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Maybe there is something to be said for marrying a man with the means to keep a wife in comfort

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By Mary Kenny
Saturday Jun 21 2008

Is it such a bad thing to marry for money? Is it so very wicked to be a bit of a gold-digger? There's a new wave of feminism, which is highly critical of the young women who are now blatantly on the look-out for a rich husband. No, in this case, the politically correct 'partner' will not serve: the bona fide gold-digger wants a husband. When marriages are dissolved, husbands pay alimony.

Gold-digging females, there have always been: it is staple of 1950s and 1960s movies, such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, or How to Marry a Millionaire, with Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable. Even such good-hearted romps as Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot are posited on the idea that every attractive woman is searching for a rich man with his own yacht.

The gold-digging female stereotype goes back centuries. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice famously begins: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

In Mansfield Park, Jane writes: "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of." And: "There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them."

But, we thought we had left all that nonsense behind. We imagined, that with the onward march of liberty, equality and sorority, all that gold-digging stuff belonged to the antediluvian past.

We had explained away gold-digging women as pathetic creatures simply lacking other opportunities. It was, as we analysed it, the dependent and inferior status of females which made them look for rich men: their lack of independence made them so weakly dependent.

Anita Loos, who first wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes back in the 1920s, had to construct a silly, little-girl-voiced airhead female persona because women were otherwise so disadvantaged, so marginalised, so woefully lacking in choices.

Why, females had only about three career choices in life in pre-feminist times -- to be a wife; a spinster/governess/nun; or a prostitute. The gold-digging female -- even of the refined Jane Austen genre -- was just a product of inequality. Give women equal rights and they would no longer look to men to provide for them in a deluxe manner.

Yet, women in the Western world now often have both rights and privileges; and still, there is the thriving phenomenon of the avaricious little gold-digger. Current movies, such as Sex and the City, and the new Audrey Tautou film Priceless, may be stylish, but they so incorrigibly reflect the shallow consumerism of modern women that a New Yorker film critic wrote bitterly: "I came out of the theatre a hard-line Marxist."

You have whole internet sites now for women who just want to find a rich man (for example, try www.sugardaddies.com or www.goldiggers.uk.com). You can join seminars on 'how to marry money in 14 easy steps'. You can copy the WAGS' celebrity lifestyle: take Coleen McLoughlin who, to be fair to her, dated Wayne Rooney before he was famous. Now she is personally richer than any of us could ever be after a lifetime of sweating labour.

Face it sisters, when it comes to the gold-digging adventures, we are right back to square one. How well I remember how disgusted I was by movies like How to Marry a Millionaire. Why, it was treating men like commodities, and encouraging women to sell themselves to the highest bidder -- revolting.

But now, I'm not so quick to condemn. Maybe there is something to be said for marrying a man with the means to keep a wife in comfort.

Heaven knows, I've seen enough sad women who ended up as drudges and slaves to the useless men they so foolishly loved; women working two and three shifts while the menfolk watched afternoon football; women who fell for losers, cads, absconders and feckless fellows who never took responsibility for anything.

It's not just the money that counts when you marry for money -- it's the fact that a man with a lot of money is likely to be responsible and dependable. If he's had the talent and the shrewdness to make himself rich, he is unlikely to steal all your credit cards, as has happened to women who gave their all to penniless bounders.

The billionaire may ditch you for a younger trophy wife, but he will provide -- and the lawyers will ensure he meets the financial conditions of the marriage contract. He may turn out to be a controlling tightfist, in which case you may have a legal case for adequate financial support.

He may turn out to be nasty, cruel and faithless, but the financial situation will always make it easier to compensate for these failings.

Do I mean it? Not really. The best basis for marriage is still love, honour and commitment. The money doesn't really matter. But if there is a new generation of gold-digging women, I am not about to blame them either.

It might even be said that gold-digging is a sideways product of feminism -- that it shows confidence, ambition, and that sense of self-esteem summed up in the catchphrase of our time: Because you're worth it.

- Mary Kenny