The American historical drama The Gilded Age is set against the upper-class society of New York during the late 19th-century industrial expansion

depicting women's living conditions and power practices amid the alternation of old and new social classes

[

1

1

]

. In the series

Bertha Russell

a new-money woman

rises to the core of the social arena through capital operation and gains discursive power to define social rules. However

she never breaks through the gender framework of marriage and family

and even actively disciplines the younger generation with patriarchal logic. This paradox of "empowerment coexisting with constraint" constitutes the core research question of this paper.Existing studies on the series have accumulated certain achievements: text-based interpretations mostly focus on the characterization and survival dilemmas of women from different classes

sort out women's awareness of resistance and identity anxiety

and affirm the series' value in representing gender situations in the 19th century; some studies attempt to introduce sociological theories to analyze class games

expanding the depth of textual analysis. However

on the whole

most existing studies on female themes still follow the traditional feminist dual narrative logic of "oppression-resistance". They rarely probe into the deep bidirectional relationship between women's acquired power and patriarchal structure

nor do they systematically explain the generation logic and operational boundaries of female power by combining capital conversion mechanisms and structural constraints

leaving notable limitations in analytical perspective.Against this backdrop

this paper takes the first three seasons of the series as the core analytical text

selects four core female characters with intergenerational and class representativeness — Bertha Russell

Agnes van Rhijn

Marian Brook and Gladys Russell — as

primary samples

and incorporates other female images of different circumstances. Grounded in Bourdieu's capital theory and Walby's patriarchy theory[2

4

]

it focuses on two core issues: the specific paths of women's capital conversion

and the bidirectional interaction between power practice and patriarchal order. This paper attempts to break through the dualistic analytical framework and provide a new explanatory path for understanding the dynamic relationship between women and patriarchy.