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    The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    Audiobook16 hours

    The Custom of the Country

    Written by Edith Wharton

    Narrated by Lorna Raver Raver

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    From New York to Europe, the apartments of the nouveau riche to ancient French estates, Edith Wharton tells the story of Undine Spragg, a girl from a Midwestern town with unquenchable social aspirations. Though Undine is narcissistic, pampered, and incredibly selfish, she is a beguiling heroine whose marital initiation into New York high society from its trade-wealthy fringes is only the beginning of her relentless ambitions. Wharton weaves an elaborate plot that renders a detailed depiction of upper-class social behavior in the early twentieth century. By utilizing a character with inexorable greed in a novel of manners, she demonstrates some of the customs of a modern age and posits a surprising explanation for divorce and the social role of women, which still resonates for the modern audience today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 16, 2011
    ISBN9781452671185
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.

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    Reviews for The Custom of the Country

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    • 3/5
      I picked this up because Age of Innocence is one of my favorite books, Undie Spragg is an amazing name for a heroine and it was a dollar. I've enjoyed it, but I haven't been moved to finish it.
    • 4/5
      Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.As soon as I saw that the heroine's name was Undine Spragg I could tell that this book would be fun, and I was right. It is a satire about a social climbing golddigger from the mid-West and her attempts to marry into high society via several different husbands.Undine is a nightmare and I started off pitying her poor parents, but then decided that they had brought it on themselves by spoiling her so badly. However, the story makes the serious point that if men keep their wives in the dark about their careers and everything else that is important to them, it is not surprising that their wives are empty-headed and vain as they have nothing but socialising to occupy themselves with. Undine is manipulative but stupid and would be no match for Becky Sharp, although she ends the book in a far better position in life than Becky did in Vanity Fair. If you have the Oxford World Classics edition, leave the introduction until last as it is full of spoilers.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book despite the main character being totally unappealing. Funny how Wharton can make her female characters so superficial and unlikable and yet, as a woman, I continue to read and enjoy the book. Her writing is so elegant. So many times I wanted to thank her for saying something so beautifully and spot on.
    • 4/5
      This was the first Edith Wharton I read, having lucked out of Ethan Frome in high school. I was totally gabsmocked by the book -- what a wonderful, snarky, insightful novel. That the heroine is almost completely unsympathetic didn't make me want to put it down for a moment.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1913, two years after Ethan Frome, but in gestation since 1907, The Custom of the Country is a novel that combines the tradition of the 'money' novel with Wharton's customary depiction of New York society and, in this case, also Parisian society. Undine Spragg is a beautiful, domineering, and spoiled young woman from somewhere in the Midwest who enters this society with the baggage of one divorce already behind her. Wharton's satirical prose envelopes Undine, her parents, and the New York social crowd, as Undine attempts to join it in her effort to get ahead. Never satisfied with her lot in life (sometimes anxious and always observant of those around her imagining what they expect from her), she is impatient and makes mistakes including marrying Ralph Marvell whose family is pedigreed but impecunious. Her attempts to live in a lifestyle which she considers worthy of her grand ambition quickly leads to difficulties that engulf the marriage. Her story continues with financial intrigue on the part of her first husband, who has also migrated to New York from the Midwest for greater financial opportunities. Undine in the meantime lives in Europe chasing after a Prince before settling on a marriage to Count Raymond de Chelles. However, her all-consuming greed leads to the end of that marriage; while further financial dealings bring vast wealth to Elmer Moffat, her first husband who has become more and more interesting to her throughout the story.Undine is one of Edith Wharton's greatest creations, who resembles Thackeray's Becky Sharp, a heroine from an earlier age. With her reliance on men of questionable financial character and the increased rate of change in society in the new century Undine devastates the social landscape before her as its representatives are shown to have feet of clay. I found myself unable to generate any sympathy for her character, unlike my experience reading about Wharton's other leading ladies (Lily Bart in The House of Mirth and Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence). In its structure the novel covers new ground for Wharton with the introduction of a journalistic narrator, Mrs Heany, in the second half of the book. The result is a more modern novel than her other great works. The story ultimately is one of a self-made woman who, while lacking moral character, is able to create a world through her ability to use the people around her for her material advantage. The novel is one in which satire is omnipresent and the result is a brittle yet brilliant achievement.
