Customer Reviews

The Custom of the Country

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What a marvelous author Edith Wharton is! I like to copy passages from her books just to feel how beautifully she constructs her sentences and paragraphs. I've also read Ethan Frome, Summer, House of Mirth, and Age of Innocence; they are all terrific novels. But The Custom of the Country is her best. Could there be a worse mother, wife, or daughter than Undine? And yet, she is too pathetic to hate; she is so needy and dependent upon material things. She's perhaps the most unliberated woman in literature! Do read this novel; you will love it and learn from it.

To anyone who has read The Custom of the Country, the idea that Undine Spragg is the perfect personification of America would be something to think about. To those who haven't read it, my humble advice is that they read it and form an opinion on that subject. For now, I'll explain my reasoning: Undine is decidedly ambitious,and the levels of her ambition are often praised and lamented by other characters. She is a social climber, and she uses other people as the rungs in her ladder. So do many business moguls, however. So do normal people. We simply refer to it as 'doing what has to be done,' or 'having a way with people,' or even 'brown nosing.' Monopolies are built with these adverbs as their hammer and nails. Our way of life is founded on them. Yet we relish our dislike for Undine Spragg for attempting to build her life in this way, the only way she was taught. We do not notice that the essence of Undine is floating all around us. It built the house we live in and produced the computer we are using right now. It is the essence of Cold Ambition. It builds itself up with or without help, reaches its peak, sees a better peak, and climbs even higher. Success is never achieved, because to profess success is to say that we can do no better now. We are raised to believe that that idea is profane. We can always do better and go higher. Just read the last line of The Custom of the Country. It's a killer.

I think Undine was dangerous, personally. If I knew her, I would stay away from her as well as I could. But just look at the thoughts that this book brings out. Read it and join in the fun.

I have just finished reading Edith Wharton's THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY and have never wanted to strangle a protaganist so much in my life! Ms. Wharton has created a character that could rival any modern day soap opera vixen. Undine Spragg is spoilt, selfish, vain and socially ambitious. When Ms. Wharton writes from her perspective, I found myself at times feeling sorry for her. When she writes from the perspective of the people Undine ruins, I despised her. In the end, there is nothing kind that I can say about Undine Spragg. About Ms. Wharton, however, I can say she has again reestablished herself as a literary genius. In the character of Undine, Ms. Wharton criticizes the emptiness of greed mixed with vanity in a shallow person who knows nothing else. However, Ms. Wharton also makes it clear that Undine is not soley to blame for her character. "It is the custom of the country" her second father-in-law explains of Undine's stupidity, insensitivity and unending selfishness. Women who are so totally pampered and kept ignorant of the real world remain spoilt brats until they are old enough to truly hurt so many lives. The two saddest victims of her ruthlessness are her second husband Ralph, a sensitive writer from an old-money family, and their son Paul. Though it is doubtful anyone will like Undine, you will at times pity her. However, the genius of Edith Wharton is that through Undine we see the destruction of society and families by the ridiculous treatment of women in society of early 1900's. Another note on this particular edition of this and all Everyman books is that they are so beautifully crafted, it is always a treasure to read any book printed by this company. Besides being beautifully designed, Everyman editions also have wonderful chronologies of the author and historical references and literary events. They are truly elegant additions to any library.

The heroine of Edith Wharton's 1913 novel, Undine Spragg, is a monster of selfishness and ambition, and yet she is hard to despise. Elevated first by the money made by her cowed Midwestern parents and by her startling and all-conquering physical beauty, she comes to New York City determined to have everything she wants, but always aware of the complexities of knowing what that truly is given the multiple standards among the different wealthy communities she moves among. Her first marriage, to a scion of one of the great Old New York families, assures her utter respectability but not the kind of money and liberty she expects to have to assure her constant amusement; in order to get what she wants, there are few sacred social rules she is not willing to bend or break. The genius of the novel is its ability to move from the point of view of the victims Undine leaves behind in her wake back to Undine herself; the novel becomes not only a strong commentary on the rapaciousness and self-centeredness of Gilded Age America, but also a marvelous anthropological study of Old New York society, the nouveaux riches, and the fearsome French aristocracy (with whom Undine seems to find her greatest challenges to her will).

