A calculated union with William Vanderbilt, one of the nouveau riche who cannot enter the upper echelons of society despite his family fortune, rescues Alva and her sisters from destitution. We meet Alva Smith at a moment of crisis where she hovers at the brink of poverty with only her respectable lineage offering hope of salvation.

Zelda Fitzgerald, her first subject, was beautifully and powerfully drawn in the international bestselling, Z, a novel that crackled with energy as she raised Fitzgerald above her diminished reputation as just F Scott Fitzgerald's mentally ill flapper wife.Ī Well Behaved Woman is a less fiery affair than Z, but no less important in its political deconstruction of Vanderbilt's narrative. At the time, however, she was often considered scandalous and vilified for her feminist, antagonistic views and a staunch independence that unsettled the status quo.įowler, also a self-proclaimed modern feminist, has established her modus operandi to be the restoration of the reputations of legendary American women whose legacies have become warped by media and myth. By modern standards, Vanderbilt’s behaviour was impeccable, despite the personal and societal challenges she faced. This intimate portrait of Alva Vanderbilt, the powerful socialite of New York’s Gilded Age in the late 19th century, certainly supports the theory. Meet Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, living proof that history is made by those who know the rules-and how to break them.“Well behaved women seldom make history” – the popular feminist slogan, coined by respected historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich no doubt inspired the title of Therese Anne Fowler’s second foray into biographical historical fiction. With a nod to Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, in A Well-Behaved Woman Therese Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against desperate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman.

But Alva also defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women's suffrage movement. Ignored by New York’s old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built nine mansions, hosted grand balls, and arranged for her daughter to marry a duke. The riveting novel of iron-willed Alva Vanderbilt and her illustrious family as they rule Gilded-Age New York, written by Therese Anne Fowler, a New York Times bestselling author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.Īlva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. The New York Times and USA Today bestseller

A well behaved woman novel