A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts
54 pages • 1-hour read
Therese Anne FowlerA Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts
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Part 1, Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination, gender discrimination, substance use, sexual content, rape, sexual assault, illness, and death.
Part 1: “Pearls”
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
A few months later, Alva visits Mrs. Vanderbilt at the house the Vanderbilts have purchased for Alva and William. Alva does not like the décor, but she is relieved that she will no longer have to worry about her financial circumstances.
Alva and William get married. Alva wonders if she will grow to love her husband.
That evening, Alva and William check into the Grand Union Hotel. He gifts her an enormous pearl necklace originally owned by Catherine the Great and then by Empress Eugénie of France, in recognition of Alva’s childhood spent in Paris at the Empress’s court. She is touched by the gift. Later that night, she waits anxiously for her husband to come to her bedroom. Her maid, Mary, reminds Alva that she needs to go to the bathroom before and after sex. When William finally arrives, he is drunk. She does as she is told and stays as still as a “plank” while he quickly and painfully has sex with her. She does not enjoy it. He repeats the act every night.
After her honeymoon, Alva returns home to learn that her father is very ill. He dies five days later.
Alva writes her friend Consuelo to congratulate her on her engagement to Viscount George Mandeville, future Duke of Manchester. She tells Consuelo that she has met Oliver Belmont, a friend of William’s, and discounts the rumors that “the Belmonts are Jews” (122).
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Consuelo and the viscount get married in New York the following spring. She adopts the name Lady C. Lady C. also adopts some British mannerisms, such as smoking in public and swearing. Alva is mildly shocked. She asks Lady C. what to do about not wanting her husband to have sex every night. Lady C. tells her to simply tell her husband she is unavailable, but Alva feels this is unfathomable.
Three weeks later, Alva learns from her doctor that she is pregnant. The doctor informs William. William gifts Alva an enormous diamond pendant to celebrate. He tells her he wants to have many children.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
One morning, while still heavily pregnant, Alva is awoken by William very early. He tells her that his grandfather, the Commodore, is dying. They go to attend his deathbed at the Vanderbilt home with dozens of other family members. Reporters are waiting outside to learn more about the Commodore’s will.
When Alva requests that they open a window in the stuffy deathbed room, she is chastised by the older women for being “selfish.” The Commodore makes everyone in the room sing his favorite song, the hymn “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy.” Then, he dies.
William is left an enormous fortune of $2 million by his grandfather. However, his “troubled” uncle C. J. is suing for a greater portion of the estate, and the litigation will likely drag on for years.
Alva attends a meeting of the Society for the Betterment of Working Children. She learns that the committee does not meet with people in need themselves. She decides to form her own society that directly talks to people about what they need and how best to help them.
Alva asks Mrs. Vanderbilt about “precisely how the baby was expelled” (135). She is shocked when she learns that it will come out of her vagina.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
William spends his time away from the family, spending his newfound fortune on property, decorations, horses, and similar items. He does very little work. Alva decides to use the money to fund a home for “young unmarried women in the city” to improve their lives (154), as they are unlikely to find a millionaire to marry as she had.
On March 2, Alva gives birth. She resists the doctor’s attempts to administer ether during childbirth as she “couldn’t abide the idea of being unconscious and manhandled” (155). Alva has a baby girl whom she names Consuelo, after her best friend. Minutes after meeting his newborn daughter, William decides to go to see his friend about acquiring a pony as he has “nothing better to do” (158).
Consuelo writes to Alva to report that she also recently gave birth to a son. She warns Alva that her husband William could have STDs from having sex with other women. Alva writes back that she does not believe her husband, a “gentleman,” is having affairs. She invites Consuelo to join them at a rented home in Oakdale on Long Island in September.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
Consuelo, now going by “Lady C,” visits Alva in Long Island with her son, Kim. Although they are only months old, Lady C. hopes Kim and little Consuelo will one day get married. Alva notices that Lady C. seems stiffer and more critical of her husband than she was when they first married. She also smokes constantly. Lady C. asks Alva whether the Commodore died of syphilis. Alva vigorously denies the rumors. They discuss whether they regret their marriages; Alva refuses to admit she is not happy, but Lady C. knows she is not.
