A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

by Therese Anne Fowler

Gratitude. How perilously close to resentment it could be.

No matter how right you are in your thinking, you could die waiting for some people to change their minds.”

“This is important: no person’s good opinion of you matters more than your own.”

“May the burning of my bridges—if indeed any more are burned—light the way for others!”

“My entire life, Consuelo. That’s how long women have been patiently speaking on this subject to one another and to the men in charge—who take advantage of our habits of being polite and cooperative while censuring every opposite behavior. Men only respect power. So we must be powerful.”

As was true with American women, for more than fifty years Englishwomen had been petitioning for equal rights, and for more than fifty years they’d been told that catastrophe would befall society if men permitted those rights. Permitted! As if rights were kept piled in bank vaults and men got to distribute them only as they saw fit.

Strong women—especially if they elect to lead lives outside of the domestic sphere—are often depicted without appropriate context, are made to seem one-note (as if any of us could be defined by a single act in our personal history or a single aspect of personality), and are described with sexist labels. An intelligent, ambitious, outspoken woman is called “pushy,” “domineering,” “abrasive,” “hysterical,” “shrill,” etc., most often by men but sometimes by other women as well.

Her funeral was an impressive event, attended by more than fifteen hundred mourners. Her pallbearers, at her request, were all female. On her coffin was draped a picket banner that stated Failure Is Impossible.