A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Watching him, Alva let herself imagine a life of comfort in which she was never anxious, never cold, never fearful that no one would want her. A life in which she wore every season’s best fashions and headed a polished mahogany dinner table with him at the opposite end, their friends and acquaintances lining the sides, enjoying French wines and stuffed squab and delicate little puff pastries au crème.”

In her dreams of what the perfect life would look like, the food is described in greater detail than any other aspect of her future life. The specific imagery of luxurious food illustrates how, for Alva, food is an important marker of her safety and security, especially after many months of suffering from food deprivation. This understanding of food insecurity will fuel her charity ventures in the future.

“Love was a frivolous emotion, certainly no basis for marriage—every young lady knew this […] Alva did not need to love William Vanderbilt; she needed only to marry him.”

This quote neatly summarizes the novel’s exploration of The Hollowness of Marriage as an Economic Contract. Alva echoes the conventions of her class in stating that love was “no basis for marriage,” understanding that, in high society, marriage was an alliance to secure a family’s wealth and legacy. Her categorization of love as “frivolous” implies that it is both unserious and unnecessary.

“‘If I were a man, I could have resolved my family’s problems ages ago.’

Consuelo kissed Alva’s cheek. ‘If you were a man, I would marry you.’

‘No, you’d hold out for a nobleman.’

‘You’re right. But I’d still love you best.’”

The dialogue between Alva and her best friend, Consuelo, highlights the nature of their relationship, illustrative of close female friendships at the time. Consuelo is more physically intimate with Alva, shown when she kisses Alva on the cheek, than nearly anyone else in her life. Their dialogue highlights the limited options for women at that time, as Alva correctly recognizes that were she a man, she would not have to agree to a marriage of convenience to save her family from financial ruin.

“Leaving aside the embarrassment it would cause her father, she did not wish to always be turning to some man or other for solutions to her troubles. As helpless as so many of her sex preferred to be, she was determined to be the opposite. All those ladies of privilege, pale feathers drifting on the breeze. No. She would aid herself.”

This internal dialogue shows Alva’s strength of character from a young age. She is determined to be self-reliant, contrasting with the other women, whom she describes with the metaphor of “feathers drifting on the breeze” to indicate their lack of control over their lives. However, she is hampered in this dream by the demands of the society around her that she act “respectable,” that is, that she defer to her husband.

“Whatever was coming, she must face it straight on. She was a married woman now. No more childish worrying over things that most every woman in history had experienced, for goodness’ sake, and they didn’t all go around fussing about it.”

Alva’s tone in this reflection about the first time she has sex on her wedding night is lightly ironic, echoing the manner of a mother chastising a child. Her firmness and self-chastisement that she should not “fuss[…]” like a child implies that she feels sad, scared, and worried about what she will have to go through. She desires sexual satisfaction, but she is resolved to resign herself to the fact that she will not experience it in her marriage.

“I believe we should see for ourselves what the real needs are, and then direct the money specifically and confirm its uses. Certainly you read the newspapers; too often the money ends up in the pockets of crooks.”

This dialogue from Alva illustrates her approach to Using One’s Privilege to Support Progressive Politics. She sets herself apart from the other women of her class by emphasizing her belief that money should be used where it can do the most good for others, while others take a moralizing approach and presume that they know best.

“She could fund a new, clean, safe barracks for young unmarried women in the city. Do more for children. Look into ways to improve the everyday lives of those who had no prospects of ever being rescued from their poverty by millionaire husbands. This was the thought that truly animated her.”

The comment that the prospect of helping “young unmarried women in the city” was what “truly animated” Alva is indicative of her approach to money. Unlike her husband, she is not thrilled about the prospect of inheriting an enormous fortune for her own benefit; her only thought is how she can use the funds to help others, emphasized through her quick list of ideas.

“Had she squandered the possibility that, given a little more time, she would have met a man with wealth and standing who would also inspire genuine love and would love her in return? It troubled her to think she might have chosen wrong in marrying William. But…perhaps she had chosen wrong in marrying William.

Not that there was any safe remedy for this particular mistake.”

Alva’s opinion that there was no “safe remedy” for the “mistake” of having married William Vanderbilt is reflective of her opinion at the time about the importance of Gatekeeping and the Policing of Respectability. Despite her unhappiness and regret, the potential of social ostracization if she asked for a divorce was too much of a risk for her at the time. Later, she reconsiders this view.

