It’s unseasonably cold back in New York, where Ada is still dressed in mourning black after the death of Mr. Luke Forte. She is still actively grieving him and thinking about little else, going as far as to tell her sister Agnes that she misses him so much that she will sometimes go to sleep hoping to never wake up. Cynthia Nixon is great here, a welcome change from the kind of broad acting that defines her other show right now. One other thing Ada is thinking of, though, is the temperance movement. She says she’s doing it to honor Luke’s memory—as Agnes counters, clergy literally drink religiously—but it also functions as a way for her to exert control over the house. After Oscar drove Agnes’ side of the family into destitution at the end of last season, Ada is now the lady of the house, and everyone is still getting used to it.
No one else in the Forte/Brooks/van Rhijn house is much interested in the temperance meeting. The person speaking is rather hysterical, painting alcohol as a society-ruining, one-way ticket to eternal damnation. Marian can hardly help but roll her eyes, and Oscar looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. He asks for a decanter of wine brought to his room as soon as the meeting ends, where he’s been spending most of his time drinking. He is very depressed, having lost his mother’s money and being 0 for two on his attempts to procure a heterosexual engagement. He has no experience working from nothing, nor really working at all. Ada just wants him to figure something out. Their footman Jack Trotter is still toiling on his clock invention, and Marian has picked up a part-time job at the Female Normal and High School. Both have gotten close with Larry Russell across the street, and while the aunts aren’t aware that he and Marian are thinking about a life together, Ada knows enough about Larry to think Oscar should befriend him. He’s certainly helping Jack, who is now being served coffee at the Russell house like he’s not a staff member, level up.
Peggy is also in the house and, as usual, is dealing with her own, much more serious issue. After commuting from Brooklyn in the snow to take minutes for Ada’s suffragette meeting, she has gotten quite sick, staying at the Forte house. They bring her food, and Marian does spend some time with her, filling her in on her burgeoning relationship with Larry. But after a couple of days, Agnes decides that she needs to see her doctor. Ada is skeptical, but Agnes sees a way to assert control over what used to be her house. It blows up in a way that’s personally embarrassing, not to mention legitimately dangerous for Peggy when the doctor refuses to treat a Black patient. As silly and fun as The Gilded Age usually is, scenes like these remind us that this time period was silly and fun for few. Though Peggy is accepted and respected in this household, she is not universally welcomed in society, and the stakes for being in a place she is unwelcome are literally life and death.
Across the street in the Russell house, Bertha is relishing her spot at the top of New York society after winning last season’s opera war. Her servants are preparing for the arrival of John Singer Sargent, who recently received scandalous notoriety for painting Madame X. Much of New York may be too timid to have a man such as that depict their daughter, but Bertha recognizes it not only as an opportunity for tastemaking but for attention. She promised Gladys to the Duke Of Buckingham at the end of last season in exchange for his support of her opera, but it was a win-win for Bertha, who would relish nothing more than her family intersecting with the British crown forever. When we met her, she could barely get invited to a charity luncheon—now, she’s planting blind items in the press about her daughter’s rumored engagement to a duke. In the rules by which she lives, she is so close to winning it all.
Gladys really would rather marry the nice young Billy, but both of them are naive about how difficult this would be. Gladys knows that advocating for Billy to her father could help, but George is in Arizona. And Billy’s family is also naive about how Bertha sees herself. When Billy’s mother excitedly tells Mamie Fish and Bertha that she looks forward to celebrating their children together, Bertha is surprised, which she really does not appreciate. Larry tries to advocate on his sister’s behalf, which works so poorly that he recommends that Gladys and Billy elope. Gladys and Bertha have it out, and their philosophical differences are irreconcilable. To Bertha, the fact that a duke is willing to marry you is reason enough to marry a duke. Who cares if he’s doing it for your money? The royal lineage is something that no market crash nor mining strike can take away. “Happiness as a byproduct of a well-ordered life may last,” she tells Larry. “As a goal, it is invariably doomed to failure.” Bertha is incredibly proud of how she’s moved up the ladder of society, and this marriage would cement that. But Gladys wants to marry for love, and that is not something one changes their mind on. As the episode ends, Gladys sneaks out into the night.
Stray observations
- • Aurora Fane’s husband Charles is leaving her for the “shady” Elsa Lipton and insists that Aurora file the divorce because it’s not gentlemanly for him to do it. It’s a tragic situation for Aurora who knows, even if she’s set financially, that being a divorced woman will preclude her from the society to which she is accustomed. But she does get to deliver this great bit of dialogue: “How strange. When I bedecked myself in these gewgaws, I was looking forward to you coming home. Little did I know…”
- • Who would have guessed that Agnes was so pro drinking? Not only that, but it was she who first brought up suffrage. She may have fallen on hard times, but she’s fallen on the right side of 19th-century social issues!
- • Is it appropriate to say that Larry and Marian are an insanely handsome couple? She may be self-conscious about breaking off two engagements in as many years, but she and Larry look like the class couple of Gilded Age High School.
- • Speaking of bedecking oneself in gewgaws, Gladys sneaks out in an outfit that could be described as Napoleonic. Someone never learned how to travel incognito!