Undine Spragg - a beautiful women with very little intelligence. Her petulant behaviour carries us through this novel as she uses her family to propel herself through the ranks of New York society. She marries to further her stature and soon discovers that moving in the right circles only takes her so far without the money to maintain the lifestyle she craves. Undine discards the people of her life as they fail to provide the monetary support she needs and looks to affairs and friendships to cover her shortcomings financially. It would be easy to hate her character except for the fact that she is not smart enough to realize the hurt she causes those around her, she never seems to hurt them intentionally they just get in the way of her greed and ambition. At times I even pitied her.

Other readers thought she was content by the end of the book, but I don't think Undine will ever be content, there will always be greener pastures...

Edith Wharton is certainly one of the most accomplished authors in American history. I don't think there is ONE of her books that I don't completely LOVE. And, "Custom of the Country" is certainly one for the record books. Wharton creates a completely new and different novel in "Custom" than in her previous books. As in the others, you may have found yourself really cheering or rooting for the main characters. You felt affection and fondness for them. But, in this one could you have found more fault with Undine? She's everything a reader should just loath. But, for some strange and heartwarming reason, you don't care. You move past that and just enjoy this wonderfully written American Masterpiece. Wharton's gift for words, story and characterization is fabulous. I just love her. She's one of my top 3 favs.

In The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton creates one of the most unlikable, even despicable, characters I know of in American fiction. Undine Spragg is not a murderer, sociopath, or monster, but an ambitious young woman determined to climb New York's social ladder to the very top. The ambitions in themselves are not inherently bad, and other characters clearly share them. It is Undine's utter lack of regard for anyone else, from her aging parents to her neglected son, that makes her contemptible. What makes her chilling is the odd combination of ingenuousness and its opposite; with rare exceptions she is oblivious to the rights, aspirations, and feelings of others if they do not pertain to her own objectives.

In Wharton's world, choosing the right man was as important to a society woman's future as selecting the right college, graduate school, or first job is today for a professional woman. For Undine and her friends, divorce carries no more significance than as a means to get out of the wrong job. As she tells her fiancé's shocked traditional New York family, "I guess Mabel'll get a divorce pretty soon . . . They like each other well enough. But he's been a disappointment to her . . . Mabel realizes she'll never really get anywhere till she gets rid of him." This dinner conversation foreshadows the rest of the novel.

Wharton reveals Undine's competitive nature through her childhood rivalry with Indiana Frusk, and her unsatisfied, reaching one through her travels with her parents. Undine will never be happy because there will always be someone with something she doesn't have, whether it is greater wealth, fame, or a title or position.

By marrying Undine, Ralph hopes to save her from "Van Degenism," which helps to set up the irony after irony found throughout The Custom of the Country. Ralph doesn't know that Undine not only desires "Van Degenism," but she wants to define it. A would-be poet, Ralph cannot seem to separate surface beauty from inner ugliness. "When she shone on him like that what did it matter what nonsense she talked?" Raymond de Chelles, who reminds Undine of Ralph, first sees her on an evening when, as even the cynical Charles Bowen thinks, " . . . she seemed to have been brushed by the wing of poetry, and its shadow lingered in her eyes."

More than greed, selfishness, or hedonism, Undine's defining characteristic, lack of empathy, shapes her actions. "It never occurred to her that other people's lives went on when they were our of her range of vision." What dooms her relationships with Ralph and Raymond is not money, attention, socializing, or any of Undine's numerous desires and complaints, nor is it simply the gulf between their values and her own. The failure lies in her inability to grasp that anything of importance exists outside her own system and their inability to see this in her until far too late. Because her parents cannot deny her anything, ". . . her sense of the rightfulness of her own cause had been measured by making people do as she pleased."

Undine wants everything, but especially that which she does not have. Her counterpart, Elmer Moffatt, exhibits this "new money" behavior through collecting objects. "To have things had always seemed to her the first essential of existence," while Moffatt says, "I mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other fellows, but because I know it when I see it." Raymond's tapestries have no more deeper emotional value to Moffatt than last year's dresses do to Undine; all are markers of money and success.

