Vile tale dressed up in Wharton's brilliant prose. Several times, from early on to the last part of the book, I nearly gave up on it. Indeed, I wished I hadn't read it.

Wharton's "Magnum Opus," as she considered this one, is wildly different from her other works. The central character, Undine Spragg, is a gold-digging narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. Undie, as she's called, works her way through one marriage after another, leaving a trail of devastation and even death in her wake.

This might be the only time I can remember in a novel wishing to reach through the pages and dope-slap the heroine. But by the time her child came along and the neglect and abuse toward him was recorded, I was so disgusted I was more than ready for the book to end. But it didn't. It kept going on and on, with the main character unchanged, unrepentant, learning nothing and gaining no wisdom in her self-absorption.

For a piece of literature one hundred years old, the disregard for marriage and the egocentric nature of the main characters hit a little too close to modern home. I know a couple people in "real life" who mirror Undine, and they've duped half the population like she has, while those around them suffer immeasurably. Perhaps this was the chief reason I couldn't appreciate the book - it was a sordid depiction of the worst of modern America.

Wharton's assessment and definition of the "custom of the country," given midway through the book, is/was only a slice of American society's problems facing marriage and the differences between the sexes. The book in its humanism describes only a fraction of the real issue at hand in not understanding or honoring the nature of covenant, nor the selfishness of at least one party that is always the root cause in divorce.

The unanswered question Wharton poses that I was most curious about in all of this related to Mr. Spragg. Wharton alluded throughout the novel several times to his masonic emblem and the occult. I kept waiting to hear the tie-in between Undine's manipulative ways and her father's freemasonry, which would have been interesting (generational curse?). But, that end was left dangling.

All in all, Wharton's writing is genius, but this particular story was too awful and depressing, and could have been shortened by about two hundred pages. Moreover, in one century, the degenerative tendencies Wharton describes in the nouveaux riche have descended full-force to the commoners in the population as well - who, ironically, often can't "afford" to be divorced, but do it anyway.

Throughout the entire novel, I just kept thinking of my youngest son’s favorite childhood book— If You Give A Mouse a Cookie.

That’s the entire storyline, right up until the ending.

Undine Spragg is thoroughly unlikeable, but she is the most committed mouse in this book where the newly rich meet the Guilded Age Society.

Amazingly this century-old classic holds up and despite not liking the main character, I couldn’t help but respect her brutal Scarlett O’Hara qualities!

Oh my Gawd! Undine Spragg, the main character in this novel (certainly no heroine, hardly even a proper protagonist) must be the biggest bitch I’ve ever met in literature (not a word I use lightly either, or often). Put together Scarlett O’Hara, Rosamund Vincy and Madame Bovary – and multiply that by about a thousand, and you have Undine Spragg.

It was strangely compelling to read about such a wanna-be, upper-class socialite from around the turn of the (20th) century New York, and I just hope that Edith Wharton compiled Undine’s character from multiple real people and a good dose of her own imagination. It is beautifully written, like anything by Wharton, and like the other books I’ve read by her, this novel is a cynical but no doubt realistic depiction of some of the people that made up the set that Wharton herself was a part of: their ideas of proper behavior, important people/valuable connections and jet-set way of gadding about Europe when they’re too bored in New York.

Given the three well-known female characters I’ve compared her with above, it is probably evident what kind of story we’re dealing with and what happens in Undine’s life as she ploughs her way through different people’s lives, including her parents, husbands, friends, her own child, in the attempt to get what she wants. In addition, the surrounding characters give us a good idea of what values and customs were crucial to these upper-crust people (hence the title, I assume), and how utterly superficial and materialistic their lifestyles were.

Due to Wharton’s beautiful and cutting prose it never becomes cliché or melodramatic or, God help me, Candace Bushnell-like as one or two reviewers have taken it upon themselves to assert. It becomes a classic which, because of Wharton’s remarkable skills of observation and style and structure, is just as applicable to today’s society as the one in which she herself lived.

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.

Wow, Edith Wharton writes an incredible tale.

Even though the heroine was a truly spoilt brat, I needed to know more and more about her and her journey through New York society in the Gilded Age.

A wonderful, wonderful read.

The "Custom of the Country " didn’t have that much of an impact on me as "The Age of Innocence" did, but that’s probably because I went in expecting another forbidden-romance/ breaking society’s conventions- type novel and what I got was wildly different to that.