    • 4/5
      I like Edith Wharton's writing very much, and this novel has many of her strengths, but I struggled with it because of Edith Wharton's relentless snobbery towards her main character, Undine Spragg, a loathsome and predatory specimen of the "nouveau riche" who preys on and ingratiates herself into classy but faded old-money New York society.Edith Wharton directs (or at least strongly nudges) the reader to hate Unidine and take the side of her victims, but the old rich of New York are no better than the nouveau riche in my view: their old money ultimately derives from expropriating Native American land, so why should I sympathise with them?Thus, although Undine is most certainly far from likable, I found myself with a sneaking admiration for her, and felt that, portrayed by another author with a broader range of human sympathies, she could have emerged as a heroic, or at least anti-heroic, character. I'll fight you for her, Edith!
    • 5/5
      How does Wharton do it? In Undine Spregg she has created a very unsympathetic character - selfish, spoiled, cruel, materialistic, heartless – who turns over husbands much as she does dresses and discards her child – and yet Wharton’s Undine is fascinating and unforgettable. Though Undine is a ruthless social climber the quality of the prose, the exquisite characterisations, the vivid scenes and exchanges, the variety of viewpoints are all so good one can only continue. And Undine is never indecisive – the story never wavers or palls because she never takes her eye from the next prize.But Wharton loves to throw the cat among the pigeons. She is also using Undine to comment on the social mores of the time. She shows how the nature of business is shifting, and the nouveau riche are pushing aside the stuffy old guard. She also draws some interesting comparisons between American and Europe society. Wharton combines superb prose with an acute understanding of human character.
    • 3/5
      about a horrible, selfish social climber--main character is so annoying that I could barely force myself to finish the book--proves that women today are lucky to be educated with careers so they can divert their energy toward better things than parties clothes and status
    • 5/5
      This is fabulous book - masterfully crafted, eloquently written, and I am just sorry I haven't read more of her book, but I will remeday that. I sumply must read more (all) of Edith Warton's works. Her writing is beautiful and succinct; her characters are well built and interesting.
    • 3/5
      I liked that this book was set in New York and Edith Wharton was obviously very clever. But overall, I just didn’t dig this book much. There is something about the story of “vapid but beautiful jerk that always gets her way” that just doesn't do it for me. Snooze.

    • 5/5
      Undine Sprague is probably the most terrifying fictional character who I have ever encountered. Many others are more malicious and deliberately cruel, but her absolute indifference to any other person's needs or feelings is chilling. She hardly seems aware that other people exist except as means to achieve her own self-absorbed ends.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton paints a fascinating anti-heroine in Udine. Ambitious, totally selfish and self-deceiving Udine sets out to conquer Society in both America and turn-of-the-century France. Divorcing her husbands and neglecting her child to achieve superficial supremacy if not personal satisfaction.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book more than I thought I would when I picked it up. Undine Spragg, the main character, is a deplorable human being. She never passed the stage in life where she realised there was more to life than her own person. She was extremely selfish and constantly wanting more. She had no thought for anyone else. She divorces and remarries as often as she buys a new dress. When the husband is no longer in fashion or no longer can provide her what she wants she moves on. She was never taught that she couldn't have everything she wanted. Undine was never satified.If you enjoy classics, like I do, you should like this book. Edith Wharton depicts the times when nouveau riche were invading the stolid New York "aristocracy" with witty criticism.
    • 3/5
      This is another dip into the Lifetime Reading Plan well.

      Undine Spragg is a beautiful but spoiled little Midwestern bourgeois princess. She goads her parents into relocating to New York City, where she hopes to realize her dream of marrying well, entering "society" as she sees it, and living a life of ease and entertainment, surrounded by all the things lots and lots of money can buy.

