| Hyacinth Bucket | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances | |||||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Patricia Routledge | ||||||||||||||||||
| Duration | 1990–1995 | ||||||||||||||||||
| First appearance | "Daddy's Accident" (29 October 1990) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Last appearance | "The Pageant" (25 December 1995) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Created by | Roy Clarke | ||||||||||||||||||
| Introduced by | Harold Snoad | ||||||||||||||||||
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Hyacinth Bucket (née Walton; sometimes known as The Bucket Woman) is a fictional character in the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, portrayed by Patricia Routledge. Routledge won a British Comedy Award in 1991, and was nominated for two BAFTA awards in 1992 and 1993 for her portrayal.
Character synopsis
Hyacinth is a social-climbing snob who constantly aims to impress people, particularly of the upper and upper-middle classes, and to give the impression that she is of high social standing, despite her modest status. This is epitomised in her insistence on pronouncing her surname as "Bouquet". She has an "acquired cultured accent which buckles under stress".
The character's creator, Roy Clarke, has called her the "least invented of all the characters I've found in my head":
So I knew my Hyacinths and I knew I had to write my own. They fascinated me. They were hilarious in their pretensions, so marvellously unaware of the real impressions they were making, and yet somehow so up front in their crusade to be superior that it was brave.
Hyacinth is married to Richard Bucket, and they live at 22 Blossom Avenue, in a bungalow which Hyacinth refers to as "The Residence" when sending letters. In an attempt to make callers think she is wealthy enough to employ domestic staff, she repeatedly answers the telephone with, "The Bouquet residence; the lady of the house speaking." This false accent had previously been used for Edie Pegden in Last of the Summer Wine, another series written by Clarke.
As revealed in the 2016 prequel, Young Hyacinth, Hyacinth is the eldest of the four floral-named Walton sisters: in birth order, Hyacinth, Daisy, Violet, and Rose.
Hyacinth's social class has been the subject of much discussion. Renée Dickason suggests that "Hyacinth Bucket is lower-middle class and thus close in status to the viewing audience", while Paul Roscoe argues that:
With each episode, Hyacinth struggles to transcend the trappings of her lower-class status and relations, only to be brought low and her pretensions to middle-class status ridiculed. For the show's middle- and upper-middle-class audience, the comedic pivot is the many ways and multiple occasions that Hyacinth is slapped down for failing to recognize her position in the status hierarchy.
Dickason concludes that Hyacinth is a "relatively rare example of a wholly unsympathetic weak Britcom character that the audience can only delight in laughing at and not with".
References
- ^ Dickason, Renée (2016). "Social Class and Class Distinctions in "Britcoms" (1950s–2000s)". Social Class on British and American Screens: Essays on Cinema and Television. McFarland. p. 50. ISBN 9781476623122. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
- Webster, Nick (17 February 2016). "Creator of Keeping Up Appearances on the real life Hyacinth Buckets". The Mirror. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
- Roscoe, Paul (2021). "Conflict Management, Status Competition, and Consumption in New Guinea, Medieval England, and Contemporary Britain". Consumption, Status, and Sustainability: Ecological and Anthropological Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. p. 78. ISBN 9781108836043. Retrieved 22 August 2022.