Gilmore Girls and the American Dream

I've been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls lately. And while that is not something that is out of the ordinary in the life of Taylor, it has made me think back to my freshman year of college. With graduation in the very near future, I have been feeling extremely grateful for all of the lessons I've learned here about all things in life.

I have been feeling especially grateful, though, for the English and journalism department who has made my writing exceptionally better. During my first ever English class here I wrote a paper on how the American Dream was exemplified in Gilmore Girls. There are some things in it that make me cringe and there are some things in it that make me smile. It's not the best thing I've ever written, but tonight I'm feeling a little bit nostalgic and want to bring you down memory lane with me.

Here it is:

“She can finally go to Harvard like she’s always wanted and get the education that I never got and get to do all the things that I never got to do and then I can resent her for it and we can finally have a normal mother-daughter relationship,” Lorelai Gilmore says in the pilot episode of the television series Gilmore Girls (Sherman-Palladino S.1 Ep.1). Lorelai is talking about her daughter, Rory, excited that she will get the opportunity to live her dream of going to an Ivy-League school. Throughout the series, the American Dream is prominent, and there are countless exemplifications of it. Different characters throughout the show live out their own versions of the American Dream by working extremely hard. The show takes place in Stars Hollow, Connecticut, a fictional town which is the perfect location to showcase the American Dream, due in part to the small town atmosphere and sense of community. Creator and executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino does a fantastic job portraying the American Dream through the characters and the location of her television series, Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls is a comedy-drama television show that aired on the WB and CW from 2000-2007 and follows the lives of the dynamic mother-daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. Lorelai Gilmore is an extremely independent, coffee-addicted single mother who lives in Stars Hollow, Connecticut; a small town she ended up in after she got pregnant at sixteen, dropped out of high school, and ran away from her childhood home. Lorelai's daughter and best friend, Rory, resembles her mother in many ways; they both share an addiction to coffee and junk food, and they love pop culture. However, they have some very key differences as well; most notably, Rory loves to study, learn, and read. Furthermore, Rory has a great relationship with Lorelai’s parents, Richard and Emily, something that has always evaded Lorelai. In the pilot episode, Lorelai receives a letter that Rory has been accepted into Chilton Academy, a prestigious prep school. From there, the audience sees the transformation of both Lorelai and Rory. Throughout the course of the show, Rory grows from a nervous, socially-awkward high school sophomore to an Ivy-League student who lands her dream job. Lorelai’s course through the show is also impressive. In the beginning she works as the manager of an inn, and by the end she owns her own prosperous business. The show is full of pop culture references to music, literature, films, and celebrities which makes it very relatable to the audience. Lorelai and Rory keep a fast pace with their quick-humor and constantly find another way to add sly, sarcastic jokes into their everyday conversation, yet another reason the audience of the show quickly fell in love with it. Gilmore Girls is a widely loved television show that exemplifies upward mobility, the importance of location, and individualism: all major threads of the American Dream.

Lorelai Gilmore represents many major threads of the American Dream during Gilmore Girls’ seven seasons. The first major thread Lorelai demonstrates during the show’s course is upward mobility, which the audience sees through her impressive transformation throughout Gilmore Girls. During the pilot episode, the audience learns that Lorelai is a manager at Stars Hollow’s local inn, the Independence Inn. However, as the show progresses, the audience learns through flashbacks and stories that after running away from home, Lorelai started working at the Independence Inn as a maid; it took her many years and a lot of hard work to make her way through the business into the position she holds during the pilot episode. Although being the manager of the Independence Inn was a great occupation for Lorelai, she did not stop there. Within the next few episodes, the audience learns that Lorelai is attending nighttime business classes at a college nearby, and during the second season she graduates with a business degree. Eventually during the third and fourth seasons, Lorelai and her best friend Sookie St. James save enough money, buy their dream property, and begin to make the necessary renovations to the ancient building; they co-own the inn, Lorelai managing it while Sookie is the head chef. In the season four finale, the Dragonfly Inn has its grand opening and is a successful business for the remainder of the show, even being recognized as one of the best inns in the state of Connecticut. An article in TIME Magazine regarding upward mobility and the American Dream reads “From the tales of Horatio Alger to the real lives of Henry Ford and Mark Zuckerberg, we have defined our country as a place where everyone, if he or she works hard enough, can get ahead” (Foroohar). Much like in the lives of Ford and Zuckerberg, Gilmore Girls exemplifies the ability of an American citizen working hard and getting ahead. Like the characters of Alger’s novels, Lorelai Gilmore is a fantastic example of starting from scratch and climbing through social classes, successfully demonstrating upward mobility in relation to the American Dream.

