We all know Miss Eloise Bridgerton; an intelligent, witty and passionately feminist young woman that first graced our screens back in 2020, shamelessly calling out the sexism, double-standards and confusing rules of her regency society, especially the "marriage market".

I will gladly admit that Eloise fast became my favourite Bridgerton character, and I spent most of Season One waiting for her to come back onscreen and fire her next shot into the forehead of the patriarchy. I loved her fierce, unrelenting spirit, her unyielding loyalty to her beliefs and her desire to broaden and nurture her mind.

So you can imagine my utter surprise and disappointment when I decided to research what lay in store for her in Season 5, which will focus on her romantic fate, and discovered that she was not, in fact, blazing a trail through the London ton with her forward-thinking ideas and writings, but instead had been sent off to the countryside to be a substitute wife to Sir Philip Crane and stepmother to the two children of his late wife Marina Thompson.

Eloise, a girl so firmly set against the fate of an arranged marriage and the dull, domestic life of a lady complete with hosting balls and guests for tea, over and over with the same small-minded, gossipy flock, was now headed for that very life. And even worse so, the book states that she does it because she is a spinster at age 27 (how ancient!) and worries this will be her last chance for love.

I was appalled. It was as if the character I had come to know and love - and more than anything, respect - had been replaced by a different person entirely, an Eloise lookalike who had decided to abandon all her principles and walk with her head bowed into the future she had been fighting against her whole life.

I am not the only one who feels this way, that I know. From Tumblr, Twitter and other sources in the Bridgerton fandom I have discovered that many people found Eloise's book disappointing, not accurate to her character, a letdown and so on, particularly because of her marriage to Philip Crane.

For this reason I have to agree wholeheartedly. Not only is it a marriage of convenience for Philip because he needs a wife and mother for his children, but their personalities simply don't compliment each other. Philip is happy to tend his garden and live a quiet life of comfort, whereas Eloise longs for adventure, independence, to attend university, the life and opportunities she could've had if not for her gender. And most importantly, she wants, no, demands, social change and the rights of women. How, I ask you, is she to achieve all that from her husband's drawing room?  

As a feminist and young woman myself, it is incredibly disheartening to know this is Eloise's fate. I almost didn't want to watch the recently released Season Two, seeing her appear every time onscreen and knowing she would never have the life she dreams of.

But then, in Season Two Eloise met a young man by the name of Mr Theo Sharpe. And I felt a spark of hope.

From their meet-cute outside the printer's shop where the young apprentice works to their witty back-and-forth at a women's rights assembly, every time Eloise and Theo appeared onscreen, the air positively fizzed with chemistry, and I couldn't help but feel our young Miss Bridgerton had met her match.

Not only is Theo working-class (how scandalous!), he is a "political radical" (or what we would simply call left-wing these days) and feels strongly about rights not just for women, but for all working class people like himself.And yet, despite initially brushing her off as another frivolous lady looking for the latest gossip on a suitor, he's drawn to her, and she to him.

Watching Eloise getting flustered and confused over her very first romantic feelings and describing it to Penelope Featherington as a "pleasing torture" might be the most adorable part of the whole season. And oh, the validation I felt when she sneaked away from Anthony's wedding to see him and found that he'd, in a very subtly romantic move, set aside books for her read and "share her thoughts" on! Someone get me a fainting couch.

But the best part of their relationship isn't even their amazing chemistry, or their shared love of reading and politics. It's how they challenge each other and make each other better. Theo calls out Eloise on the one thing despite all her forward-thinking ideas she has never considered - her vast privilege and the protection she has from her status and family as a high-class lady, something he will never have. He's worked for everything he has and knows it could all be taken away because of their meetings.

And Eloise in turn proves Theo's prejudice's about all high-class young ladies being the same and looking for nothing more than gossip and a suitor wrong, . Furthermore, when she discovers Theo was lying to her about the print shop actually being used by Lady Whistledown in an effort to prevent her from writing cruelly about them, she quite rightly states she deserves more than that. She deserves to be treated as an equal. Whistledown already did her damage and wrote about Eloise's secret visits to Theo in her gossip sheet, and his dishonesty only hurts their friendship.

Which is why how their relationship ends is so heartbreaking. Eloise's big flaw is that she talks a great deal about her ambitions, but never really acted on them until Theo. And then Lady Whistledown printed about them, causing scandal and potential ruin, and she got scared and broke things off, preferring to hide in her gilded cage and hurting them both deeply.

But my point here is the vast differences they have being from entirely different worlds, might just be the best thing for them. In being with Theo romantically instead of Sir Philip, Eloise could have the life she wants - independent, free of the constraints of high society, able to fight for social equality, be seen as her own person and not just a pawn in the marriage market. She could be with the person who admires her for fighting back and not fitting in, someone with just as much passion and fire as her. Someone who completes her. 

In conclusion, the hope of this petition is to draw attention to this pairing and why it would be a terrible mistake for the show-runners not to act on it. With enough signatures and noise, my goal is to get the attention of Netflix and Bridgerton producer Shonda Rhimes herself, to ask them to reconsider Eloise's story and give her something truly worthy of her character. And with your help, I hope we can get there.