“It’s worth it, she thought. This was what women did, what they’d always done. She was no different from any of them—or perhaps she was wiser: she at least was gaining in status. She was directing her fate.”

Alva’s internal dialogue here is written in a tone that suggests she is attempting to convince herself of something she does not believe. She wants to improve her morale by imagining that she is “wiser” than other women who find themselves in unhappy marriages because she can use her “status” to “direct[…] her fate.” The falseness of this belief is revealed when Alva finally breaks from her husband William to pursue happiness on her own terms.

“Perhaps the trouble lay in her friend’s ability to see in her something she did not wish anyone to see—wished was not true. No, she was not in love with Richard. She was not in love at all. She was not in love and she wanted to be and she couldn’t be, and there it was, the shameful truth illuminated under her friend’s knowing gaze.”

Despite Alva’s repeated attempts to deny, to herself and others, her true desire for love and marriage, her closest friends, Lady C. and Oliver, recognize her unhappiness. This quote illustrates the personal cost of marriage as an economic contract. Her claim that “she was not in love with Richard” illustrates the exact opposite through its repetition.

“Nothing has ever been done on such a scale. How marvelous: a grand celebration of everything that’s good, when what society’s expecting is for you all to roll over and play dead.”

Ward McAllister’s appreciation of Alva’s tenacity and sense of grandeur in the face of gatekeeping represents high society’s general reaction to her extravagant ball. This comment clarifies why her costume ball secured her place in society; as Ward says, “nothing has ever been done on such a scale.” His comment also offers insight into why he continues to help her with her “grand celebration of everything that’s good.”

“I’ve been reading in the papers about your Sir Francis Galton, the scientist who advocates purposeful breeding. Not one of us is inherently better than the next person, I don’t care what Galton supposes is true. I might as easily have ended up being the fur puller as the one who wears the fur.”

Throughout the novel, Alva maintains an interest in literary and scientific novelties of the day, such as the ideas of the eugenicist Sir Francis Galton. Her rejection of his ideas about the genetic inheritance of traits that lead to poverty and “purposeful breeding” reflects Alva’s intelligence and self-certainty, as well as her lifelong belief in equality. Her understanding is partly rooted in her own personal experience.

“When one inherits so much money that publishers create and sell to the public booklet reproductions of the last will and testament from which it came, so much money that it seems there is no limit to it, so much that it can’t possibly be spent by oneself, so much that barring a complete catastrophic collapse of one’s country’s economy, it can’t even be lost, one must, it appeared, commission the largest yacht ever made for personal use. Or at least this was William’s first action.”

This passage is an example of the dry humor that Fowler deploys throughout the novel to underline the absurdity of the culture of high society as well as the public fascination with it. She uses the gender-neutral pronoun “one” to archly mock the way that society etiquette rules were written about at the time.

“‘God made us equal and it’s man who creates the imbalances, the unfairness, the arbitrary rules meant to keep power in the hands of—’

‘Don’t trouble them with politics,’ William said.”

This exchange between Alva and William is demonstrative of their relationship dynamics, reflected through his blunt interruption. Alva held progressive political views about the inherent equality of all people that her husband William did not share. When she attempted to express these views, he shut her down, contrasting contrasts with her relationship with Oliver, who shared her political views and enjoyed hearing her opinions.

“As she often told her children, a person should stand up for what he or she believed in. Set the example for others. How could she expect them to do so if she didn’t do it herself?”

Alva’s advocacy was not purely based on improving her own material circumstances. She was also motivated in part to set an example for her children. This internal dialogue foreshadows the end of the book, in which Alva joins her daughter Consuelo in a rally for women’s suffrage.

“These men must believe themselves completely beyond reproach! And, well, why wouldn’t they? Wives permit all of it. Because of course if we’re to believe what we read in the Lady’s Book, the True Woman is completely fulfilled by her domestic duties—her home, her children, her charity functions. The True Woman understands that men have needs of a different kind.

But I don’t believe a word of it. We accept their behavior because of what would happen if we didn’t.”

As she grows older and gains life experience, Alva comes to question the social norms to which she had adhered her whole life. Faced with her husband’s entitlement and indifference to her well-being, she comes to realize the misogynistic underpinnings of what she had been taught was the ideal: the True Woman. She reflects that society has trained women and channeled their expectations for marriage through pedagogical texts like the Lady’s Book, an American women’s magazine.

