The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country is one of her most famous novels, first published in 1913. Drawing on the society life she personally experienced, Wharton offers a dark portrait of the follies of the American upper classes and the emptiness of their world. At the same time, she shows how hard it can be to escape from their web of rules and conventions, no matter how strongly one desires it.

The novel’s focus is on Undine Spragg: beautiful, ambitious, and grasping, she is one of the new nouveau riche flooding the social scene of New York City. Undine is determined to become an upper-class society woman and she is willing to do whatever it takes to rise up the social ladder. After marrying the wealthy and naive Ralph Marvell, she sets her sights on Raymond de Chelles, a French aristocrat, believing that if she can become his wife, she will gain the station she seeks.

But Undine’s attempt to buy her way into the elite world of high society fails, for a number of reasons. First, there is her ruthless and insensitive nature, which alienates the sophisticated circles of New York’s upper classes. She is also too young and unschooled in the subtle tactics of high society. Her beauty and confidence is a far cry from the established grandmotherly figures who rule the social scene.

As a result, Undine fails to secure the social place she so desperately wanted and as a consequence, her marriage to Raymond falls apart. She is ultimately forced to return to her first husband, Ralph, now a successful businessman. Though being with Ralph provides Undine with financial and social security, it is not enough for her. She is determined to break away from Ralph, restart her career as a social climber, and try again for social status.

The novel ends on an ambiguous note, leaving the reader to wonder if Undine will succeed. The narrative presents Undine’s story as evidence of a “custom” in which people of the upper classes seek status and position through marriage and money, at the expense of emotions and human connections. It also highlights how women are particularly vulnerable to this custom, which is enforced by society’s conventions and judgments.

The Custom of the Country is an important work of literature, demonstrating Wharton’s talent for conveying the hypocrisy, materialism, and cruelty of America’s social and economic system. Undine serves as the novel’s foil in the sense that she is both naïve and calculating, a representation of the wide reaches of this system. This is a complex and thought-provoking story that shows readers what is possible when one’s pursuit of status overrides everything else.