      A succession of marital adventures (each with an aristocrat of a different type) teach her nothing about living a truly fulfilling life. Undine is sort of a proto-Scarlett O'Hara. But unlike Scarlett, she never undergoes any refining hardship, and thus, never develops her character into someone the reader can truly like.

      This is a didactic book, in which Wharton shows us how the prevailing definitions and behaviors of success in business create such "perfect monsters" as Undine. A perceptive mouthpiece of a character states this theme outright in the first third of the book. "The custom of the country" has created her. The remainder of the book merely hammers the lesson home over and over again. Although there are some surprises and reversals, Undine is allowed to remain the same spoiled Undine she was from the beginning.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton's damning portrait of the never satisfied, social climbing, money grubbing American is an excellent read. Follow the marital career of Undine Spragg and cringe throughout the entire story. Undine represents all that is base and ugly about the upstart American women contrasted with the elegant, complex European social system. I particularly love the closing, as Undine ponders her awareness that there is one thing she cannot have. She cannot be the wife of an asmbassador because she has been divorced. How crushing! To me, this is a harsher, blunter Edith Wharton than I am used to, yet still wonderful!
    • 5/5
      This is such a depressing book. You know why someone like Undine exists. And so you "cut her some slack." But she is so horrible. It makes you angry that she exists. And then you feel so bad for her husbands (a string of them) and her little boy. I'm glad I have lived in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Reading Wharton and James over the past few weeks. She is so good.
    • 5/5
      I read The Customs of the Country before I learned that Edith Wharton was the subject of the September issue of Vogue magazine, entitled “The Customs of the Country.” I just about died. How did I not know about this before???? Supermodel Natalia Vodianova plays Edith Wharton, and several famous actors and authors play various people in her life, including Jeffrey Eugenides as Henry James (gasp! A win-win combination in my book, pun intended). It looks as though Edith Wharton is having a bit of a revival at the moment; a cache of her letters has been published recently, in conjunction with the fact that this year is the 150th anniversary of her birth. In addition, Vintage Classics have reprinted several of her novels, including this one, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence, all with simple and simply beautiful covers. Edith Wharton was notoriously both fascinated by and contemptuous of New York society, and The Customs of the Country is another such novel in which she skewers her characters and the world in which they live. The Customs of the Country is the story of Undine Spragg, a rapaciously acquisitive young woman who constantly strives for more. She and her parents come to New York City, having recently hit the apex of society in the aptly-named midwestern town of Apex, and Undine is on a quest to marry well and acquire money and power. Yet Undine is constantly an outsider looking in, someone that true high-class New York society doesn’t take completely seriously.She marries Ralph Marvel, a man with whom she couldn’t be more incompatible. Ralph’s family have come down in the world, and Ralph is an artistic type who would rather be composing poetry than working a 9-5 job on Wall Street. The novel chronicles Undine’s adventures in marriage, her scandalous affairs, from New York to France and back again. Meanwhile, a shocking secret from Undine's path threatens to reveal itself and spoil all her plans. I was intrigued by the author's choice of the name Undine for her protagonist. An undine is a water spirit, said to gain a soul by marrying and having a child. So you might easily see the connection between the mythological creature and Undine Spragg and the hope that Wharton might have had for her main character as she created her. There's also the German folktale of Ondine, in which a woman curses her unfaithful husband to cease breathing. Shoe-on-the-other-foot syndrome, maybe? You get the sense that Edith Wharton was not only fascinated with the monster she created, but repelled by her actions at the same time. As such, the reader doesn’t quite know whether to dislike Undine or laugh at her, because half the time her antics are really quite ridiculous. At the end of the day, though, the reader has to wonder: what’s all of this social striving for? To what end? That’s why this novel is sometimes tinged with a hint of sadness.
    • 5/5
      Oh Undine!I have to address you, but I must confess that I am very nearly lost for words. I have never met anyone quite like you – in fact or in fiction – and you have made such an impression. You really are a force of nature. You had to be, to have lived the life that you have lived.Looking back it’s hard to believe that you were the daughter of a self-made man, that you came from Apex in North Carolina. But, of course, you were the apple of your parents’ eyes, and they were prepared to invest everything they had, and to do without themselves, to help you reach the very highest echelons of New York society.You always got what you wanted. Always.Did you appreciate what they did for you? Did you understand how much they sacrifice? I think not; there was nothing in your words, your actions, your demeanour to suggest that you did.At first I was inclined to blame your parents for spoiling you, but I came to realise that it wasn’t them, it was you. I began to feel sorry for them.You made some mistakes as you climbed the ladder, because you didn’t quite understand quite how that rarefied society worked, but you were a wonderfully quick learner. You changed your behaviour, your appearance, your expectations, to become the person you wanted to be, the person you needed to be, to achieve your ambitions.And you succeeded. You drew the attention of Ralph Marvell, the son of one of the oldest, grandest families in New York. He loved your beauty, your difference; and you loved everything that he stood for. And so you married …..Sadly, it wasn’t a happy ending.You didn’t understand that the families at the pinnacle of society were not the wealthiest. You couldn’t understand that Ralph didn’t share your ambitions – I don’t think that you even realised that was possible – and certainly it was quite beyond your comprehension that he dreamed of a writing a novel. He never did, he had not one iota of your drive and ambition, and I suspect that he lacked the talent. Ralph drifted through life, disappointed that he could not expand your narrow horizons, that he could not open your eyes to the beauty of the art and literature that he loved.He was part of an old order that was dying, and you were part of a new order that would adapt and survive. You learned how to bend and even change society’s rules to allow you to do exactly what you wanted to do. You really didn’t understand him, you broke him, and my heart broke for him.I even began to feel at little sorry for you, despite your selfishness, because there was so much that you didn’t understand. There are more important things than money, luxury, fashion, and social position. Things can’t really make you happy, because there will always be other things to want, there will always be things beyond your reach. You learned so much, but you never learned that.There would be more marriages, more travels, more possessions ….There would be more damage. My heart broke again, for the son you so often seemed to forget you had. And though you would never admit it, you were damaged by your own actions. But you were a survivor Undine, weren’t you?You did learn a little; I learned a little about your past, and I came to feel that I understood you a little better; most of all, I do think that when you finally married the right man it made all the difference. It wasn’t quite enough for me to say that I liked you, but I was always fascinated by you.Now I find myself wanting to do what Alice did at the end of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I want to throw you in the air and say, “You’re just a fictional character!” But I can’t. Because you are so utterly real; not a heroine, not a villainess, but a vivid, three-dimensional human being, with strengths and weaknesses.You are perfectly realised; your world and everything, everything around you is perfectly realised. The telling of your story is compelling, beautiful and so very profound. It speaks of its times and it has things to say that are timeless. Because, though times may change, human nature stays the same.Edith Wharton was a genius – it’s as simple as that.
    • 4/5
      This is, perhaps, Edith Wharton's most scathing satire of haute bourgeoisie society of all the novels she wrote. I have seen it compared to The House of Mirth but while Lily Barth was bad (but probably not bad enough), Undine Spragg is just plain awful: shallow, uneducated, vulgar and totally narcissistic. She lives in her own selfish world that must unceasingly revolve around herself.Unfortunately, like many beautiful women she has a string of enablers - starting with her parents who bend to her every whim. The novel chronicles her rise from a midwestern city (Chicago? Cleveland?) to New York where she marries into an old New York family (Think the Welland family from The Age of Innocence only with a whole lot less money). She quickly becomes disillusioned with him, and moves onto greener pastures with a French aristocrat, only to see that his expectations of domestic life do not meet her expectations of how she wants to live.Finally we find her with husband number three - a vulgar Donald rump-like character - who is very rich and understands that he will only hold onto her as long as his money holds out. Along the way, Undine leaves a trail of destruction in her wake: suicide, bankruptcy,a neglected child and ruined parents. Up to the very end, she is neither satisfied, nor is she sorry for anything that she does.In today's age of income inequality and narcissistic culture, this book, written 100 years ago is just as relevant to day as when it was written in 1912.
