Custom essays on The Gilded Age: the age of controversy

It seemed as though Americans, having obtained a lot of money, decided to prove the rest of the world that they were not as poor and ignorant as everybody thought. Excess of easy money made a chasm between people and created a new circle of society, who did everything to become the most privileged people. Certainly the Fair was held for all people and everybody aspired to come to see all the wonders but, uniting people by the fair, its organizers stratified the society more than ever. Coming to the fair, seeing the undisguised luxury and the richest people of the country, common people felt depressed and humiliated, understanding their poverty. Realizing this, the author chose to depict such characteristic for the atmosphere of that time story. In the midst of the triumph of luxury, in the White House, there is the World’s Fair Hotel – the place of the cruelty and ruthlessness, where the murderer Henry H. Holmes kills naïve women arriving in Chicago to see the wonders of the Fair. The main two characters of the novel the architect Daniel Burnham and the killer Henry H. Holmes represent the two sides of the era, the one that impresses and is covered with gold and the one that is underneath but is ruinous and rotten.
Despite the difference in the time of writing the authors of both books agree that the Gilded Age was very controversial and paradoxical. It was the time that gave people the possibility to earn money, the economy was on the upgrade, the corporations emerged as the main way of doing business. America was enlarging and shifting to a new level of development, it changed its mode of life from agricultural to industrial, the reforms overthrew the established views and way of life. Reforms affected all spheres of life. Women became more active, they started to get education, to work and soon got the right to vote. Their role in the society was not passive any more and the emergence of women’s clubs and movements prove this.

In general social life of people became more active. New laws found a broad response among people. Reforms on a large scale continued in particular cases. thus, for example the gilded age was the time of active struggle against lynching and as a result in 1918 Anti-lynching Bill was passed.
The hatred between classes was supported by the struggle that was between the workers and the manufacturers. The desire to get equal or at least better conditions made people to stage walkouts, which were suppressed by federal troops. Such attitude towards poor people could not but rouse more disgust towards the rich, as they built new houses and found new ways of entertainment.
New inventions and laws meant to make life of people better (Cherny, 75). Actually they did and their long term effect assuredly had its positive influence on the development of American society. However, at that very time, in the Gilded Age the abyss between the poor and the rich became extremely large, as having got the possibility to gain easy money the upper circles of society created their own world on an unreachable pedestal. The transitional period made it possible to find loopholes and to earn money for unscrupulous and greedy people, who made the majority of the newly formed class of society. The new life that started in America did not become the era of opportunities for everybody.
To conclude, the Gilded Age certainly became a remarkable era in the history of America due to both its paradoxes and controversies and its reforms and breakthroughs. The age of luxury, wealth and economic rise turned out to be the one only for a group of people in power and their milieu, the Rotten Barons. Certainly lots of people aspired to join this class and to become one of the new rich, but as we have seen from the book The Gilded Age, such people became outcast as quickly as they joined it and no money could save them from their empty inner world. The suddenness of reforms led to a leap in economy and technology but it took time for the majority of people to catch up with the time.

Works Cited

Cherny, Robert W. American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868-1900. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1997
Larsen, Eric. The Devil in the White City. Vintage, 2004
Learn About the Gilded Age. Digital History. 10 march, 2010.
The Devil in the White City. Random House, Inc. 10 March, 2010.
Twain, Mark and Warner Charles. The Gilded Age. A Tale of Today. Oxford University Press, 1996