Later, Alva reflects that she does desire love. She feels as if women are told they will come to love their husbands “in order to reduce their objections to advantageous alliances” (166), even if it does not result in their future happiness.
At parties, Alva’s social circle talks of nothing but superficial things like oysters and polo. Alva is relieved when she meets Oliver Belmont, who asks her about politics and history. Alva tells him she believes women should have the right to vote. She is attracted to the young man, but she is troubled by the feeling.
One morning, Alva’s sister Jenny announces she is engaged to Lady C.’s brother, Fernando. Alva is delighted that she and Lady C. will be sisters-in-law, although Lady C. warns that her brother has a wandering eye.
One day, while out riding, William announces he intends to build a mansion in Oakdale and to build a new church in the town. Alva persuades her husband to let her manage the development.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10 Analysis
In the second half of Part 1, Alva’s lack of understanding about sex, pregnancy, and childbirth lay bare her vulnerability and ignorance despite her immense privilege. For women of Alva’s class in the late 19th century, discussing these topics in detail or with any degree of scientific accuracy was considered scandalous and taboo. The notion of a girl or woman experiencing sexual satisfaction was frowned upon, and sex was largely considered something for the man’s pleasure and at his demand. Thus, Alva learns only a little about sex before her wedding and that from her older sister, who is herself a virgin. She is advised not to “act as though you like whatever he does to you” (60). This sets up Alva for deep dissatisfaction with her sex life, coupled with the understanding that she shouldn’t hope for more.
On her wedding night, Alva does as she is told, and Fowler describes the scene in graphic detail. Alva “lie[s] silent and rigid despite the pain” while tears “slid down to her ears and hair” (115). In a modern framework, this would be understood as marital rape, as her husband did not ask for Alva’s consent, nor did he stop when he saw he was causing hurt, pain, and discomfort. However, like many women of Alva’s time, she understands this unpleasant, indeed traumatic experience as part of her marital duty to be endured. She feels she does not have the authority or agency within her marriage to deny her husband what he wants. Just as Alva denies herself romance in her marriage, she also denies herself sexual pleasure, but both of these circumstances are socially proscribed and upheld as correct, developing the theme of Gatekeeping and the Policing of Respectability. This episode provides a key point of contrast when Alva later has sex with Oliver, a man who puts her sexual pleasure ahead of his own.
William’s lack of understanding and interest in his wife’s thoughts, feelings, and desires in their sex life is representative of his sense of entitlement, another hallmark of both the time period and high society culture. Many men of his class saw women as simply their property, and the laws of the time upheld women’s positions as an extension of their husbands. This attitude contributes to his dismissal of Alva’s thoughts on politics, which she continues to show an interest in, furthering the novel’s exploration of Using One’s Privilege to Support Progressive Politics. Thus, Alva is gratified when she meets Oliver, a man who treats her as a human being with agency and ideas worth considering.
Several chapters end with letters, written by Alva or Lady C. These epistolary passages play two important functions in the novel. First, they create verisimilitude, or a sense of realism. A Well-Behaved Woman is a fictionalized account of Alva’s life, and the letters are likewise fictional. However, they are representative of the correspondence women like Alva and Lady C. would have exchanged over the course of their friendship. Through the letters, Fowler offers insight into the historical time period and what it may have been like to live in it. Second, the letters are, naturally, written in first-person perspective, offering insight into both Alva and her foil Lady C.’s inner lives. For example, when Alva writes about having to wear black after the death of her father, she writes, “I wouldn’t miss him any less were I to wear scarlet” (122). This rebellious, though private, sentiment foreshadows the later public rebellion Alva will take on when she decides to divorce her husband.
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