Madeline
The Gilded Age is the story of the rich and the elite in New York during the 1800’s when the railroads were being built and money was pouring into the city. These are the socialites who ran New York during this time. They built the mansions that made fifth avenue the definition of upper class. They built the fortunes that New York City’s wealth backbone was built on. And they held the events that helped shaped New York into what it is today.
Premise of The Gilded Age
Marian’s father has died and left her nothing. Her only option is to move to Manhattan to live with her aunts, her only living relatives. These are socialite women of old money in New York. One of her aunts, Agnes, married into old money that dates back to the Mayflower crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And the other aunt, Ada, moved into the brownstone when her sister’s rich husband died. Although Marian is confused by the seemingly arbitrary rules, she is forced into the social scene that encourages her family connection to old money. These three women represent the old money socialites of New York City.
Across the street, a new mansion unlike the neighborhood popular brownstone style has been erected and the Russell family has moved in. The matriarch of the Russell family, Bertha, is insistent to make her way into the elite social circles. These elite social circles refuse to accept her regardless of her riches exceeding any of theirs. The numerous charity events, makes it difficult to keep denying her and her money entry into these circles. This character is based off of Alva Vanderbilt, who in real life, tried to push herself into the social culture of Manhattan.
Although these two families is what The Gilded Age is mostly based on, there are a number of other characters to add color to the story. This includes the other socialites in the scene in Manhattan and their husbands as well as the house staff for both families. These characters help move the stories along and both put up and tare down the walls these families come up against. Some of these characters are based on other socialites of the time and some are completely fictional. Regardless of whether they were real or not, each character in The Gilded Age helps to paint the whole picture of how the elite lived during this time.
My Need For More
If The Real Housewives of New York was filmed in the late 1800’s, more people would be watching that then all the other Real Housewives combined. There is something to be said about these people who held a majority of the money in the United States during this period. The lives they lived were grand and ridiculous.
I am now on a mission to find out as much as I can find about these elite people in New York during this time. I have scraped Goodreads and Letterboxd for whatever I could find, both fiction and nonfiction, to scratch this new itch to better understand the Gilded age. There will be many more posts about this time period to come.
Final Thoughts
If Downton Abbey took place in the United States, it would be The Gilded Age. For anyone who is a fan of one will for sure be a fan of the other. They are not just similar because they both are historical series, the general structure of the shows have a lot in common. The stories are just as alabrate and attention grabbing as the other making it an easy show to binge watch all the way through.
