400 pages
This masterfully crafted biographical novel takes us credibly into the mind and heart of a Gilded Age matron more often reviled than praised..
A Well-Behaved Woman follows Alva Vanderbilt Belmont from her own family's downfall through her unhappy marriage to Willie K. Vanderbilt and on to her years at the forefront of America's women's rights movement. It's a long journey, made faster by judicious leaps over years where not much was changing - or not much that she knew of at the time it was happening. While much of Vanderbilt history is generally known from the obsessive tabloid coverage of the late 1800s, and more from the many biographies written since about various family members, Alva was primarily known for her apparently cruel interactions with her daughter, Consuelo.
For decades, all anyone knew of Alva herself was what appeared on the outer side of this intensely private woman: that she was a Southern belle by upbringing, that she was intensely competitive with her sister-in-law, Alice Vanderbilt,' in the matter of houses, that she forced a fragile Consuelo to marry England's most eligible duke despite the girl's pleas, tears, and refusals, that she scandalously instituted a divorce from Willie K. over his near-constant adulteries, and - almost unheard of at the time - came out of it a wealthy woman in her own right.
This author takes us into the inner layers, credibly revealing a young Alva desperate to recoup her family's fortunes by a good marriage before she and her sisters are left homeless by the death of their near-destitute father. How that early insecurity fed her societal obsession is a recurring theme. Along the way there are glimpses into the constriction of young Society women's lives, from what they wore at each time of day or season through the types of charitable works that were considered suitably genteel to the kind of instruction (or lack of it) they were given about their expected role in the marital bed. While a few infelicitous deeds of Alva's are glossed over or set hastily aside without much effort to excuse or explain, overall the author succeeds in humanizing a woman long seen through a less compassionate lens, and adds convincing psychological underpinnings to the documented rapprochement between Alva and Consuelo following the ill-fated ducal marriage.
If you like watching The Buccaneers or reading about America's Gilded Age, or following women faced with challenging choices and limited acceptable tools with which to extricate themselves, this book may well engage you as deeply as it did me.
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