The Custom of the Country

by Edith Wharton

Overview

First published in 1913, Edith Wharton's The Custom Of The Country is scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York's high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin. One of Wharton's most acclaimed works, The Custom Of The Country is a stunning indictment of materialism and misplaced values that is as powerful today for its astute observations about greed and power as when it was written nearly a century ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553213935
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/1991
Series:	Bantam Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	605,758
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

American novelist Edith Wharton (1862–1937) is best remembered for her finely crafted stories depicting New York life, including The Age of Innocence.

Date of Birth:

January 24, 1862

Date of Death:

August 11, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Education:

Educated privately in New York and Europe

Read an Excerpt

Book One

Chapter One


"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.

But her defense was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to read it.

"I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother.

"Did you ever, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.

Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her rusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followed the mother's glance with good-humored approval.

"I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of her hostess's inquiry.

Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs in one of the private drawing rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spragg rooms were known as one of the Looey suites,and the drawing room walls, above their wainscoting of highly varnished mahogany, were hung with salmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette and the Princess de Lamballe. In the center of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and Mrs. Spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as if she had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attire was fashionable enough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially melted wax figure which had run to double-chin.

Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity and reality. The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized and self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a "society" manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughter she filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in the latter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for a moment to "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.

The young girl whose "form" had won Mrs. Heeny's professional commendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back from the window.

"Here-you can have it after all," she said, crumpling the note and tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap.

"Why-isn't it from Mr. Popple?" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed unguardedly.

"No-it isn't. What made you think I thought it was?" snapped her daughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childish disappointment: "It's only from Mr. Marvell's sister-at least she says she's his sister."

Mrs. Spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among the jet fringes of her tightly girded front.

Mrs. Heeny's small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity. "Marvell-what Marvell is that?"

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Edith Wharton: A Brief Chronology

A Note on the Text

The Custom of the Country

Appendix A: Edith Wharton’s Outline and Notes for The Custom of the Country

1. “Undine chronology”
2. “Final version”
3. Additional Notes

Appendix B: Edith Wharton’s Correspondence about The Custom of the Country

1. To Morton Fullerton (15 May 1911)
2. To Bernard Berenson (16 May 1911)
3. To Bernard Berenson (6 August 1911)
4. To Charles Scribner (27 November 1911)
5. To Bernard Berenson (2 August 1913)

Appendix C: From Edith Wharton’s Autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934)

Appendix D: Contemporary Reviews

1. Nation (15 May 1913)
2. New York Times Review of Books (19 October 1913)
3. Independent (13 November 1913)
4. Athenaeum (15 November 1913)
5. Bookman (December 1913)
6. Times Literary Supplement (2 April 1914)
7. Forum (November 1915)

Appendix E: Women and Marriage

1. From Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Undine (1811)
2. From Robert Grant, “The Art of Living, IX: The Case of Woman” (1895)
3. From Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination (1896)
4. Letter from Edith Wharton to John Hugh Smith (12 February 1909)
5. From Emma Goldman, “The Traffic in Women” (1910)

Appendix F: Competition and Consumerism

1. From Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
2. From Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
3. From George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (1920)
4. From Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)

Appendix G: Aestheticism

1. From Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)
2. From Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination (1896)
3. From Henry James, The American Scene (1907)

Select Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Anita Brookner

As long as men and women seek to use each other -- and to use each other badly -- Edith Wharton can be counted upon to provide the ideal commentary.

Reading Group Guide

1. Some critics consider The Custom of the Country an epic tale, complete with a hero (in this case, a heroine) and various battles (that is, her marriages). Do you agree? What aspects make the novel epic? Which aspects refute this idea?

2. What do the novel’s descriptions of marriage and divorce tell us about Wharton’s views on the subject?

3. Are we to look at Undine as a sympathetic character? Consider women’s roles at the time of the novel. Was Undine forced to be the person she was?

4. In contrast to Wharton’s other New York—set novels, there is no dominant moral character in The Custom of the Country to oppose the selfish Undine. Why did Wharton let Undine go unchallenged? What is she saying about New York–and, by extension, American–society?

