Rory Gilmore: Examining Money in Pop Culture
If you have ever watched Gilmore Girls, you know that the character of Rory Gilmore can be divisive, especially after the show’s 2016 revival A Year in the Life. Much of the criticism lobbied at Rory stems from her character development over the years and how she does (or does not) acknowledge the privileges in her life. While many critics find fault with the way that Rory relates to money, as a therapist who works with people around their relationship to class and money, I am not surprised by Rory’s anxieties and quirks around it. In fact, I think her behaviors and attitudes make a lot of sense in the context of her upbringing, and I love the complexity of Rory, so let’s dig into this facet of her personality.
Rory is born into the wealthy Gilmore and Hayden families in New England by teenaged Lorelai and Christopher (Lorelai realizes she is pregnant when her debutante gown no longer fits). Against the wishes of Christopher’s parents, Lorelai has baby Rory and starts raising her alone with her parents in their mansion before later running away before Rory’s first birthday. Lorelai immediately accepts employment as a maid at a charming inn in Stars Hollow, Connecticut and lives in the inn’s potting shed for many years while raising Rory.
Let’s pause for a moment: by the time that Rory is a toddler, she goes from having a maid to her mother working as a maid. While Rory’s conscious memory will not remember these first few years of life, she will have been impacted by Lorelai’s stress and anxiety at surviving on their own. We also see that this becomes part of Lorelai and Rory’s narrative around their life together: they describe overcoming adversity and hardship throughout Rory’s childhood, as they did not receive any money or other kinds of help from Richard and Emily Gilmore after Lorelai runs away. Lorelai especially shuns the wealth she was born into and seems to equate it with only negative qualities, especially a sense of being stifled and controlled.
The series begins with the life-changing event of Rory being accepted into the prestigious Chilton Preparatory School. The catch is that Lorelai cannot afford it, and she reluctantly turns to her parents for financial support. Richard and Emily agree to pay for Chilton in exchange for dinner together every Friday night at their house. Lorelai agrees to this, and Rory’s relationship with her grandparents picks up again as a high schooler; throughout the series, Rory becomes close with her grandparents and develops a very different relationship with them than her mother has. Rory eventually goes to Yale, her grandfather’s alma mater, and when financial aid falls through, Rory asks her grandparents for the money in exchange for continued Friday night dinners, which they happily agree to.
While Richard and Emily are pleased with Rory’s entry into their world, Lorelai wrestles with how easily Rory integrates into the wealthy environments at Chilton and Yale, and all of these dynamics are accelerated when Rory begins dating Logan Huntzberger at Yale. Logan is the son of a newspaper mogul who is set to inherit his father’s empire and is implied to be magnitudes more rich than the Gilmores (my guess is the Huntzbergers may be close to billionaire status). This is where things get really juicy when thinking about Rory’s relationship with money, so let’s address the criticisms aimed at her.
Rory is critiqued as immature, self-centered, and unwilling to acknowledge that she belongs to a rich family. True, she comes from a rich family (actually, from two - but we will get to that periodically), but Rory’s life story is much more complicated than this. During her formative years, she was raised in a low-income environment and watched her mother move up the ladder at the inn through hard work alone, which later allowed them to buy a nice house in town. Rory models this in her dedication to school, for which she is handsomely rewarded by perfect grades, praise, and general success. It is not until Rory is 16 years old that she reenters the world of the Gilmores and learns that her grandparents are actually a safety net for her and Lorelai (it is worth mentioning that the safety net does come with some strings).
Rory is not just the daughter of a Gilmore, though, as I mentioned above - she is also the daughter of a Hayden, a similarly upper-class family. Rory and Lorelai are snubbed by the Haydens, and Rory’s flighty father, Christopher, pops in and out of their lives as he wishes. So, while we could look at Rory and discuss how she is the granddaughter of two very wealthy families, this is not the complete picture. Because Rory was an illegitimate child to the Haydens, they do not have a relationship with her and these grandparents do not seem to be a safety net at this time in Rory’s life (though she will receive Hayden money through her father as time goes on). They imply that Rory and Lorelai are not good enough for them, so Rory gets the message that she is not good enough to be a legitimate part of a wealthy family first through the Haydens…and then this message is reinforced through the Huntzbergers.
While Rory is dating Logan at Yale, she begins spending more and more time with his social circle, who are the richest legacy students at the university. Rory becomes more and more embedded within the wealthy world of her grandparents and Logan, and she appears to enjoy being in their company and enjoying the benefits of these connections. However, trouble strikes first when Logan’s mother and grandfather tell Rory she is not good enough for their family and later when Rory begins an internship working for Logan’s magnate father, Mitchum. Rory is crushed when Mitchum tells Rory that she “doesn’t got it” when it comes to journalism. Rory nonetheless dates Logan throughout the duration of the original series and continues solidifying her identity as a fellow rich legacy Yalie who walks in the world of her grandparents now.
So, what is my verdict on Rory? It is complicated. I think she is a great character and her progression throughout the series is quite relatable given her upbringing, so I have more empathy for her than many other viewers of the series. Yes, Rory has wealthy grandparents and does not want for pretty much anything once she is reacquainted with them. She is set to be the recipient of several trust funds as an adult. She attends an elite high school, followed by Yale. She receives praise from almost everyone she meets, and if she had married Logan, she may have been one of the richest women in the country…and, there is more to Rory’s financial story than this. She grew up with a narrative that she and her mom are poor to middle class. Rory and Lorelai really did struggle during Rory’s childhood, and Rory had no idea that her grandparents were a potential safety net - so she grew up with money fears and scarcity and no sense of herself as a wealthy person. She is explicitly told she is not good enough for the Hayden or Huntzberger families, even after she enters their world. It is no wonder that Rory shows confliction and a lack of awareness around her financial status - she has received conflicting messages about her place and socioeconomic status in the world, and she is comparing herself to households who are magnitudes richer than hers, so relatively speaking, she feels less wealthy than them (as of the original series, at least - it is unclear in the revival how much trust fund money she has access to).
Yes, Rory has so many privileges in this world that most people do not, but she also has a complicated backstory full of mixed messages about how well she is able to integrate into wealthy environments. Rory would be the perfect candidate for financial therapy - the thoughts and feelings she has around money make complete sense for her background, and a financial therapist could help her navigate her relationship with money. People who come into money in adulthood often have struggles with understanding their thoughts and feelings around their finances, and a therapist with experience in this area can be so beneficial to these clients and their understanding of themselves in the world.