“Oliver’s hand on her neck. William’s on her shoulder. Mere moments of intimacy, sharp reminders of what she wanted and shouldn’t want, couldn’t have and didn’t deserve, would never have and would always wish for, reminders of what she shouldn’t even desire if she were a decent woman.

In Alva’s time, a woman was not supposed to express any sexual desire or needs. Her thoughts, grounded in specific imagery of the touches of the men in her life, reflect the tension between what she instinctively desires and what society deems a “decent woman” should want. In this passage, she reflects on how, despite her best efforts to be the titular “well-behaved woman,” she struggled to set aside her longing for physical intimacy.

“‘You deserve this twist of fate’s knife,’ she said to her reflection, embracing the melodrama of her situation. She blamed Henry James for exciting her imagination. If only his titular lady could free herself from her injudicious heart! If only Alva could be kidnapped by pirates!”

Throughout her life, Alva frames her understanding of the world through the lens of classic literature like Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881). She sees herself as an Isabel Archer who, like the protagonist of that novel, has been manipulated by a cruel husband, Gilbert Osmond. Her exclamations at the end and the reference to pirates imply that she reads more sensational literature as well, her imagination fueled by images of escape present there.

“That she’d been so thoroughly betrayed by the two of them was a blade in her heart. Surely her blood was draining out of her body, and in another moment or two she would slump to the floor, freed from her horror and embarrassment.”

This passage details Alva’s emotions at the turning point in her life, as portrayed in the novel, when she learns that her husband has been having a years-long affair with her best friend, Lady Consuelo. For once, she gives in to the emotions that she traditionally held at bay, which she experiences as “horror” and “embarrassment.” This is represented in the use of melodramatic figurative language, such as her description that the betrayal “was a blade in her heart.”

“She had won.

Better than that, William had not won.

Some time ago, she had attended a lecture at which Victoria Woodhull argued that God was female. Today was the first time Alva thought the argument could be right.”

This passage illustrates how the narrative embellishes real historical events to provide the context of the larger world in which Alva lived. Victoria Woodhull was a feminist campaigner who advocated for women’s suffrage and free love. While it is possible that Alva could have heard her speak about the radical idea that “God was female,” in reality, it is highly unlikely that the real Alva, at that time, would have attended such a controversial lecture.

“Those who’d given themselves the chance to think about it must be grateful that she had hacked a path into the jungle for them to follow; none of them was obliged to stay locked in a gilded cage any longer. Each of them could and should claim the respect they deserved.”

In this passage, Alva uses a mixed metaphor to express how she saw her role as a pioneer for women’s rights to divorce in high society. First, she characterizes herself as a trailblazer “hack[ing] a path into the jungle,” implying that she has done difficult, hard, and dirty work in asking for a divorce. Then, she characterizes her peers as being like prisoners who are “locked in a gilded cage,” a common turn of phrase that expresses how immense wealth can also be a prison. She wishes to liberate them from this cage.

“She had done it.

It was done.

Her daughter was forever protected from fortune-hunting playboys, from seeing opportunity pass her by while her friends went off gaily to (sometimes) better fates. Consuelo Vanderbilt had in the space of mere moments, in a single sentence uttered by a man she might never see again after today, been transformed into a living piece of history.”

Alva’s internal dialogue here expresses the conventional wisdom of her time about marriage as an economic contract. She feels relieved that she has secured her daughter a marriage to a man with a title. With regard to her own experience, this passage is ironic and reflects how Alva is not entirely transformed by her own experience; she still values social acceptance and financial security over love when it comes to her daughter.

“When he said Kiss me, she did, and when he said Touch me, she did that, too, and when he put his hand where she’d once been forbidden to put hers, when he murmured, Just allow yourself to feel it, she was no longer nervous or scared. His fingers stroked her, he pressed his hips to her thigh, desire plain, and when she cried out, he moved onto her and she pulled him in. ‘I want this,’ she said, looking up at him.

He smiled. ‘And you shall have it.’”

This is one of the most sensually graphic passages in the novel and reflects the culmination of Alva’s desire for sexual satisfaction. The passage focuses on the sensory detail of enjoyable touch; this contrasts with the descriptions of Alva’s sex with her husband William, which was painful, perfunctory, and not described in great detail.