5. Wharton consistently presents Undine as monstrously acquisitive, yet Undine seems to get these characteristics from her father, who uses them in business. Does Wharton approve of these behaviors at all? What is she saying about the gender differences of the time? If Undine had been allowed to use these characteristics in business, would she be a different person in her personal life?

6. Do you think Wharton hates Undine? If she does, how does this affect the narrative?

Editorial Reviews

Edith Wharton's finest achievement.

Elizabeth Hardwick

Praise for Edith Wharton and Custom of the Country

“For my money, no literary antiheroine can best Undine... Wharton’s portrait of [her] is so acute that it frequently flickers across time into the contemporary.”—Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

“Prescient... In this new Gilded Age, when the disparities between rich and poor are again, and disastrously, as great as they were in Wharton’s time, we could do with such a novelist, a cultural anthropologist who might hold up a mirror to our failings and our future, with eagle-eyed clarity and a small measure of compassion.”—Claire Messud, The New York Times Style Magazine

“There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as ‘major,’ and Edith Wharton is one.”—Gore Vidal

“Wharton is an amusingly ruthless observer of the manners and mores of the wealthy.”—Jay McInerney, The Week

From the Publisher

The Custom of the Country is one of the most enjoyable great novels ever written. Not all enjoyable novels are great, and not all great novels are enjoyable. This is, supremely, both.”

The Guardian (London)

Brilliantly written.”

Saturday Review (London)

A splendid and memorable piece of work.”

Bookman

Of all Edith Wharton novels, The Custom of the Country is my absolute favorite…Grace Conlin’s reading of Blackstone’s unabridged version is splendid, her voice fruity, elegant, and utterly ruthless.”

Forbes (audio review)

"The Custom of the Country satirizes much that Wharton thought was wrong with the US at the turn of the century: serial divorce, rampant consumerism and materialism, indifference to art and literature, and a proudly provincial attitude toward the traditions of Old New York and European culture. Combined with Sarah Emsley's incisive and well-researched introduction and notes, this excellent new edition of the novel includes well-chosen readings ranging from selections by Charles Darwin and Thorstein Veblen to excerpts from novels by Harold Frederic and Anita Loos that shed light on Wharton's audacious protagonist, Undine Spragg. The result is a volume that not only restores the social and economic contexts for the novel but sharpens the reader's appreciation for Wharton's satire in this book, the most savage–and the most humorous–novel of her long career."

Donna Campbell Washington State University

This is an excellent edition of what I consider to be Wharton's best novel, and it is supported by very valuable supporting material. Arguing that the novel is a satire of consumerism, Sarah Emsley offers a particularly good analysis of Raymond de Chelles as one of the few positive forces, and a husband who acts as a counter to the rampant material ambitions which dominate other parts of the novel. Emsley's introduction also provides a succinct and successful summary of Wharton's life and a good survey of the relevant criticism. The edition ends with a series of extremely useful appendices, including Wharton's outline for the novel, examples of contemporary reviews, extracts from Darwin, Veblen and Santayana and sections on Aestheticism and Women and Marriage."

Robin Peel University of Plymouth

Laurel Lefkow gives a stellar performance as she introduces Edith Wharton's 1913 characters to a 21st-century audience. The story features one of literature's least likable heroines, Undine Spragg. Lefkow gives her a simpering, cloying, sometimes whiny voice, which is perfectly suited to this shallow, spoiled, and self-absorbed young woman. Undine has four marriages as she ascends the social ladder, and each union is masterfully portrayed. Undine's richest husband is the crude financial tycoon Elmer Moffat. He is given a husky, folksy voice. The story is slow paced and filled with richly detailed locales. Lefkow’s warm, articulate voice makes for a highly enjoyable listening experience. D.L.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile

Laurel Lefkow gives a stellar performance as she introduces Edith Wharton's 1913 characters to a 21st-century audience. The story features one of literature's least likable heroines, Undine Spragg. Lefkow gives her a simpering, cloying, sometimes whiny voice, which is perfectly suited to this shallow, spoiled, and self-absorbed young woman. Undine has four marriages as she ascends the social ladder, and each union is masterfully portrayed. Undine's richest husband is the crude financial tycoon Elmer Moffat. He is given a husky, folksy voice. The story is slow paced and filled with richly detailed locales. Lefkow’s warm, articulate voice makes for a highly enjoyable listening experience. D.L.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile