The Custom of the Country (Penguin Classics)
Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's second full-length work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted. This edition features a new introduction and explanatory notes and reset text. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Community Reviews
"'Undine Spragg -- how can you?' her mother wailed, raising a prematurely wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid bell-boy had just brought in."
This is the opening line of this outstanding novel, whose starring character is the oddly named beauty Undine Spragg, brought to New York by her Midwestern parents to make a splash in society. It's an appropriate opening, as Undine's every thought, word and action is selfish to the core. The novel explore's her exploits as she tries to fit in with a New York society she doesn't understand but whose rules she is determined to learn.
As with Wharton's "The Age of Innocence," this novel skewers the pretensions and fixed rigidity of the wealthiest among New York society, which the author knew well from personal experience. It also explores the impact of divorce (the book was published in 1913) on women in particular, who bore the taint of scandal from a divorce, even though it was becoming more and more common.
I was surprised to read that many believe the book's primary theme is the impact on women of divorce and the unwritten rules of hob-nobbing among the monied class. To me, this was just as much a character study of an unfathomably self-centered woman, who craves the limelight and is a shopaholic, with absolutely no regard or sympathy for anyone other than herself. It is a cautionary tale against those who think money and titles will bring happiness, because when that is all a person wants, she can never find satiation.
Wharton writes: "During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanishes underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet."
When Undine has a son, he doesn't help her find deeper meaning in her life; he is an inconvenience to be foisted off on tutors and nannies. All her life she has plied her beauty to help her marry "well," and then to marry again, and again. Yet no matter how high the title of her husband, nor how wealthy he is, Undine Spragg will always find a reason to zero in on what she still has not conquered or cannot have. She ultimately learns how to navigate "the custom of the country," but she'll never be anything other than a vain, greedy and ungrateful social climber.
Wharton's gift is to keep us reading and wondering what will happen, even though the protagonist is so thoroughly detestable.
This is the opening line of this outstanding novel, whose starring character is the oddly named beauty Undine Spragg, brought to New York by her Midwestern parents to make a splash in society. It's an appropriate opening, as Undine's every thought, word and action is selfish to the core. The novel explore's her exploits as she tries to fit in with a New York society she doesn't understand but whose rules she is determined to learn.
As with Wharton's "The Age of Innocence," this novel skewers the pretensions and fixed rigidity of the wealthiest among New York society, which the author knew well from personal experience. It also explores the impact of divorce (the book was published in 1913) on women in particular, who bore the taint of scandal from a divorce, even though it was becoming more and more common.
I was surprised to read that many believe the book's primary theme is the impact on women of divorce and the unwritten rules of hob-nobbing among the monied class. To me, this was just as much a character study of an unfathomably self-centered woman, who craves the limelight and is a shopaholic, with absolutely no regard or sympathy for anyone other than herself. It is a cautionary tale against those who think money and titles will bring happiness, because when that is all a person wants, she can never find satiation.
Wharton writes: "During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanishes underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet."
When Undine has a son, he doesn't help her find deeper meaning in her life; he is an inconvenience to be foisted off on tutors and nannies. All her life she has plied her beauty to help her marry "well," and then to marry again, and again. Yet no matter how high the title of her husband, nor how wealthy he is, Undine Spragg will always find a reason to zero in on what she still has not conquered or cannot have. She ultimately learns how to navigate "the custom of the country," but she'll never be anything other than a vain, greedy and ungrateful social climber.
Wharton's gift is to keep us reading and wondering what will happen, even though the protagonist is so thoroughly detestable.
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