Customer Reviews

The Custom of the Country

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Pre-flapper Undine Spragg flaps her mouth and metaphorical wings into infamy in this elegantly written novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald included "The Custom of the Country" on his College of One (the one being girlfriend Sheilah Graham) reading list. One can detect why -- Undine was Daisy Buchanan (see "The Great Gatsby") before Daisy Buchanan was Daisy Buchanan. Actually, Undine shows much more daring in swinging from man to man (but with a net of money -- old, new, her father's, always somebody else's -- always underneath).
Daisy's loyalty to old money makes her a conservative (Ann Coulter variety) compared to Undine.
Wharton delivers a great meditation on the endlessness of appetite and its first cousin -- boredom. "She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them."
Undine's life foreshadowed the shallow culture of "busy-ness" and "going out" that's everywhere around us today. Her emotionalism is also very modern. Undine probably represents to Europeans and others the prototype of the piggish and priggish wealthy American. Edith Wharton cleverly drew a character of her present, the future and one of timelessness.