The Vanderbilt Marlborough Union

The Vanderbilt Marlborough Union

The Vanderbilt-Marlborough Union, at the very beginning of the magazine starts out almost idealizing this marriage describing it as though it was a perfect extremely extravagant wedding just before breaking from this line of progression to state how the Vanderbilt household was not functioning at its best of late. The audience for this item appears to be the middle class specifically it may be of greatest interest to those in the upper middle class who look upon the super-rich with aspirations of becoming like them. The article seems to somewhat try to bring the super-rich class down to within reach by depicting this almost perfect wedding, in their ranks, and then saying that everything is in fact not fine, that there has been some infighting among the elders of the family. The creator of this article would have known what he was saying and as such it implies either someone that was disgruntled at the existence of this super-rich class, or he knew that those aspiring to be like the super-rich would be glad to see them brought down to a more obtainable position. The description of Mr. Marlborough especially shows this when the article describes his stature saying that it is quite unimpressive. The description of the clothing echoes this when it says that the way he dresses is almost negligent. The article goes on to describe the castle of Blenheim owned by Mr. Marlborough saying that it is a very large estate of almost ten square miles and that the Vanderbilt mansions don’t even rival the size. Instead the Vanderbilt mansions are described in this article as admirable training schools from which to graduate to a castle. In describing the homes as a school the author may be implying to the audience that the only real difference between them and the super-rich is education.

H. M. Breen

Breen, H. M. “The Vanderbilt Marlborough Union.” Metropolitan Magazine Dec. 1895: 375-80 Print.

Metropolitan Magazine

11/3/2015

Dalton Spatz

Print.

1890's