Seriously, Undine’s behavior and her treatment towards everyone was hard to digest at times, with moments being where I couldn’t even go further and had to stop reading for a few days. But Wharton’s writing skills are indeed unsurpassable and the last few chapters were unputdownable with the end of the novel culminating at such a height of irony that I couldn’t help laughing out loud.

Even though it was hard to imagine people such as Undine existing, it certainly didn’t feel impossible and at times it was scary to imagine falling into the traps that her poor husbands fell into.

This is certainly not a romantic novel in my opinion but more like a warning letter, which doesn’t shy away from showing the ugly face of upper-class society and to what lengths a person can go to integrate themselves in the coveted "inner circle".

The treatment towards Paul and his righteous rage at all the injustice done to him and the few people he loved was the hardest thing to read

Alas, Undine! What a fatal, restless passion you have--not for men themselves--but for their admiration, and for the money and possessions they might bring you. You do so love your ropes of pearls!



And how utterly miserable you make yourself and everyone around you. Can anyone in this glittering world ever satisfy your insatiable lust for more and still more things? Will you settle for a fine apartment, perhaps on Fifth Avenue--surely the West Side is not enough?



Or perhaps you'd fancy a grand Hôtel in France and a Château in the countryside? But no, the tapestries are so dusty and it's all such a bore!



And who is the man who can satisfy you? The sensitive Ralph Marvell from a patrician New York family?



Or the handsome, determined French aristocrat, Raymond De Chelles?



But then...there is the crude new American, Elmer Moffatt, a financier and social climber every bit as ruthless as Undine herself...



The Custom of the Country is an irresistible mix of grand soap opera and social satire simply packed with unforgettable characters, locations, and glorious descriptions. Home furnishings, architecture, dress silks or feathered hats--every detail is caressed with an acquisitive eye.

As Undine climbs ever higher I delighted in Glided Age Washington Square with it's old-money families...



Elegant, intimate salons filled with fine paintings, china vases and delicate gilded chairs...



The fading grandeur of Old Europe is keenly drawn, as is the invasion of New Money Americans eager to appropriate the 'finer things' without really understanding them.



I flew through The Custom of the Country in two sittings and I can't wait to read more Edith Wharton.

P.S. The portraits are all by John Singer Sargent, reputedly the inspiration for Claud Walsingham Popple, who paints a portrait of Undine.

ok so i am rating this three but i love this book. in fact, i am only rating it three as a knee jerk reaction or my feeble attempt at vengeance against the main character who i hate but it's a clever fucking book and ugh i am too emotionally involved so i want to but i can't bring myself to rate this higher

Such an odd name--even after all those pages Undine still didn't look like a real name to me.

With all her faults, to me the most glaring was that she didn't learn or plan anything. She didn't even read! It was just clothes, clothes, clothes to her (maybe jewelry) and having a good time. You'd think with having a life of leisure (especially after she married the count) she could have learned more about business or finance and "suggested" to her husbands what to do. After all, she bargained down the Parisian dressmakers, she could have handled real estate equally well (especially if the landlord was a man.)

And that whole mess about getting a divorce first from Ralph without having her next step insured....just bad planning.

I guess Scarlett from Gone With the Wind comes to mind as someone who could have made things work, and the timing would have been about the same (late 1880s.)

There was a quote explaining the title, and it was how American husbands don't want to bother their wives with their business lives but they really should.

The "In" Crowd
By Dobie Gray

n  I'm in with the in crowd
I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd
And I know what the in crowd knows
Any time of the year, don't you hear?
Dressin' fine, makin' time
We breeze up and down the street
We get respect from the people we meet
They make way day or night
They know the in crowd is out of sight
I'm in with the in crowd
I know every latest dance
When you're in with the in crowd
It's easy to find romancen

The heroine of Wharton’s The Custom of the Country would have been born a few decades too early to have known this song from the 1960s, but I couldn’t help thinking of it as I read about her social-climbing and romantic exploits. Undine Spragg navigates her way out of small town America in the early years of the 20th century, landing in New York, then the fashionable capitals of Europe, always chasing the next stylish clique, or what she has been told lately is the “in” thing -- until she gets wind of something better. Then it’s “Ooooh, shiny!” and she’s off again after that. She would have been contemporary with the early years of the show Downton Abbey and I kept imagining her manipulating her way into the drawing or dining rooms there, and the subtle eye-rolling the Crawleys would have done when confronted with this American upstart.

