The Parvenu’s Plot

In this very readable volume, Stephanie Foote gathers a range of print sources-from novels by Edith Wharton and Henry James to gossip columns, fashion magazines, popular novels, and etiquette manuals-to ask how the realist period understood the individual experience of class. Examining the female arriviste (the parvenu of the title) in turn-of-the-century New York (where a supposedly stable elite was threatened by the nouveaux riches), Foote shows how class became more than just an economic position: it was a fundamental part of individual identity, exemplified by a shifting set of social behaviors that form the core of many nineteenth-century novels. She persuasively presents the female parvenu as a key figure in turn-of-the-century culture that embodies the volatility of social standing and the continuing project of structuring and justifying it.