54 pages • 1-hour read
A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender discrimination, antigay bias, death, and death by suicide.
The Hollowness of Marriage as an Economic Contract
The stages of Alva’s life, as portrayed in A Well-Behaved Woman, can be broadly defined in relation to her changing views on marriage. Over the course of the novel, her opinion about whether marriage should be an economic agreement or a source of love and sexual satisfaction shifts. She comes to understand that the emptiness of her first marriage cannot be offset by the safety and security she gained in exchange for her wealth, illustrating the novel’s argument about marriage as an economic contract.
As a young woman, Alva reflects the education and views of the society in which she was raised. Although she longs for love and affection of the sort she read about in Jane Austen novels, she recognizes that she needs to focus on marrying a wealthy man so she can provide for her sisters now that her family fortune has been lost, her mother has died, and her father is on his deathbed. She reflects that “emotions [are] unstable, unreliable, time consuming” (40). It is better to accept William Vanderbilt’s perfunctory proposal, even if she does not love him, in order to secure the material security of herself and her family. On her wedding day, she naively believes that she will come to love William “when she’d had time to take the full measure of [him]” (106). These views are representative of the conventional wisdom of the upper classes of Alva’s time, in which marriages were used to pool wealth and form alliances. Alva trades her family’s wealth for social position and a network that will ensure that she is secure.
Very quickly, Alva becomes disillusioned with the notion that she would eventually love her husband, which forces her to abandon society’s idea that she will come to love her husband over time. She comes to realize that “young ladies were being sold a bill of goods […] in order to reduce their objections to advantageous alliances” (166). Alva finds her husband dull and self-involved, concerned only with frivolous pursuits like hunting and boating. Instead, Alva finds herself drawn to the handsome and thoughtful Oliver Belmont, who offers a model for a different type of man. Unlike her husband, Oliver listens to and respects her views and opinions. However, throughout her life and marriage, she continues to put these feelings of love and romance aside, choosing instead to continue to adhere to the norms of her society’s expectations that she remain a dutiful and faithful wife rather than risk the safety and stability she has found.
With the revelation that William and Lady C. have been conducting a years-long affair, however, Alva’s views shift. She realizes that the pact she made with William doesn’t offer her anything beyond social safety, and she has come to want something more. This spurs her to ask for a divorce and to instead marry Oliver Belmont, the man she loves. In this new marriage, she finds greater joy and fulfillment, but her views on marriage do not change so drastically that she would allow her daughter, Consuelo, to make the same choice. She intervenes to prevent Consuelo from marrying the “playboy” Winthrop Rutherfurd, even though Consuelo insists she loves the man. Instead, she maneuvers Consuelo into marrying the respectable and titled Duke of Marlborough. Her hypocrisy comes clear when Alva repeats to Consuelo the same poor advice she herself received as a young woman: “[T]o imagine yourself in love now would indicate mere infatuation. Genuine love will occur later” (483). Alva offers her daughter the same panacea that she was offered, even though she has come to realize, through her own experience, how hollow it is. Consuelo eventually finds happiness as an unmarried woman, supporting the novel’s assertion that no marriage at all is a better prospect for women than a loveless marriage that is an economic contract.
Gatekeeping and the Policing of Respectability
A Well-Behaved Woman is set in the late 19th-century United States, a time of significant shifts in society due to the rise and fall of fortunes connected to the Industrial Revolution. New money families were eager to overcome the rigid hierarchies of wealth and lineage to become part of the elite. This shift, in which wealth became tied to social mobility, posed a challenge to the “old money” families, who wished to gatekeep “new money” industrial tycoons from high society. Anyone who transgressed these rigid boundaries could find themselves expelled from high society and shunned by their former friends, and the novel explores the tension of this position through Alva and William’s experience gaining entry to high society.