Beautiful and much indulged by her parents, the early chapters of this book reminded me of Mildred Pierce’s fanatical devotion to her daughter’s whims and desires, and I thought, this can’t turn out well. It doesn’t.

It’s a credit to the writing of the brilliant Edith Wharton that she’s able to keep us fascinated by the mental processes and actions of this supremely self-serving and shallow woman, even while we despise her behavior. Others have said that Wharton makes Undine a “sympathetic” character. I don’t think even Wharton can do that. I didn’t find her sympathetic, but Undine is intriguing and getting inside her head the way we do is an adventure worth having. While never liking her, I still wanted to see what she would do next, what would happen because of it, and how she would rationalize it in her pretty, narcissistic little head.

Of course, the limitations society put on women of that era is a common theme in Wharton’s work. About the only means women of that time had of gaining power and controlling their destiny was through linking up with powerful men. This might be done by leveraging money of their own to make a good “match” or by their knowing how to use their attractiveness, if they were lucky enough to have that resource available to them. Countess Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, as well-to-do women in that era and environment, have similar challenges, but entirely different ways of dealing with them. At least they try to bring some level of integrity to the situation. Then there’s Undine. She’s no rocket scientist, but she knows how to weaponize her beauty to get what she wants. Not at all intellectual and easily bored by the details of “business” and how wealth is created, she compensates with a killer instinct about how to manipulate people and has none of the pesky moral qualms that would prevent her from doing so.

I love House of Mirth a lot, and The Age of Innocence, of course. But I think I’d rank The Custom of the Country ahead of The Age of Innocence in my own enjoyment tiering, in spite of TAoI’s Pulitzer status. This one and its characters were more vivid to me, more intriguing and compelling, in spite of the fact I was put off by Undine’s moral character, or lack thereof. I don’t know exactly where she would fall in the modern DSM diagnostic system, but I’m sure a good therapist could have had a field day with a patient like this.

Poor Ralph. Poor little Paul.

And the prose, of course, is stellar. My God, Edith Wharton could write.

The In Crowd, Dobie Gray, 1964 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWO-...

The In Crowd cover by Bryan Ferry, 2007 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRH1X...

Despite this being just over a hundred years old now (published 1913), it feels completely modern as Wharton casts a disenchanted eye over American mores and the products of American consumerist culture.

Undine Spragg (hilariously, her nouveau riche parents named her for a curling tong her father invented!), is the ultimate consumer and believes her beauty entitles her to wealth, material possessions and social status. Uneducated though not stupid, she manipulates her way through the book, collecting and discarding husbands, abandoning her parents once her father can no longer afford to send her an allowance, and having little time for her son, all on her way to her ideal 'deserved' position: at the top of society.

I've seen Undine compared to Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) but the difference is that Becky really is sharp and is more alive than either the virtuous but wet Amelia or the gallery of grotesques and rogues who people Thackeray's world. Wharton's vision is different: Undine isn't an anti-heroine, we're not on her side, and we watch, chilled, as she progresses through the book. Wharton is a fine enough writer not to make her protagonist a monster, and we have some compassion for her inadequacies : books bore her, art is a mystery to her soul, love appears intermittently but wanes all too quickly, and however many high-fashion gowns and hats she has, accessorised with diamonds and pearls, she's still unsatisfied and hungry for the next big thing, always receding, which can make her happy. She genuinely can't and doesn't understand where she's going wrong - even by the end,  married to an American railroad billionaire, she's still not happy and is searching for the next thing to make her life perfect.

Wharton's writing is elegant and unflinching, vivid and scenic as she shows us Undine and her progress over a ten year period. There is some 'culture clash' stuff (Americans vs Europeans, Old New York vs new Wall Street) and there's no-one here that we can admire - but that's not, I think, Wharton's aim - instead, she gives us a coolly analytical and prescient view of what happens to a society that is all about exteriority, social status, money and possessions - everything, it seems is available to be bought and sold, and Undine is the result.

Edith Wharton once again manages to make rich people problems fun and compelling. The characters were ambiguous, if not detestable at times. The ending was less melodramatic than the ending of The House of Mirth but much more effective and impactful in my opinion.