With a supportive husband, wealth and wily machinations, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) has achieved the heights of late 1800s New York Gilded Age society. True, her marriage may have become rocky but her daughter is now a duchess. She believes herself to have no peer. So, with the new season of HBO’s The Gilded Age, there will have to be new characters striving to climb the rungs of society. Footman turned clock inventor Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers) is looking for new business ventures and trying to become accustomed to his newfound fortune. Former lady’s maid and now wealthy widow Enid Turner Winterton van Rhijn (Kelley Curran) wants to rival the best of society’s matrons. How can they—and others—achieve these goals?
In 1870, Ladies Home Journal claimed that to succeed in New York society you simply needed to “keep carriages, live above Bleecker, subscribe to the opera, go to Grace Church, have a town house and a country house, give balls, and parties.”
Fine basics, though, in truth, it would take a bit more pomp. Taking the lowly backgrounds of Jack and Enid into consideration, what suggestions can help these characters cement their positions in Gilded Age society?
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