59 pages • 1 hour read
Shana AbeAn American Beauty: A Novel of the Gilded Age Inspired by the True Story of Arabella Huntington Who Became the Richest Woman in the Country
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Women’s Agency in a Patriarchal Society
While Arabella “Belle” Huntington is the protagonist of An American Beauty, the book explores the lives of women during the Gilded Age more broadly. The story is told through chapters that alternate between the perspectives of different female characters. While there are some similarities in their experiences, there are other factors besides gender that influence how the lives of women played out during this time.
The book features the perspectives of Belle, Catherine, and Clara—three very different women who nevertheless have one thing in common: their dependence on men. All three women come from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences. Catherine is born into a wealthy family, but her parents disown her when she marries for love, leaving her to sink into poverty. Clara’s story is almost the inverse of Catherine’s: She is plucked from destitution and brought up in immense wealth and privilege. Belle, too, moves from dire circumstances to substantially grander ones across her life, albeit through her own machinations rather than fate, as in Clara’s case. Despite these vastly different circumstances, each of the three women’s fates ultimately rests in the hands of a man: Catherine loses her standing because of her husband; Belle climbs the ranks because of her lover; and Clara remains protected and cushioned throughout her life because of her father.
The freedoms of all four women are undeniably limited by their dependence on men. However, the different choices they make with their limited freedom reflects the kind of privilege and life experiences each of them have enjoyed. Catherine was born into a comfortable life which she lost because of her naive romantic choices; however, the hardships she faced forced her to learn adaptability for survival. She consequently drilled the same lessons into her own children, and Belle is a living example of her mother’s lessons. Belle’s pragmatism sees her making difficult decisions like living apart from her son to ensure her family’s survival, or marrying Collis even when she cannot shake her feelings for Edward. Clara, on the other hand, is a more passive recipients of any difficulty she faces. She makes choices that are led entirely by her heart, like marrying Francis. She is ignorant of his real character and motivations, and can afford to be because of the protection her father’s wealth affords.
Catherine and Belle’s life experiences push them to make hard choices without regret or apology and allow them to prevail over equally hard circumstances. Clara, and even her mother, Elizabeth, on the other hand, are unable to do the same. Despite Elizabeth’s best efforts, Belle retains control of Collis’s heart and attentions, and is even able to bring Archer back into the fold. Clara, similarly, believes she is exercising autonomous and independence in her choice of husband; however, her life still remains tethered to a man’s, with her husband’s affections and her father’s fortune inextricably linked. The women of the Gilded Age are, thus, united in the curtailed freedom and independence afforded to them. Within this, however, range of choices and opportunities available to them to change their circumstances is a product of numerous different factors such as class, upbringing, and life experiences.
The Tension Between Societal Expectation and Personal Ambition
Several characters in the novel face conflicts between their personal ambitions and the expectations of the society around them. The way each character contends with these conflicts shapes the trajectory of Belle’s life.
Belle’s mother, Catherine, experiences this conflict between personal ambition and social expectation even before Belle is born. Catherine defied societal expectations early in her life when she married for love, but this was a decision fueled by desire rather than personal ambition. Later in life, however, Catherine defies societal expectations once again, this time for the sake of personal ambition: Her family’s survival. Catherine’s experiences have taught her to disregard any and all softer feelings, like love and desire, if she and her children are to survive. Thus, she pushes her daughter into sex work and toward men like Collis and Johnny. Catherine has no choice but to sacrifice everything at the altar of survival; there is barely any regret, and no trace of apology, at having to defy societal expectations in this stage of her life.
Another character who faces this same conflict is Collis; however, unlike Catherine, Collis’s conflict is a matter of desire. Collis desires excitement, passion, and adventure from his life—”a world beyond rules” (259), as Elizabeth asserts that Belle is able to provide him. However, he is also tied to Elizabeth by society’s norms and dictums around fidelity in marriage, and he cannot bring himself to completely sever these ties. A man of Collis’s fortune will not lose anything tangible if he ends his marriage to Elizabeth and chooses to be with Belle. The conflict he feels, thus, is entirely psychological, unlike Catherine’s; the impact of his choices, unlike hers, do not affect his survival. However, both Catherine and Collis’s conflicts and resultant choices directly impact the trajectory of Belle’s life.