    • 5/5
      Edith Wharton understood a certain type of woman as well or better than anyone who ever wrote a book. Undine was narcissistic, beautiful, manipulative, clever (but not overly intelligent or curious), and, above all, ambitious. She was more ruthless and eviscerating than a mafia don.Eventually, one of her captivated followers might notice her complete lack of concern for anyone but herself and her lack of interest in anything other than shopping or dining. Some even began to find her boring, but as a reader I was never bored by her. She was a fascinating piece of work and the book is absolutely wonderful.
    • 4/5
      If you’re the kind of person who gets angry while reading about annoying characters to the point of wanting to punch them in their fictitious faces, don’t read this book. Wharton does paint an enduring portrait of a gold digger in Undine Spragg, but at 500+ pages, it gets to be a little much. She also satirizes ‘new money’ in America, both how it was made, through unscrupulous backroom deals and connections, as well as its lack of grace and culture. Undine has an extraordinary amount of ambition, but as a woman can only channel this by using her charms to marry a rich man, and someone with connections in society. As with all greedy, selfish people, no amount of material possessions are ever enough for Undine, and she can only improve her situation by divorcing and remarrying, something that carries a stigma in America and is not possible in France, where she lives for a portion of the novel. Wharton’s writing is great, but none of the characters are likeable, so it’s a bit of a masochistic read. It’s the 8th novel I’ve read by her and was far from a disappointment, but I would recommend ‘The Age of Innocence’, ‘The House of Mirth’, ‘The Reef’, or good old ‘Ethan Frome’ instead.Quotes:On beauty, a sign of the times then (and again now), and I liked the last phrase:“She was tall enough to carry off a little extra weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular.”And this one, on being admired:“What could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it?”On men:“He put it to her at last, standing squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her.”On moments of rapture, and writing; the best passage of the book:“It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one’s self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fullness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.”
    • 4/5
      ** spoiler alert ** The story of Undine Spragg, possibly the most self-centred heroine I have ever encountered, who forces her long-suffering parents to move to New York so that she can meet "the best people". She marries Ralph, from an "old family" and has a son with him, but divorces him because he is too poor. She plans to marry her lover, Peter, but he drops her and so, after much strategizing on her part she marries a French nobleman, Raymond. Raymond too fails to keep her in the style she had expected, so she ditches him for the dubious Elmer Moffatt, to whom, it is revealed towards the end, she was briefly married as a teenager. Even with his riches, she is dissatisfied and the final page sees her furious that as a divorcee she can never be the wife of an ambassador.Things I liked about this novel:Undine's realisation that Raymond and his friends are bored by her because she is ignorant and has no interests or conversation.The fact that Peter ditches her (or at least says he does) because of her heartless disregard for her husband when he is so ill.The comments that: Undine regards money as something the men in her life must provide for her and she is wholly uninterested in how it is earned/obtained; American men keep their women ignorant about money and thus value them and their intelligence less than Europeans do their wives.On the other hand:Ralph's suicide came out of nowhere and seemed precipitate - surely he knew Undine didn't really want Paul?Presumably Undine's divorce from Elmer meant that her marriage to Raymond in the RC church was unlawful. This doesn't affect the plot because the divorce was kept secret, but were we supposed to note this?
