The Buccaneers

Set in the 1870s, The Buccaneers uses courtship and marriage to illustrate the differences between British and American cultures and to explain why “dollar princesses” emerged during this time frame. The British upper class was hierarchical, title-based, and bound to land, and its wealth relied on agricultural rents and the social authority of the peerage. However, after the mid-century, economic changes left many aristocratic families land-rich and cash-poor. Estates needed investment for the maintenance of houses, staff, and tenant lands, but tradition, property, and inheritance practices restricted the sale of assets. In short, British social rank remained secure, but liquidity was weak.

By contrast, American elites in the same period were products of industrial and financial growth because their wealth came from railroads, steel, mining, banking, and urban real estate. Such families could convert assets into cash more easily, and their fortunes rose quickly. The United States did not recognize titles; instead, status was measured by visibility, philanthropy, and control of key institutions such as clubs and charities. Old New York families guarded entry to these rarified circles through etiquette and guest lists, but the overall structure was more open to new money than were the social circles in Britain.

These structural contrasts created a clear exchange as the so-called “dollar princesses” emerged. British aristocrats offered titles, precedence, and social access, while American heiresses brought dowries or settlements that could stabilize struggling British estates, pay debts, and modernize properties. The marriages constituted a legal and financial mechanism, and settlements placed capital with trustees for the benefit of the couple and heirs, balancing British concerns about preserving land with American expectations of retaining financial security.

Notably, these bargains were fraught with cultural differences. British society had formal rules around matters such as presentation at court, chaperonage, and country-house hospitality, and the calendar of the Season synchronized politics, sport, and marriage markets. Social rank was signaled by nuances of conversation, accent, dress, and knowledge of protocol. Americans, however, were accustomed to a more public and entrepreneurial approach to social life. They accumulated status through conspicuous building, charitable boards, and lavish events, but they lacked the symbolic capital of titles. Mothers and daughters therefore traveled to Europe to use the mechanism of marriage to convert money into rank, often relying upon introductions from diplomats, expatriate Americans, and sympathetic hostesses.

Wharton’s novel highlights the friction points within these arrangements. Specifically, Americans were simultaneously praised for their energy and criticized for their presentation, while Britons were valued for their adherence to tradition and faulted for their rigidity. American families often expected access and influence that would be commensurate with their cash contribution, and this mindset clashed with the British families’ expectations that their new American family members would defer to their established social routines.

Gender norms also differed, as American daughters were permitted to be more visible in public life and had some leverage via their wealth. However, as Nan’s predicament illustrates, once they married into the British system, they encountered stricter social norms and were expected to defer to their husbands and in-laws and mind their estate obligations. For disgruntled couples, British divorce law was also more restrictive than American law and carried higher social penalties. Entailed estates limited a husband’s ability to liquidate property, while settlements protected the wife’s capital but tied it to the family line. The effect was to secure the estate rather than the individual woman’s freedom, and this asymmetry appears in Wharton’s focus on the grim reality that marital “security” can drastically reduce a woman’s agency. Ultimately, the exchange had consequences for both cultures. In Britain, imported capital prolonged the viability of some aristocratic houses and linked them to American business networks, while in the United States, the marriages created transatlantic families that circulated between Newport, New York, and London, shaping tastes in architecture, fashion, and philanthropy.