Okay I just binge-watched this yesterday and I'm not sure I understand how you can blame Eleanor for Max's woes.  First Max takes something of value from a client (I'm pretty sure that violates the house rules in a whore house) and then blackmails the client into including her in the plot to sell the page -- something she knows was stolen from a pirate's haul, which is a killing offense.  So right off the bat Max partners up with someone who's broken the pirate code.  Max is reckless.

When Eleanor forces Max to tell where the exchange is going to take place, so that Fint & Co can get the page back, yes that is a heart-breaking scene.  It is totally understandable why Max feels betrayed.  But then she leaves.  She casts off the protection that Eleanor has put around her and puts herself in a position to be snatched up by Anne Bonny.  Max is reckless again.

Elanor has no idea where Max is during her first imprisonment / abuse episode. She thinks Max left on a boat.  She only finds out the truth right after she and Vane have knocked boots when Vane's crew catches Rackham trying to spirit Max away (under Vane's orders) and decides to publicly gang-rape her instead.  Eleanor's reaction was pretty damn strong when she found out -- complete with beating members of the crew with a club and basically banishing Vane from his livelihood.  What's Max's reaction?  Blaming Eleanor for the situation and giving herself to Vane's remaining crew to work off the debt of 5000 pesos.  I think later we learn that a hand-job costs 5 pesos so ugh, that's a lot of fucking she just signed herself up for.  What the hell was she thinking?  Max is a bit of an idiot.

Eventually Anne is so disgusted by the situation in Max's private "fuck tent" that she enlists Eleanor's help to end it and it is Eleanor who goes all "kill'em all and let God sort it out" by proposing that Vane's entire remaining crew be slaughtered so that no one will be around to take vengeance for her killing the one bad guy who was brutalizing Max. THIS is the problem I have with Eleanor.  I don't blame her for not taking action to save Max earlier. Max has twice TWICE walked away from Eleanor's protection after putting herself into a very dangerous position.  Eleanor, on the other hand, conspires with Anne to slaughter members of Anne's crew thereby helping Anne violate the most central rule of the pirate code and she doesn't do it save Max, she does it to punish the crew (or at least the biggest, meanest loudmouth) for  celebrating when she was forced to reinstate Vane's pirating privileges.  She did it out of ego and a need to save "face."  She kills a bunch of men who did nothing bad to Max because she feared they might be loyal to their crew.  It's a pretty shitty thing she did.  And the one who is going to suffer for it is Jack Rackham.  I don't think Anne gives a shit if she can't be a member of a pirate crew any more but Rackham wasn't given a voice in the decision.

This is why I don't much like Eleanor.  Her actions towards Max were understandable.  It's her cold-blooded murder of Vane's remaining crew that I can't stomach.  Also her taste in men is pretty dubious.  I'm mean Vane is pretty to look at (in a certain light, when the light catches his six-pack abs just right and he's not completely covered in mud) and I can understand the attraction of a bad boy but, damn, that guy is bad news.