    • 4/5
      I really enjoy Edith Wharton’s writing this one has some good lines that made me giggle and Undine’s attitude towards life and other people is laughable.Undine is a social climber of the highest form she even goes so far as to call it her career. And that every bit of unhappiness she goes through is someone else’s fault and everyone is out to get her. She finds out that climbing up isn’t always better. And she is never satisfied! As much as Undine is not a very good person she is written so well I couldn’t help but like her even if she is supposed to be so unlikable. Or maybe I just enjoyed her story more than I liked her I don’t know I do know I really enjoyed this book! It was so funny to me how really delusional she is at times. I just enjoyed the character of Undine so much and also Moffatt I knew whenever he came in the picture fun things were going to happen or at least some great lines! This is set in such a time when society was hilarious a bunch of highbrows or at least they thought they were and Undine’s quest to fit in with the “right” crowd made for a great story.This is my second Edith Wharton book and I have enjoyed both of them very much and plan to go on to read everything she’s written!I listened to this on audio narrated by, Grace Conlin who does a very good job at the narration.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton is truly a woman of letters. I cannot think of a contemporary writer who even comes close to matching her style and use of language. It is a pleasure to read her prose, and not difficult or archaic as some may think “Classic Novels” to be. Along with her beautiful prose is her keen insights into human nature, and her ability to skewer and satirize every social class with knowing intimacy.

      Wharton daringly takes a wholly unlikeable and unsympathetic character, Undine Sprague, and makes her the main character of this novel. Undine is one of the most spoiled characters I have ever read about in a novel; she and Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair seem to be tied for this title. While Undine has brief flashes of insight and understanding of her world, her ambitions and those around her, they are very brief and she dismisses them quickly so as not to lose sight of the next rung up on the Social ladder in which she is ascending.

      While this is not my favorite Wharton book, (Undine is just too unsympathetic for that) I would absolutely recommend it, if for no other reason than to read beautiful prose, something that seems to be a lost art today in “literary fiction.”
    • 4/5
      Undine Spragg, Wharton's eminently unlikable heroine, is a grasping, abrasive, ill-tempered, clueless social climber who is only really ever interested in that which is out of her reach.In some ways, Undine is the anti-Lily Bart, even though both women are constantly putting themselves in rather compromising positions with men to whom they are not married in order to obtain financial security. Undine's idea of financial security, however, is to be rich enough to indulge her every whim without ever having to hear a word of reporach. Sadly for her, she marries repeatedly and in haste men whose resources do not equal their reputations, and finds herself under continual financial strain.Wharton's at her driest and funniest here; she's a uniquely American combination of Dickens and Austen, satirizing social convention and the money-grubbing that seems so often to go along with it, but also painting a picture of the vast unhappiness that the social structure forces not just on Undine, but also on the men who bob, bewildered, in her glittering wake. I don't like this as well as The House of Mirth, but it's just as good, and makes an interesting contrast with that more famous work. As with other Penguin Classics, I'd leave the introduction for afterwards if you chose that edition of the work.
    • 4/5
      You can't always get what you want, Undine, but, in the words of the Rolling Stones, you get what you need. Undine is a spoiled and larger-than-life character who wants and "needs" many things. She's not afraid to do what it takes to get them and frequently uses her beauty to take advantage of people. The ineffectual men in her life are tossed aside like yesterday's newspapers. There is always something bigger and better around the corner for her. I came to love to hate Undine, especially when she treated her son with cold indifference. She is truly one of the most distasteful characters Edith Wharton has created...and one of the most memorable.This book is all over the place geographically from the midwest to New York City to France and back again. Undine observes others and absorbs their behavior, thus always moving upwards to attain her goal of having money and the recognition of people in high society. It's fun to see her setbacks offset by her greed and undaunted social climbing.Wharton's writing is accomplished as always, using irony and her own astute observations to create a world of manipulation and misfortune. I'm going to indulge myself and end this review with another quote from The Stones: "I can't get no satisfaction." This is a perfect description of Undine's nature.
