gilded cage

Cultural  

1. To be like “a bird in a gilded cage” is to live in luxury but without freedom: “Because the movie star could not go out without being recognized and pursued, she stayed in her penthouse, living like a bird in a gilded cage.”

---

gilded cage Idioms  

1. The encumbrances or limitations that often accompany material wealth, as in She had furs, jewelry, whatever money could buy, but was trapped in a gilded cage. This metaphoric expression indicating that riches cannot buy happiness was popularized (and possibly coined) in a song, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” (1990; lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb, music by Harry von Tilzer), about a young girl marrying for wealth instead of love and paying for luxury with a life of regret.

---

Example Sentences

Some have described the palace as a gilded cage.

From Washington Post

It’s a luxurious prison, a gilded cage filled with priceless works of art whose value becomes null in this harrowing survivalist situation — after all, you can’t eat art.

From Los Angeles Times

“Living in the White House, as you’ve heard other presidents who have been extremely flattered to live there, has — it’s a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things,” Biden said in a CNN town hall a month into his presidency.

From Washington Post

Living in the White House, he said, is “a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things.”

From Seattle Times

Harry writes: “Pa didn’t financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any largesse. That was his job. That was the whole deal. We agreed to serve the monarch, go wherever we were sent, do whatever we were told, surrender our autonomy, keep our hands and feet in the gilded cage at all times, and in exchange the keepers of the cage agreed to feed and clothe us.”

From New York Times