Ironically, Undine is little more than an attractive object to the people around her. As Madame de Trézac tells her, " . . . they're delighted to bring you out at their big dinners, with the Sèvres and the plate." Later, when she visits dealers with Moffatt, she sees that "the actual touching of rare textures--bronze or marble, or velvets flushed with the bloom of age--gave him a sensations like her own beauty had once roused in him." To Moffatt, who knows and understands her insatiable hungers, she may be at least in part an object for his collection. He tells her, "You're not the beauty you were . . . but you're a lot more fetching." The "oddly qualified phrase" could be used of Raymond's tapestries and many of the other old valuables that Moffatt has acquired.

For Wharton, Undine and Moffatt represent those aspects of contemporary American society that she most disliked. As Charles Bowen says, " . . . in this country, the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it . . ." Undine, like the Wall Street of Peter Van Degen and Elmer Moffatt, is voracious, self-centered, reaching, and without conscience or moral center (choosing to sell an ill-gotten string of pearls for the money rather than to return it). Unlike Mrs. Marvell, with her hospital committee activities, Undine does not contribute to society; she was born to take. Symbolic and symptomatic of the new America that Wharton left, Undine remains ignorant and without taste.

Wharton's last paragraph is brilliant, for it cleverly shows how even an Undine who has achieved wealth, position, fame, and power can still find something to desire--something that she has put out of her own reach through her actions. " . . . . she said to herself that it was the one part she was really made for." Undine is a young woman; Wharton hints at the potential she still has to leave yet more misery in her wake as she yearns for yet more of what she believes she deserves. She is like a living Tantalus, but one whose every attempt to grasp destroys.

Edith Wharton is likely the best chronicler of life in the upper startum of early New York, and the CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY joins her other classics in this realm, such as the HOUSE OF MIRTH and the AGE OF INNOCENCE. From the beginning, you can see where the book is headed, but the skill with which it's written keeps it from being a predictable read. The herione (?) is Undine Spragg, a social climber on the order of Lily Bart. Undine is a rather unlikeable protagonist, which leaves one's sympathies with the supporting characters, such as her first husband, Ralph Marvell. Fortunately, the book is filled with wonderful supporting characters, and the book's point-of-view often shifts between these characters. The ending is bittersweet, but gives one a great deal of insight into the emptiness of attaining everthying you want. Another terrific novel from Edith Wharton!

In CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY Edith Wharton created a most unlikable protagonist that is certainly easy to deplore. Undine Spragg is the epitome of a spoiled individual who doesn't bother to care how her financial demands negatively affect those around her. After moving to New York with her parents she has the full intentions of entering the ranks of high society. She studies the society columns in the local newspapers and dreams of residing in a splendid home on Fifth Avenue. Undine is both charming and beautiful and she doesn't hesitate to rely on various schemes and methods to get what she wants.

During the course of this book the reader follows Undine as she strives to enter the fashionable social circles of New York at the beginning of the 20th century. She studies the prominent players in the upper classes and desires to join them during their dinner parties in New York and their annual spring trips to Paris. Unfortunately her father doesn't possess the type of financial resources to accommodate Undine's wishes so she seeks to marry a man who can provide. Undine's climb to the top of New York society is not without incident. At times her ascendancy is marked by setbacks and controversies that aim to keep Undine away from the social limelight.

Edith Wharton provides insightful commentaries on how Undine Spragg is so self-centered and ignorant and the general superficiality of high society during this time period. Undine completely ignored the concerns of her husband(s) and her child as she strived to join the fashionably conscious social circles. The social and religious sentiments towards divorced woman are also explored during this era of general disapproval of broken marriages. CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY provides a revealing glimpse into the workings of the upper society circles of New York before the Great War. Highly recommended.

I've just finished reading this book and i must say that i found it extremely good. While reading it you build up an absolute hatred for the main character, Undine Spragg. She drives you on to keep reading despite your hatred, to see if anything that deserves to happen to her does happen. Although certainly not one of Wharton's most noted books, it does have a kind of hidden lustre to it that makes you want to tell everyone to read it. If you have read and liked either The House of Mirth or The Buccaneers, I would suggest you try The Custom of the Country.