When Does ‘The Gilded Age’ Take Place? Answered

HBO’s hit show The Gilded Age transports us back in time during a specific era in American history.

We love The Gilded Age because of the rich people’s drama. Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) going to obscene lengths to secure her place in society, even though she and her husband are new money, is one of my favorite things to watch. This woman will throw balls and have an opera singer perform in her living room to prove a point.

The best from the old money camp has to be Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski). She will calmly and bluntly eviscerate people with only a few words. Don’t get on her bad side. They live in a world of glitz and glamor, and most of their drama in season two centers around who has boxes at which opera house and who is marrying whom. It’s a much different reality from what most of us know, and part of that is because the show takes place about 140 years in the past.

When does The Gilded Age take place?

The Gilded Age takes its name from the exact historical era in which it occurred: the Gilded Age. Most historians place the time between 1877 and 1900. To put it into a global context, it is also about the same period as the late Victorian era in England. The era goes in between the Reconstruction Era, when America rebuilt after the Civil War, and the Progressive Era, when social activism took off in America. The Gilded Age was all about industrialization and expansion. Steel mills and railroads boomed along with real estate. People were making fortunes almost overnight.

The name comes from the book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Instead of getting a “golden age” after the Civil War, we just got something gilded. To gild is to cover something with gold. Most often, it is associated with being excessive, wasteful, or unnecessary. It looked pretty, but there was no need for it. Wealthy people spent their money just to do it. Did they need the ridiculous hats or houses that looked like cathedrals? No, but it sure looked lovely, didn’t it?

Specifically, season two of The Gilded Age begins on Easter Sunday in 1883. The season ends in October of the same year, on the morning after the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House. As of this writing, there is no word from HBO as to whether a third season is on the horizon. If a third season does happen, there is still plenty of time left in the Gilded Age to explore before the good times for the rich start to shift in favor of the workers and those less fortunate.

(featured image: Max)