William’s decision to propose to Alva offers an example of how he attempts to circumvent this gatekeeping. Although she is relatively penniless, William, whose wealth is new, marries her in the hope that her old money connections will secure his family’s position in society. Up to this point, they have been stymied in their efforts to enter high society; for instance, he despairs that “[t]he [opera] academy refuses to sell [his] father a box” and asks Alva to write letters to her connections on their behalf even before they are married (43). After their marriage, Alva throws a lavish ball and ensures Mrs. Caroline Astor, the queen of New York high society, will attend, securing the Vanderbilt family’s place in society.
However, even once William and Alva Vanderbilt have “arrived” socially, the novel portrays how precarious that place in that society is. The smallest transgression results in ostracization, a painful truth best illustrated in the novel through Ward McAllister’s story. He was a socialite valued for his party planning and social network. Despite his many years in this role, he is immediately shunned when he publishes a book about his experience that exposes the inside view of high society. Even Alva, whom he had helped when she was most in need, is forced to go along with society’s dictates out of “self-preservation,” illustrating how powerful the social forces are.
Alva’s views about the maintenance of this public “respectability” shift over time. As a young woman, she thinks of it as being of the utmost importance. She worries when William’s Uncle C. J. dies by suicide, and social gossip says that he was gay because she fears it will tarnish the family’s reputation. She repeatedly rejects Oliver’s suggestions that they have an affair for fear that, if the news came out, she would be shunned. Once she resolves to divorce her husband, however, and faces ostracization herself, she recognizes how these rigid rules of respectability are used to control people and begins to reject them. As she declares, “May the burning of my bridges—if indeed any more are burned—light the way for others!” (502). She recognizes that “[s]ociety loved her when she was advancing its causes, then castigated her when she was advancing her own” (539). Her story illustrates the high stakes of following society’s rules of respectability, as well as what one gains from walking away.
Using One’s Privilege to Support Progressive Politics
Alva was not a revolutionary firebrand, but throughout her life, she used her privilege and influence to advocate for progressive politics both in her private and public life. As portrayed in the novel, from a young age, she took a different approach to helping others than her contemporaries, who were focused on moralizing and often ineffective forms of charity.
In the opening chapter of the novel, Alva participates in a charity visit to a tenement building to distribute sewing kits as part of an “improving” mission, meant to provide the poor with the means to earn a living. However, she is quickly confronted with the insufficiency of this approach when she comes upon a young woman who has bled out and died, possibly from pregnancy complications. From this point, she resolves, “[W]e should see for ourselves what the real needs are, and then direct the money specifically and confirm its uses” (149). She uses her own wealth in furtherance of this mission once she becomes one of the wealthiest women in the world by “fund[ing] a new, clean, safe barracks for young unmarried women in the city” (154). She puts her conclusions, drawn from her own observations, into effect, laying the foundations for the proactive and progressive attitude that she will display throughout her life.
Alva quietly advances her progressive views in her personal life throughout the novel. She insists on having Mary, a Black woman, serve as her lady’s maid, even as others criticize this decision. When her sister-in-law, Alice, objects to her “insistence on employing a Negro to be [her] lady’s maid” as a decision in “terrible taste,” Alva retorts angrily, “Mary is an intelligent, talented woman and impeccable in her work” (299). She later invites Mary to her New Year’s Eve party as a symbol of her support for desegregation, even though she recognizes her guests may not “be thrilled to have [Mary]” there (502). In addition, when married to Oliver, she supports the progressive perspective expressed in his newspaper, the Verdict, his campaigning on behalf of William Jennings Bryan, and his stint as Congressional representative. She agrees with him that it is important to “tak[e] on corruption, imperialism, corporate greed (455), and they work together to promote progressive politics.
After Alva is widowed, she takes advantage of her newfound independence and the changing social context to become a public supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. Her recognition of her ability and agency in this fight is the final point of her character arc as she realizes that “she had other tools: connections and political experience and lots and lots of money” (539). Like her late husband Oliver, she intends to use her privilege to help others and improve society. Although not covered in detail in the novel itself, the Author’s Note states that Alva used her “considerable resources to the American women’s suffrage cause” (541). Alva was motivated by her experiences and her innate sense of justice to use her privilege and prosperity to help others, unlike others of her class, like her husband William, who were content to merely enjoy their wealth and preserve their class status.
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