Far be it from me on any other instance to defend the actions of a member of the rich from any scrutiny, given their inherent exploitation of the working class, but given the societal, gender, and indeed material dynamics of HBO’s The Gilded Age, of which Season 4 is debuting November 1st, I will make an exception for my favorite character on the show, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon).
In Season 3 of the acclaimed HBO drama, Bertha manipulated events to have her daughter Gladys married to the Duke of Buckingham, who was in need of the Russell money that would come with Gladys’ dowry. This was a common practice at the time: rich American heiresses marrying into the British aristocracy that needed the money- a mutually beneficial trade of power for capital and vice versa across the Atlantic among the elite.
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For this, she received considerable criticism both in-universe and from the audience (at least at first) for not allowing her daughter to choose a love match for her marriage in Billie Carlton. She also received significant criticism for pushing Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) towards Hector (Ben Lamb), the English Duke of Buckingham, for marriage, in a few ways that resembled the tragic situation of the Alva Vanderbilt effectively selling her daughter Consuelo off to an infamously unhappy marriage to the Duke of Marlborough.
Bertha Russell understands love very differently from The Gilded Age’s audience.
In this, people, including her own husband George (Morgan Spector) and son Larry (Harry Richardson), who walked out on her at the end of the last season, viewed Bertha as a relentlessly ambitious and heartless social climber who cared nothing for the feelings of Gladys and only wanted to advance her family’s social station at any cost, and dominate with power for the sake of itself, all other considerations for her family be damned.
I completely disagree. When we analyze the full breadth of her actions, including the real-life inspiration of Alva and Consuelo and the key differences from it, we realize that, at a fundamental level, Bertha Russell did nothing wrong, and everything she sincerely felt was right for her daughter, with proven effect.
In this analysis, I do not mean to defend her actions, as we better understand in a more modern context how they are indeed wrong to pressure her daughter into marriage with someone she did not initially love, but within the context of New York high society.
This is particularly important because real love matches were very uncommon among the upper class the Russells were part of. In many ways, Bertha and George’s own marriage was an exceedingly fortuitous fluke. But it was a successful one regardless, which propelled Bertha to incredible highs in society, and understandably she wanted to ensure her daughter would have the same opportunities.
Within this context, Bertha acted, ruthlessly by her own admission, to place her daughter into a marriage with a good man in Hector that she had vetted. And she made sure it was one with considerable influence that would allow Gladys such a degree of autonomy and power that women, even white upper-class women like themselves, were rarely afforded in their extraordinarily sexist society. Even upper-class women could only hope to head up charities and sometimes be activists for causes they believed in, without any woman having anything close to the influence a man could have.
Bertha Russell is wonderfully ruthless in getting what she wants and securing better societal placement for herself and her family. Having come from working-class Irish-American potato farmers into high society as “New Money” in New York City, and with her mother having died in poverty, Bertha is well aware of how precarious her and her family’s station is, even with George being as rich as he is. Indeed, at points in the series, George is about to lose their fortune, and Bertha never truly frets, but braces herself for what she experienced in childhood.
Bertha Russell, far more intimately than George, Larry, or even Gladys, knows what it’s like to be a woman in high society. She knows the degree of power and influence she has been afforded and the limitations that continue to beset her and other high-class women. The most amount of agency a woman could have at the time was her choice of husband and the status and financial gains that came with it.
A husband is a choice that shapes your life, Bertha Russell understands this deeply.
Unlike the real-life source of her partial inspiration, Alva Vanderbilt, Bertha was born in poverty, presumably in upstate New York where her sister lives, while Alva was born to wealthy slaveowners in Alabama. Having been fortunate enough to find George and build a life and family with him as his business took off into the economic stratosphere, she had to adapt and sharpen her societal skills in every way she could to guarantee the longevity of their success.
We see this frequently through the first few seasons of The Gilded Age, as she navigates New York high society to maintain her and George’s success and placement in the upper echelons. The Old Money elites would consistently try to put her and her husband down, only to acquiesce to their own changes on society.
At the end of the day, it was still Gladys’ (albeit pressured) choice to accept Hector, though she still clearly had her doubts, concerns, and second thoughts in the wedding itself. Obviously, this is a horrible situation for any young woman to be in. But Bertha Russell knew the rules and expectations of high society at the time.
She already thoroughly vetted the Duke through their personal meetings and observed him in society. As such, she sincerely believed (correctly, at least as we see in the latter half of Season 3) her daughter could be happy and secure, as well as influential and uniquely powerful, in such a union.
Bertha knew that Gladys, inexperienced in the world, was susceptible to puppy love rather than focusing on a long-term marriage with a strong foundation. True, Bertha should have taught Gladys about this and made it clear. Perhaps she did, and we simply never saw it that much on screen.
But Gladys was also headstrong, going so far as to run away one night to the Carlton household to be with Billy, a scandal by any stretch, even if there was no actual physical activity. Bertha knew Gladys was squandering a potential marriage opportunity with Hector that she hadn’t considered thoroughly, and she put her back on track, albeit begrudgingly, to make the match happen. Even with the pressure Gladys was feeling from Bertha, it was still her choice to accept Hector.
After Gladys accepted him and begrudgingly walked down the aisle, she still struggled to reach Sidmouth Castle, especially because of his jealous sister, Lady Sarah (Hattie Morahan), who took every opportunity to nip at Gladys and keep her from asserting control. After Bertha and George heard from Gladys about her unhappiness, Bertha was furious with George about their daughter’s situation.
George then blamed her for “manipulating” him, even though he willingly went along with the scheme and could have shut it down at any time. Bertha, keeping a level head, traveled to England and guided Gladys to assert her authority as Duchess, putting Sarah in her place and bringing Hector closer to Gladys as a result.
Gladys is now confident and self-assured in her role as Duchess of Buckingham, knowing that her husband sincerely loves her and she loves him back, and that they are on more equal footing in this partnership. She is her mother’s daughter, eager to assert herself as an influential figure and bolster herself and her family in the ruthless world they live in. At the end of Season 3 she is overjoyed to share with Bertha the news of her pregnancy, imbibing some joy in her mother after her husband just abandoned her moments ago for creating the events for this happy event for Gladys.
Bertha Russell isn’t perfect, but she did nothing wrong.
I do not mean to say that Bertha, and the show in effect of showing her efforts, couldn’t have gone about this better. We could have seen more effort in the show to help Gladys get to know Hector better (even though Bertha had introduced them months ago). We could have seen more of Bertha’s conversations with Gladys about the importance of marriage as a livelihood.
We could have had deeper introspection on what Gladys actually wanted to do in her life. If time had permitted and they hadn’t been pressed by the limited window of opportunity with Hector, Gladys could have met other high-class suitors. But on a fundamental level, Bertha did what she was convinced was right for her daughter to have a life of powerful agency, and the show validated her at the end of Season 3.
Of course, things might take a turn for the worse for Gladys and Hector’s marriage in Season 4 like Consuelo’s and her Duke’s in real life, but there is little to suggest that’s the storyline trajectory. Series scribe Julian Fellowes clearly intended to subvert the infamous story. He wanted to showcase how a powerful woman like Bertha sought not simply to sell off her daughter like Alva.
Instead, he intended her to genuinely aim to place her in a happy, powerful position like her own. “I’m so proud of the woman you’re becoming, Gladys; just remember who you are,” she says to her daughter. If that scene didn’t show the true noble depths of Bertha’s motivations, I don’t know what does.
On that note, Bertha Russell did nothing wrong.
The Gilded Age Season 4 debuts on HBO and HBO Max on November 1st.