From the moment 17-year-old Belle appears on the page, she is shown as willing to bend the rules and operate in murky moral waters if it will benefit her. She embarks on a relationship with a married man almost entirely because of his wealth and status. However, the revelation of how Belle came to work at Johnny’s also hints that she is not inherently as stoic and pragmatic as her later choices reflect: She was pushed into this life by Catherine. Simultaneously, Belle’s personal ambitions are not limited to mere survival, as Catherine’s are; she has always—even literally—dreamed of a grander life for herself. In this sense, Belle is both a pragmatist and a romantic. Her circumstances and upbringing see her consistently making decisions led by her head rather than her heart, prioritizing personal ambition over everything else, and she is willing to bow to societal expectations if this is what her ambition requires. However, she cannot shake some level of passion and idealism entirely. These traits lead her to risk Collis’s displeasure by taking a stand and bringing her son back to New York; they are also reflected in her enduring love for Edward.
Thus, the single biggest conflict in Belle’s life actually stems from the conflicts that others in her life experience. Catherine pushes Belle to disregard societal expectations to ensure her family’s survival. Collis flouts societal expectation by pursuing a relationship with Belle, but his inability to disregard those expectations entirely places limits on her life for years. There comes a point in her life, however, where Belle sees a harmonious resolution of both these sides for herself; this is where her story concludes. Once she becomes Collis’ widow, Belle is no longer bound by societal expectations, and she has long since fulfilled her personal ambitions; thus, she is finally free to pursue her heart’s desire and invite Edward in.
The Influence of Beauty and Wealth on Social Mobility
An American Beauty fictionalizes the life of Arabella “Belle” Huntington, a woman who rose from a fairly anonymous background to become one of the richest women in New York during the Gilded Age. Her ascent was not just one of fortune, but of social standing as well, and the book delves into how both beauty and wealth played a role in Belle’s climb within New York society.
The lives of the characters in the book suggest that social mobility can happen upward and downward. Collis is an example of upward social mobility. Like Belle, he, too, comes from humble beginnings, and worked his way up in the world by amassing wealth through his railroad business. Collis’s wealth eventually affords the Huntingtons the opportunity to rub elbows with New York’s elite, with young Clara receiving invitations to high society balls and events. By contrast, Catherine experiences downward social mobility early in her life. She is cut off from her family after she marries for love and is left destitute, effectively losing her standing in society as well. In this era, social status could rise and fall as quickly as material wealth.
Belle experiences the good fortune of upward social mobility because of her association with a very wealthy Collis; however, it is her beauty that affords her the opportunity of this association in the first place. She manages to capture Collis’s attention with her loveliness, and this attention then blooms into a relationship between the two. Collis’s affection for Belle allows her to ask him for things that further her own and her family’s financial situation, and with it, their social standing. Belle not only amasses a fortune by buying properties with Collis’s funds, but also uses the means at her disposal to access spaces meant for New York high society, like museums and art auctions. Thus, Belle uses the only power that she has at her disposal as a woman in the Gilded Age to control the people and resources that hold real power: men and money.
The changes in Belle’s social standing over her lifetime show the influence of beauty and wealth on social mobility. Despite all the money Belle has at her disposal as Mrs. Worsham, there are still places she can’t access: Social clubs and balls. When she becomes Mrs. Huntington, however, she eventually does receive an invitation to the latter from the arbiter of society himself, Ward McAllister. The kind of money one has, thus, also influences one’s potential for social mobility. As Mrs. Worsham, New York society knew Belle to be Collis’s mistress; thus, the money at her disposal was as illegitimate as the role in his life to further her societal standing. Becoming Collis’s wife lends Belle more legitimacy—at the very least, enough to grant her an invitation to a ball. Because of her past, the literal sum she needs to pay to cement her position in society is much higher than anyone else’s.
While the Huntingtons choose not to pay the amount McAllister requests, the interaction nevertheless shows that it is possible to buy one’s place in society. Money is the ultimate seat of social currency, and can directly influence mobility. While men have direct access to this power, women have an indirect one through their beauty, as they use this to find and snag the right man with the right fortune. Thus, both wealth and beauty are seen to have an influence on social mobility, and they prove especially potent when combined with Belle’s determination and strategic thinking.
