In the third season of HBO’s The Gilded Age, a frothy costume drama set amid the robber barons and socialites of 1880s New York, a servant suddenly comes into money. So much of it, in fact, that he’ll never have to work again. But instead of seizing his new-found freedom, the man keeps his windfall a secret and continues toiling below stairs. He simply can’t imagine leaving a household staff that has become his surrogate family.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Even for a show that’s famous for its silliness, this is a ridiculous storyline. No one in their right mind would choose a 19th century servant’s labors as a hobby. It isn’t surprising, though, to see The Gilded Age telegraph such complacency among the lower classes or alarm at the prospect of sudden social mobility. Created by Downton Abbey mastermind Julian Fellowes, a bona fide aristocrat and Conservative politician in his home country of Britain, the series aspires to be more than what it is: a historical soap par excellence decked out in prestige drag. Successful or not, it’s a reflection on the American Dream of equal opportunity as pursued by the self-made strivers of its era. Season 3, in particular, suggests that Fellowes does not wholly approve.
This is the season where things start to get real for the show’s quintessential dreamers: George (Morgan Spector) and Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon). Born into undistinguished families, this cartoonishly ambitious couple hustled to make George a titan of industry. Season 1 saw them and their nearly grown children, Larry (Harry Richardson) and Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), move into an ostentatious mansion on old-money 61st St. Bertha set about scheming to rule high society the way her husband dominated business. By the second season finale, her triumph in championing the new Metropolitan Opera had cemented the family’s arrival. But in the new episodes, Bertha’s obsession with marrying off Gladys, against her will, to a British duke (Ben Lamb), divides the Russells. In a parallel overreach—one that could bankrupt him—George insists on trying to build a cross-country railroad during an economic downturn. Unstable as they are, Fellowes implies, the Russells could fall as quickly as they rose.
Holding steady in more modest, dated luxury across the street are the show’s true heroes: quippy society widow Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and her tenderhearted sister Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon), who’d resigned herself to spinsterhood before meeting a kind reverend (Robert Sean Leonard) in Season 2. Alas, the marriage was short; he died of cancer almost immediately, and the meek— that is, Ada—inherited everything. It was a convenient twist, seeing as Agnes’ troubled son, Oscar (Blake Ritson), had just been swindled out of their family’s riches. The big drama among the sisters, this season, is Ada’s struggle to wrest control of the household from Agnes, now that she’s paying the bills. Nothing really changes, though—and in Fellowes’ world, tradition and consistency are virtues.
The Gilded Age isn’t entirely opposed to progress. Haughty as she can be about the “new people,” Agnes, like Downton’s imperious Violet Crawley before her, has a good heart. She’s open-minded enough to employ a young Black writer, Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), as her secretary. This season, Peggy falls ill at the sisters’ home, and they are horrified to see their family doctor refuse to treat her. When Peggy’s parents (Audra McDonald and John Douglas Thompson) arrive with their own physician, Dr. Kirkland (Jordan Donica), Agnes and Ada graciously receive them at the front door. (A romance soon blossoms between doctor and patient, in one of the season’s best storylines, bringing McDonald’s character into delicious conflict with his snooty mom, played by Phylicia Rashad.) Populated by strong female personalities, the show also gets behind the feminist causes of its time, like women’s suffrage. It’s sympathetic to the plight of divorced women, then considered too scandalous to be received in polite society.
What Fellowes can’t countenance are privileged people who lack the magnanimity befitting their rank and, most of all, servants who are insufficiently grateful to their benevolent employers. If the Russells are presented as morally ambiguous antiheroes, then one of the season’s only true villains is a member of their staff who leaks intel on the family to the press. “Money is money,” this ostensible monster sniffs when caught. Never does anyone ask if Bertha is adequately compensating her employees, nor do we get to know the culprit well enough to understand the context for the crime. Three seasons in, The Gilded Age has barely explored its huge cast of servant characters. Like Downton, it has more sympathy for—and curiosity about—aristocrats desperate to keep fortunes they didn’t earn than it does for workers whose pursuit of happiness is enshrined in America’s founding documents.
Through his characters, Fellowes communicates his approval for a more compassionate and inclusive upper crust. Yet the question of whether class-based gatekeeping and the economic stratification that enables it might be, in themselves, social ills isn’t up for debate. (Would Agnes and Ada treat the Scotts with the same respect if they weren’t refined members of the Black bourgeoisie?) Rather, the social scene is presumed to be inherently good and worthy of preservation. As Ada observes: “Society’s changed, Agnes. The trick is to accommodate the new without upsetting the boat.”
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