A Well-Behaved Woman

Alva Smith came from a distinguished Southern family impoverished by the Civil War. Alva's family had class and connections, but no money, and there were plenty of young men who had money and whose families were desperately keen to graft both class and connections onto their fortunes. Alva's strategy was to move to New York and snag herself a rich husband, which she did most successfully in the form of William Vanderbilt. Now fabulously wealthy, Alva's mission was to break the somewhat nouveau Vanderbilt family into the cream of New York society, a campaign hard fought and won. Alva went on to become one of the city's leading socialites, taking the Vanderbilts with her. One of her tactics was conspicuous consumption and excess - in which Alva excelled. She was determined to outdo her rivals and the ruling class: if Mrs Astor's limited invitation list was based on the 400 she could fit in her drawing room, then Alva would throw a party in her huge new mansion costing $3M and invite everyone, except Mrs Astor. She would have the grandest houses and most flamboyant parties and yachts bigger than her rivals, and if 'people like her' couldn't get a seat at the Academy of Music, then she would help found the Metropolitan Opera so she damn well could. Autocratic, difficult, and a woman of strong opinions, Alva Vanderbilt was a complex and fascinating character brought vividly to life - a devoted mother of three, a dutiful wife in the face of her husband's serial infidelities, she chafed at the constraints placed upon women especially in polite society and within marriage. She took up the cause of suffrage and female workers' rights becoming a passionate campaigner for many uncomfortable causes. Eventually she caused a sensation by choosing her own happiness over convention and having the temerity to sue William for divorce on account of his adultery. Initially shunned by society, she engineered her daughter Consuelo's marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, and thereby her rehabilitation. That wedding, a reverse mirror image of her own (Vanderbilt money Churchill class) was in its day an absolute media sensation.Her funeral in the 1930s was attended by hundreds of suffragettes and her coffin draped with a banner saying 'Failure is Impossible'. A Well-Behaved Womanis a portrait of an age and the limitations placed on women of all classes within it. Neither was the same after Alva. von Fowler, Therese Anne