    • 5/5
      ”Even now, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.”Meet Undine Spragg, possibly the most unlikable woman in literature and that quote just about sums her up. She’s not completely happy because there may be something out there that she wants if only she actually knew about it. That quote comes up towards the end of the book but pretty much lays out the journey Wharton takes you on from the beginning. Undine cares about only one person. Undine. The rest of society is only there to supply her with an audience to note how beautiful and wonderful she is. She needs money; lots of it and beginning with her father, every man in her life needs to supply her with plenty of funds to buy the things she just has to have. I kept hoping someone was going to say, “Undine stop. There’s no money left for that.” But the bills just keep coming.The fact that Edith Wharton is able to portray this self-centered social climber without making the reader throw the book against a wall is all to her credit. But isn’t that what Wharton always does? Whether it was Lily Bart in The House of Mirth or Ethan Frome and Zeena and Mattie she always manages a psychological portrait of her characters that will surprise, maybe shock, but will be in keeping with the ugly reality that is life, in this case life among the wealthy of New York and Paris in 1913. You know it’s satire but it’s all so believable I had to wonder if Wharton knew people like Undine. The writing, as is always the case with Edith Wharton, is sublime and the pages practically turn themselves. Very highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Oh, Edith. Why does it always seem like you're speaking to me directly, that your books are your end of our correspondence, that your heroines are mere reflections of the person I truly am? Why, oh, why can you find just the tender spot, the flaw I wish I didn't have and then show me what would happen if I didn't keep it in check? How can you crash into my life at the very moment I need it most? The Custom of the Country reads like a cautionary tale and yet it's impossible for me to blame the heroine as I see too much of myself in her. Undine's childish belief that a fat bank account buys happiness, her blind refusal to really deeply consider that money does not grow on trees, her selfish yet brave belief that she must be happy no matter what even if she hurts everyone that stands in her way, all down to her eternal quest for an unreachable satisfaction with her lot. This is a brilliant book because it reads like a tragedy that's full of stuff and I revel in material things, however much I wish I didn't. Details of dresses lined in a wardrobe 'like so many unfulfilled promises', exquisite art, theatre, food, houses. It's an orgy of aristocratic detail the inherent dizziness of which plays into the ultimate catastrophe and the spiralling fall. It's about climbing a neverending ladder to the stars and not being able to appreciate the world in between. The writing is marvellous, the emotions raw. Oh, what a treat that was.
    • 4/5
      Undine Spragg, a woman of powerful and thoughtless beauty in the Paris Hilton school of vulgarity, must arouse the disgust and impatience of all decent readers, even while arousing their curiosity as to how far, this time, she might be willing to go to achieve her ends. Wharton's intention in this tragicomic novel was to critique the weakness of the established ruling classes, as exemplified by the husband of Undine who commits suicide, in the face of the challenge from a vulgar breed of interlopers who sought out society to realize their ambitions for place and power. Of all the most revolting qualities of Undine, apart from her indifference to the husband she leads to commit suicide, must be her attitude towards her children, whom she does not scruple to use as political footballs in her quest for recognition and acceptance. Fortunately, she meets, in her last husband, a dangerous and breathtakingly materialistic man who is thoroughly her match.
    • 4/5
      The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton tells the story of Undine Spragg, a Midwestern girl who attempts to scale the heights of New York City society. Undine is one of the most unique characters I have come across. Beautiful, selfish, and ignorant. She is terribly spoiled and seems incapable of understanding the consequences of her actions. She has no empathy and leaves a wake of damaged lives behind her. She repulsed me with her nastiness, yet I had to read on and find out what she was going to do next. As we follow Undine through first one husband and then another, I kept waiting for her to learn a life lesson or two, but instead she always seems to think that her wishes must come first, that money should always be available to her and that her beauty entitled her to anything she wanted. Undine always seems to get what she wanted, but she also was quickly dissatisfied. Motherhood did nothing either mature her and I felt very sorry for her son, Paul. Wharton never wavered in keeping Undine true to her vision, even at the end of the book, the reader is given a glimpse of Undine that allows us to know that she will never be satisfied with the status quo. Wharton delivers her story beautifully and uses her wit and insight to give us a sharp look at upper crust society as the nouveau riche come up against the old guard. I enjoyed this book immensely and will keep Undine Spragg on the memory shelf alongside of Scarlett O’Hara and Becky Sharp.