This study will provide a summary and critique of Maureen Montgomery's 'Gilded Prostitution': Status, Money, and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914. The study will focus on the marriage aspect of Montgomery's book, emphasizing the effect of the marriages on the individuals involved, and what these marriages said about the American and British cultures.
As Montgomery declares, "The focus of this study is on American women who married British peers or the younger sons of peers" (1). While this phenomenon was occurring in other European nations, "concentration upon the British peerage . . . allows an exploration of these marriages in terms of the cultural relations between Britain and the United States" (1). Montgomery suggests that these transatlantic marriages played an important role in bringing the two countries closer together after a long period of estrangement. At the same time, there seems to have been a great deal of antipathy between the two cultures over the true nature of these marriages. Americans thought the women were being taken advantage of financially by British peers who were in debt, while the British argued that the women were successful in British society only because they were rich.
Montgomery says the major effects of these marriages were on British society rather than American society, as might be expected, simply because Britain was the society in which they took place. The British admired the American women for their courage and adventurousness, but they also feared that the success of the women would make it harder for British women to succeed in the same competitive realm.
The author's point of view is very important here, and Montgomery is very clear on this count:
By examining contemporary attitudes towards transatlantic marriages, as opposed to approaching the subject from a purely biographical angle, I have attempted to show that the relationship between the American heiress stereotype a...