Growing Up Rich

Growing Up Rich (1975), a bildungsroman by American author Anne Bernays, follows 13-year-old Sarah “Sally” Agard Stern, who is forced to trade a lifestyle of enormous privilege and wealth for a humbler existence when her mother and stepfather are killed in a plane crash. As well as class tensions, the novel explores the division between practicing and non-practicing American Jews and the challenges of adolescence in the late 1940s. Although it is not strictly autobiographical, the novel is loosely based on Bernays’s own experiences as the daughter of Edward Bernays, the man regarded as the founder of the PR industry. The New Yorker hailed Growing Up Rich as “a novel of adolescence that is endlessly fascinating.”

The novel opens in Manhattan, sometime in the late 1940s. Sally Stern lives a life of the utmost privilege. She is driven to her expensive private school by the family chauffeur. At home—a townhouse on East 79th Street—original works by Degas and Calder adorn the walls and her every need is seen to by servants.

Her family life, however, is much less cozy than the home in which it takes place. Sally looks up to her mother, Marguerite, a beautiful and glamorous professional model, but they struggle to relate to one another. Her stepfather, Freddie, is likable but barely present in her life. The family member she sees most is her younger half-brother, Roger, who is utterly spoiled by his family’s wealth. He is demanding, arrogant, and always on the brink of a tantrum if he doesn’t get his own way.



Then, one day, Sally’s mother and stepfather are killed in a plane crash. All the original artworks she grew up with are to be packed up and sent to the Museum of Modern Art, while she and Roger are to be packed up and sent to Brookline, Massachusetts.

To Sally, their new home—a suburban frame house—looks like poverty, and this impression is confirmed when she learns that for now, she will have to sleep in a cot on the porch. It is the first of many shocks. Their foster father, Sam London, is a former business partner of Freddie’s, but his main occupation is teaching at Boston University. He and his wife, Judy, are liberal intellectuals, where Sally’s parents were conservative and proudly anti-intellectual. Sam and Judy are also fiercely proud of their Russian Jewish heritage, whereas Sally’s parents kept their German Jewish heritage in the background.

Sally struggles to get her bearing in this new environment. She thinks often of a Calder mobile that used to hang in her home in Manhattan, a symbol of the glamour she has lost, and she resents her parents for loaning it to the Museum.



She also struggles to bond with her foster family. Sam prefers the life of the mind to family life. In the evenings, he retires to his study to be alone with his books. Meanwhile, Judy is a disappointing replacement for Sally’s glamorous mother. She is frumpy, clumsily dressed, and does all her own housework. Even worse, she is as much of an intellectual as Sam. Roger responds to all this upheaval by acting out, becoming a less bearable companion than ever.

Sally spends more and more time daydreaming about her old life. She recalls glamorous parties in Manhattan, her parents leaving for balls in the chauffeur-driven car. She does not romanticize these memories, however, and her new circumstances gradually allow her to recognize the privilege and self-absorption of her parents and their circle.

Sally and Roger start at the local public school. Sally, of course, longs for the luxury of her Manhattan private school, especially when her classmates find out about her enormous trust fund and luxurious upbringing and she becomes a curiosity. Her Jewishness makes her doubly an outsider, and thanks to Sam and Judy, she is more conscious of her Jewish heritage than ever.



Meanwhile, Sally is also going through the typical turmoil of adolescence. Feeling herself to be overweight, she embarks on an increasingly love-hate relationship with food. Both the Jewish cuisine of her new home and the luxurious catering of her old life are described in lavish detail. Sex also rears its head. In the oppressive environment of the late 1940s, Sally discovers the guilty pleasure of masturbation. At school she develops a crush on a charismatic but troubled boy, who humiliates her by publishing a story in the school magazine in which she appears, thinly disguised, her crush exposed.

The novel’s crisis looms when Sally’s father offers to bring her to live with him and his young wife Lorna. Her father is wealthy, and Sally is excited by the prospect of returning to a plusher lifestyle. But her father is a WASP and a drunk. Lorna is a vapid creature who talks endlessly, except when she is playing tennis. The more time they spend together, the more Sally realizes that she has nothing in common with her father.

When he makes an embarrassing, drunken scene in a restaurant, Sally realizes that she is more at home with Sam and Judy than she could ever be with her father. She refuses her father’s offer.



Roger’s behavior, however, has only become worse. No sooner has Sally committed to the foster family than Roger attempts to run away from home. Sam and Judy recover him, and the escape attempt proves a wake-up call. In the novel’s closing scenes, Sam begins to demonstrate fatherly warmth, while Sally finally recognizes the value of Judy’s particular brand of womanhood.