A Gilded Blueprint For Success: Gender, Capital, and the Marriage of Bessie and Stanford White

This talk argues that Gilded Age New York’s female elite ought be characterized not as victims of a patriarchal political economy, but instead as its agents.  Specifically, it employs a study of Bessie Smith’s marriage to famed architect Stanford White. Bessie imported into her marriage the material and social capital that allowed Stanford to become their society’s literal and figurative architect.  Tapping into Bessie’s private correspondence for the first time, however, also reveals that she maintained complete control of the personal assets upon which Stanford grew increasingly dependent—even while he posed as their owner. To their agreed mutual gain, her capital was his in the eye of the public, as was his performance of her wealth.

This talk argues that the White marriage is lent its import and interest because it was one of constant negotiation between husband and wife, and of their united efforts to navigate a shifting socio-political terrain. It casts capital as a driving force behind their union, the contours of which were as tenuous and contingent as the larger environment in which it was created. Neither spouse’s claims to power were unilateral: they were predicated on their ownership of different kinds of capital at different times. The Whites’ relationship is thus revealed as a joint partnership in every sense.  But by focusing on Bessie White and the quiet power she enjoyed throughout her marriage, this talk demonstrates how women deployed norms surrounding capital and gender toward their gain, and in doing so, how they subverted them.