The Custom of the Country

For as much as I detest Undine Spragg (and I really do, she's a terrible woman) I enjoyed this novel. I cannot, however, see me reading it again for pleasure.

What a wild ride. Inanity after insanity after twist and turn--Undine is insatiable chaotic good to a fault and watching her wreak havoc in 1910s New York Society was incredibly fun.

Wharton was completely ahead of her time, as she talks very frankly about divorce and terribly rigid societal expectations people wished they could run from. (e.g., Wharton throws out the term divorce-colony and it's Sioux Falls, Dakota; a divorce colony to encourage women to move West in exchange for a divorce.)

Undine's world is so vibrant and ever changing as she ascends the Society ladder a lá Rebecca Sharp. She looks ruin in the face many times and somehow keeps carving a path forward. The incredibly detailed world-building made this one such a page turner.

Watching Undine go head to head with Elmer Moffatt at different points in the story was thrilling. At times I underestimated Undine, Moffatt, or both. The rest of the poor souls around them are just collateral damage in their wake.

This story is about what we think will makes us happy, the boxes we put ourselves, and a cautionary tale of what happens when we look for external answers for internal problems. Great read.

Undine Spragg relies upon her beauty to bring her the things she wants in life—clothes, jewelry, friends, parties, admiration, respectability. And her beauty does bring her men, but each man who comes into her life, she soon realizes, is not able to bring all the things she wants, and so, after a short amount of time, she quickly discards each man for another. But discarding a man brings consequences, too, and often these result in loss of one or more of the things she wants. No man seems capable of giving her everything. She is perpetually dissatisfied.

Though Undine is markedly limited in her interests in life, what a complex character Wharton creates in Undine Spragg. I couldn't help both hating and loving Undine, being alternately drawn to and repulsed by her. And the poor men who ended up with her...how quickly most of them realized the terrible mistake they had made in choosing Undine.

A few quotes from the book:

“Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses.”

“Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience. The task of opening new windows in her mind was inspiring enough to give him infinite patience; and he would not yet own to himself that her pliancy and variety were imitative rather than spontaneous.”

“She had found out that she had given herself to the exclusive and the dowdy when the future belonged to the showy and the promiscuous...“

‘It's normal for a man to work hard for a woman—what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it.” “To tell Undine? She'd be bored to death if he did!” “Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again—I don't mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in THEM.”‘

“The flame of love that had played about his passion for his wife had died down to its embers; all the transfiguring hopes and illusions were gone, but they had left an unquenchable ache for her nearness, her smile, her touch.”

“The turnings of life seldom show a sign-post; or rather, though the sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing.”

“(H)is musings on man's relation to his self imposed laws had shown him how little human conduct is generally troubled about its own sanctions.”

“If only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable.”

"”A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is, and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if there's time for both.”

‘“And you're all alike,” he exclaimed, “every one of you. You come among us from a country we don't know, and can't imagine, a country you care for so little that before you've been a day in ours you've forgotten the very house you were born in—if it wasn't torn down before you knew it! You come among us speaking our language and not knowing what we mean; wanting the things we want, and not knowing why we want them; aping our weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care about—you come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as paper, where the streets haven't had time to be named, and the buildings are demolished before they're dry, and the people are as proud of changing as we are of holding to what we have—and we're fools enough to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick up our slang you understand anything about the things that make life decent and honourable for us!”‘

“She could never be with people who had all the things she envied without being hypnotized into the belief that she had only to put her hand out to obtain them, and all the unassuaged rancours and hungers of her early days in West End Avenue came back with increased acuity. She knew her wants so much better now, and was so much more worthy of the things she wanted!”

“Little as she understood of the qualities that made Moffatt what he was, the results were of the kind most palpable to her. He used life exactly as she would have used it in his place. Some of his enjoyments were beyond her range, but even these appealed to her because of the money that was required to gratify them.”

And, my favorite quote, from the end of the book:
“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.”

Three stars because of Edith Wharton's writing. She just has a way conveying scenes beautifully while giving fantastic characterizations. If not for that, I would probably barely give it 1 star. I don't think there was a single likable character in the group. Well maybe Paul, but he was only like 9 years old by the end so he doesn't really count. I don't think there was a single moment when I didn't want to push Undine off a cliff in the Alps or off a ship as it crossed the Atlantic. Not a single redeeming quality. The men were not much better. They all let her trample all over themselves. I nearly stopped reading this one and in some ways wish I had. Not a book I'd recommend unless you're a big fan of Wharton.

Another beautiful Wharton heroine that expects more of high society than high society seems to be willing to give her. Yet while The House of Mirth's Lily Bart makes us root for and shed tears for her, Undine Spragg isn't likeable at all. She's a self-absorbed social climber, lacking all empathy, even for her own family members. While she's craving a world of spending and constant entertainment, she slowly absorbs social etiquette by imitating others. She makes the mistake - twice - to fall for old money and titles, before realizing a world stuck in old customs is too rigid for her needs. Yet luckily for her, there's the new ‘custom of the country' that allows her to reinvent herself again and again. Only to find herself wanting again, wanting something else, something more.

Yes! Edith Wharton! I guess I'll have to read more.