Could Gladys Russell on ‘The Gilded Age’ Be a Potential ‘Dollar Princess’?

One of the storylines that has been present in HBO’s The Gilded Age from the beginning is Bertha Russell’s desire to be accepted in high society. It guides her every waking moment to the point where even the death of five men is not really an issue to her if she can get into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.

When it comes to Bertha’s daughter, Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga), we see her delaying the young adult’s entry into society, carefully picking her friends, and when a potential romance emerges, Bertha says it’s “not what she wants.”

That leaves the question: What kind of match does Bertha want for her daughter?

My theory is that Bertha is laying the foundation for Gladys to be a future “Dollar Princess.” Dollar Princesses is a term that came about to describe new money families in America marrying their wealthy daughters to British nobility. The British nobility where going broke and needed an influx of cash to keep their estates afloat. The Americans had felt shunned by Old Society and felt that if their money couldn’t buy them a place there, they’d buy a title instead.

One of the most famous of them is Jennie Jerome, the future mother of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The future Lady Churchill, who married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874, came with a dowery that is estimated to be over $4.3 million dollars today. Lady Churchill started the trend and from the late 19th century until WWII, wealthy American woman were able to continue the social climbing of their parents.

As written on the History article on the topic:

In 1895 alone, nine heiresses married European men with noble titles. Notable matches included that of railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough and dry goods heiress Mary Leiter to Lord Curzon. “Though the British peerage has of late years yielded many titled husbands to American heiresses,” declared the San Francisco Call in 1904, “there is no danger of the supply running short.”

For Bertha Russell, this is the kind of path she would likely want for her daughter—a title that will open doors that money couldn’t on its own, and grandchildren who will be part of the British aristocracy—validity that money can buy. Of course, these marriages very often sucked, and the women often faced culture shocks, unloving marriages, and the lack of full control over their money.

“[…] after marriage, they found themselves chatelaines of houses where taking a bath involved a housemaid making five trips from the kitchen in the basement, carrying jugs of hot water to fill a hip bath,” author Daisy Goodwin writes in Newsweek. “The stately homes of England were all too often dark, dingy, and terribly cold.”

Another reason this could likely happen is because of the connection to Gilded Age‘s predecessor series, Downton Abbey. Lady Cora on Downton was a “dollar princess” who married Robert as a wealthy American heiress after being “fortune hunted” by him and eventually falling in love. Initially, creator Julian Fellowes wanted to do a prequel series about Cora and Robert, but it eventually turned into The Gilded Age, focused on different characters.

Making Gladys a dollar princess and introducing that dynamic will not only be a fun tie-in, but also might get us a young Cora prequel character—and that I would love to see.

(image HBO Max)