant costing her own, she would have done it again.
With the timeline now repaired by her, Victoira was miraculously returned to her own time before her life expired on the gallows. She would live again in the time that was suspended and waited for her to save it.
CLOSING ARGUMENTS
With all of this happening, I truly felt that I was watching something new. I wasn’t just watching the Barnabas and Angelique origin story. Equally important, I was seeing someone who was tested beyond what any human being would ever have to go through, and the results of her decisions would ultimately save the future of the family she had grown to love.
Victoria entered this timeline with her life turned upside down from the death of her fiancé. The child she loved was being tormented mentally, and it seemed her world was truly ending. However, she put this all aside and did what she had to do to survive and save the family from heartbreaking disaster that struck at every turn.
Victoria lost nearly all of her friends as they turned on her one by one in 1795, yet she did everything possible to save them all. The one solid hope that she was dependent on was torn from her as Josette also turned away from her. This storyline was truly Victoria’s greatest challenge, and the strength and resolve she maintained throughout proved her to be a very dynamic character and not just a mere audience surrogate.
She made choices and followed through with them, even if they weren’t always the right ones. With every bad choice she made, Victoria did everything possible to make it right and tell the truth.
When anyone else would have given in to the powers that were, Victoria stood up to them when the situation called for it. When she needed to be caring and nurturing, she was, even if the sentiment wasn’t reciprocated. Although she didn’t always know what she was supposed to do during when she was being tested, she never failed in what she could do.
To borrow from a popular quote, when the needs of many outweighed her own, Victoria was the first to act and do what she could to save those whom she loved and cared about. Although she was faced with horrific and irrational chaos, she held her head high and acted as she saw best. When she was to face her death because of her actions, she walked bravely without struggle or apology, confident in what she had accomplished. In my eyes, this is the tell-tale sign of a true hero.
What was her reward when she returned? Was she met with open arms and a warm welcome? Hardly. The family would never know that the girl lying in front of them had saved them. She would live as an unsung hero, and the pain of her experiences would be kept inside and never known to anyone else but herself. Her deeds would not be recorded in the history books of the Collins family. Her amazing resolve and victory over all of the tragedy would never be celebrated. However, I don’t think Victoria really would have wanted this.
She proved once again that she didn’t need the approval or permission of others to feel relevant. Victoria proved to herself that, although going into the past feeling that she had lost everything, she possessed within herself the strength to not only protect herself but also anyone that she loved without having to rely on others or Josette’s spirit to protect her. For this reason, I believe that the 1795 storyline equally belonged to Victoria Winters as much as it did to Barnabas and Angelique, and that her arc was one of the largest in the entire series. Is it celebrated as such?
That will depend upon you. As for myself, court is adjourned. I find Victoria Winters a true dynamic character, and someone very worthy to look to as an example of how to deal with and overcome the adversity and pain that life may bring.
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