Nouveau riche

A nouveau rich is someone who has come to wealth and thus ascended to the higher society, without, however, mastering its social forms and with the need to show his wealth in many external things. ¹

Interpretation of the nouveau riche prudery regarding the short story “A Cup of Cold Water”

“Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for granted that people are born with carriages and country places: it never occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche prudery which classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave in the presence of either.”²

Miss Talcott is not aware of the issue that other people do not have the privileges of her financial advantages, which implies she never feels superior to the lower classes or even frowns upon them. She never looks down on them. She is not an arrogant or snobby woman.