If I Was a Rich Girl, I’d Have All the Cover in the World: The Real Mean Girls of Classic Literature

“Mean Girl” is a ruinous label. Just like “social climber,” once it’s attached to you, it’s impossible to shake. It’s no surprise that these two identities frequently overlap for the women of classic literature.

“Mean Girl” is a devastating charge because it hinges on perception rather than proof—once Becky Sharp is known as a socially ruthless ambition monster, she can’t fight the allegations. Undine Spragg (of Custom of the Country) is also a scornful object of self-interested womanhood designed to prompt derision.

What fascinates me is how the label is weaponized selectively and some badly-behaved characters get branded Mean Girls while others evade the title despite exhibiting the same behavior. In my careful studies of the Sad Rich Girl genre, I’ve found that the application of “Mean Girl” usually comes down to class.

Classic literature makes clear that a woman whose plotting and manipulation is motivated by social ends is a villain. Becky Sharp is possibly the most famous social climber (and cautionary tale) of them all. Her name is a shorthand for gold diggers and opportunistic women who leverage their “charm” to Anna Delvey their way into the “right circles.”

Likewise, Undine Spragg is repulsive because she always wants something that is just out of her reach—she is greedy. Undine abandons her first husband to marry her second (for money) and her third marriage is in pursuit of a royal title.

Both Undine and Becky are caricatured as materialistic, gauche, and unfeminine—their ambition painted as grotesque. We would call them cringe today because their desire to ascend the social hierarchy makes them try-hard.

Their usage of charm and wiles to get what they want is played for outraged laughs: the reader is meant to meet them with an attitude of how dare they? How entitled are they? How vicious are they! Self-interest is painted as the most vile trait a woman can possess and their ultimate humiliation is merited because they are both mean and tacky—the worst things a woman can be.

The latent message of these characters’ arcs is that a woman can want *a little* for herself, but to want a lot—especially unabashedly—is gross. It’s telling that attitudes toward these characters have changed so little since Thackeray’s time. We still use Becky and Undine as examples of shrew-ish, new money wannabes. As much as we profess to champion social mobility and rag-to-riches-style American dreams, we are still so ready to hate a woman who dares to seek more than she already has.

In contrast to Vanity Fair’s villainess, a woman like The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan—who is casually cruel and callously indifferent (but sans social-climbing motives)—isn’t widely considered mean. Instead, she’s tragic. A paradigmatic rich girl, Daisy is indifferent to all but her own suffering. She’s tragic in a trapped-and-has-no-agency kind of way, but she’s cruel in her lack of compassion.

She seems to have no compunction about letting Jay take the fall for her hit-and-run, which leads to his murder—and she doesn’t even stay for his funeral. Like Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse, Daisy’s privilege serves to vouch for her innocence.

These characters’ lousy treatment of other people is portrayed as a byproduct of their insulated worlds: that’s just how they’ve been raised to treat lessers—they don’t know better. And while this is, on one hand, a supremely unflattering image, it’s also an alibi. Daisy and Emma will never be accused of being “ruthless” or “calculating” because they have no reason to be: they’re already at the top of the social pyramid.

That Daisy’s actions are not premeditated (unlike Undine who is in the habit of planning her next marriage while the ink is barely dry on the most recent certificate) has the effect of exempting her from Mean Girl scrutiny. Daisy is a symbol of wealthy indifference and moral flabbiness, which is a very different charge than foul-smelling ambition or dirty meanness.

Since Daisy and Emma aren’t charged with odious striving, they are never classified as Mean Girls—just girls who happen to be mean. For women of privilege, mean is not a defining quality but an incidental one.

Emma is the worst. She is self-centered and self-interested and selfish (which makes her one of my favorite characters of all time). She behaves much in the same “because I feel like it” way that Becky and Undine do, but the chasm that separates them is that Emma is ensconced in secure status, which entitles her to be a bitch. (You can’t be a bitch if you don’t have the credentials.)

Emma manipulates and bullies homely Hilary, but the journey of recognizing her misguided meddling is construed as redemptive. What growth Emma undergoes! What positive self-transformation! The pivotal scene when Emma makes a tasteless joke and is socially shamed is the absolute worst thing that happens to her.

The great trauma of Ms. Woodhouse’s life is facing consequences for her actions (it’s a testament to Austen’s talent that the stakes are so low yet the reader is engrossed in Emma’s fate.) Becky Sharp loses everything and the reader feels she deserves it.

Being rich is the best moral cover. People imagine that only social climbers have use for viciousness and conniving: But why would someone who already has everything be manipulative or mean? For sport. Because ennui. (Why do children burn ants with a magnifying glass?)

In reality, all four of these anti-heroines are Mean Girls, but their reception reveals whom society is willing to punish. Women who scheme to rise are shamed; women who meddle for sport are indulged.

Becky and Undine hustle and are humiliated for it. Emma and Daisy wield their power recklessly and are excused. It’s not about who is actually mean—it’s about who has the luxury to be mean without tarnishing their reputation.

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To Have and Have More by Sanibel is available via Zando.