Another major thread of the American Dream that Lorelai illustrates in Gilmore Girls is individuality. Lorelai does not let anybody tell her who she should be or how she should act. She is always true to who she is and does not care what other people think of that, because as long as she and Rory are happy, that’s all that matters. Lorelai shows her individuality by being a single mother and giving her daughter the best life she can. Lorelai refuses help from her wealthy parents, so she can prove to both herself and her parents that she is her own person. In Unsung Heroines: Single Mothers and the American Dream, Ruth Sidel, author of many books regarding single mothers and their children, says “When critics decry the negative impact of single motherhood on children, they generally overlook the courage and creativity, the resilience and risk taking needed by almost all single mothers to survive and by the indomitable to thrive” (Sidel 135-136). This quote depicts what Lorelai does for Rory: being extremely resilient, courageous, and creative in order to give Rory a life in which she not only survives but thrives. Lorelai is also a big believer in ethics and good principles, something a lot of people cannot truthfully say about themselves. After Rory makes a poor decision, Lorelai tells her “I did not raise you to be like this, I did not raise you to be that girl” (Sherman-Palladino S.4 Ep. 22). “Self-Reliance,” an article relating individuality to the American Dream, says “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (Emerson 16). Lorelai exemplifies this quote throughout the entire show by always sticking to her principles and in exchange being her own happy individual. These examples prove how Sherman-Palladino’s character represents the American Dream perfectly.

Rory Gilmore represents the stereotypical perfect American Dream that many teenagers have while growing up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Dream is the idea that “every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative” (“American Dream”). Despite growing up in the potting shed of the inn her mother worked at and not having a constant father figure in her life, Rory achieves great success through working hard. While watching Gilmore Girls the audience learns that for as long as Rory can remember, it has been her dream to grow up and become a journalist, specifically like her idol Christiane Amanpour, a global affairs correspondent for ABC News. Throughout the course of the show, the audience sees Rory’s determination and initiative as she works her way up from being a transfer student who is trying to catch up with the other students at Chilton Academy, to valedictorian of her graduating class. After being accepted at many Ivy-League schools, Rory chooses to go to Yale University where she majors in English and Journalism and eventually becomes the editor of the Yale Daily News. She also gets an internship with one of the country's leading newspapers, and at the end of the series, she gets an opportunity to become a full-time reporter for an online magazine as she follows Barack Obama’s campaign trail around the country. In an interview with Harvard Business Review Staff, Christiane Amanpour speaks about her first real job as a reporter: a several month long trip remarkably similar to the description the audience of Gilmore Girls gets about Rory’s first job (Amanpour). Rory’s dream was always to prosper as a reporter like Christiane Amanpour, and through hard work she was able to achieve that, making her a perfect example of the stereotypical American Dream.

Like the characters of Gilmore Girls, the fictitious town in which the show takes place, Stars Hollow, Connecticut, also exemplifies a major thread of the American Dream: location. Stars Hollow is the perfect location for the American Dream to take place because of the great sense of community it illustrates. Everybody in Stars Hollow cares for everybody, and the people of the town take care of their neighbors just for the greater good. In “The New Colossus” Emma Lazarus uses the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of the American Dream, saying “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This symbolism can be related to Stars Hollow and Gilmore Girls. When Lorelai ran away from home with a baby and only a few dollars to her name, she ended up in Stars Hollow and the townspeople graciously took her in. They helped her get on her feet, and continued caring for both she and Rory even after they started to prosper. Lorelai and Rory were looking for a new life, or the opportunity to “breathe free,” and Stars Hollow gave them that opportunity. The town of Stars Hollow helped the Gilmore girls when they needed it most, and because of that both Lorelai and Rory were able to achieve their American Dreams.

Achieving the American Dream can be very difficult, but Amy Sherman-Palladino made it possible for Lorelai and Rory Gilmore to achieve theirs in Stars Hollow. The lovable, hard-working, sarcastic Gilmore girls were each able to achieve their own dreams; by the end of the series Lorelai owns her own successful business and Rory lands her dream job as a reporter. Stars Hollow and the Gilmores may be fictitious, but Sherman-Palladino’s show, Gilmore Girls, exemplifies the American Dream perfectly.

//103