Blog Nº 32
“She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.”
I have already read two of Edith Wharton’s most famed novels, The Age of Innocence (1920) and The House of Mirth (1905), so I had high hopes for The Custom of the Country. Like many of Wharton’s works the subject is marriage, meaning that the subtext is divorce. The Custom of the Country thrusts us into pre-World War One New York, focusing on an aristocratic society struggling to maintain its old word social conventions in the face of modernity and new ideas.
The novel takes place over several years of the early twentieth century and centres on the beautiful but amoral young woman Undine Spragg. Undine and her parents have just moved from the Mid-West town of Apex to New York City, and her goal is to marry a rich man admired in society to kickstart her social career. Though divorce is possible at this time, it is heavily frowned upon by the upper echelons of society and yet, by the end of The Custom of the Country Undine has succeeded in dissolving three marriages in her pursuit of social “triumph” and is starting to become dissatisfied with her fourth. Undine is single-minded in her goal and is indifferent to who she may hurt along the way. Her various exploits take us from New York to France and back, providing an eye-opening look into society, respectability and the female struggle in this era.
Many have drawn comparisons between Undine Spragg and Becky Sharp, the central character of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848). Like Undine, Becky comes from outside society but is determined to marry her way in; she is ruthless, cold and uses men to get to the top, and like Undine, she reluctantly bears a son who she would go on to neglect. However, unlike in Vanity Fair, there are no moralising elements in The Custom of the Country. No normative friends, no narratorial passages condemning the corruption of the anti-heroine – the literary tradition is closer to that of Trollope in The Way We Live Now (1875), which he wrote as a reproach of the financial scandals of the 1870s and how they revealed the levels of dishonesty and corruption present in respectable society.
Undine’s first ‘high society’ marriage is to Ralph Marvell, who comes from an Old New York Society aristocratic family. For Undine, marriage is not about getting a husband; it is instead an entry into the world of money, society and position, which to her are everything. Frankly, who her husband is does not matter too much to Undine, as long as he can fund her lifestyle and is respectable enough to allow her a life of amusement in the right social circle. Undine uses her dazzling beauty to manipulate men into doing what she wants, and the artistic, intelligent Ralph finds out too late that Undine has no interest in intellectual or creative pursuits and that she is mercenary and extravagant. However, Wharton critiques Ralph as much as she does Undine – he sees her as a blank page on which he will create his ideal wife who will fit right in to his fantasy life. As with her second husband, the French aristocrat Raymond de Chelles, once Ralph pierces the veil of her beautiful façade that he himself has imagined based on her striking good looks, he realises in a moment as comic as it is tragic, that there is not much substance to Undine at all.
Though Undine is not a likeable character, we can draw some comparisons between her and Wharton. When The Custom of the Country was published in 1913 Wharton was newly divorced after a long and unhappy marriage and she had permanently settled in France, where she would remain until her death. Undine is completely enamoured with Paris and it is there she sets her sights on the aristocrat de Chelles, and when we hear of her string of divorces and the fact that she somehow continues to be accepted in society, there is undoubtedly a hint of admiration in the narrative voice.
It is also interesting to note the cultural differences between the United States and France when Undine marries de Chelles. In some ways they are portrayed as very positive; speaking of America, a character named Charles Bowen comments that society marriages are unhappy because men take little to no interest in what their wives have to say, and do not let them in to the world of business. Instead, they furnish their wives with material things which they in turn pretend constitute a happy marriage to their fellow female friends. In France, women are deemed to have much more intellectual independence, and men respect and are interested in women with opinions, knowledge and academic and cultural interests, suggesting that marriage is more of a partnership. It is this fundamental difference that is ultimately the last straw in the internal disintegration of Undine’s marriage to de Chelles – once he realises there is no intellectuality beneath her ‘beautiful façade’, he becomes indifferent to her. However, this intellectual independence does not allow French women to escape the everyday tedium that comes with marriage – Undine’s expectations of a dazzling life in Paris with Raymond come crashing down when she is forced to remain at the de Chelles’ country estate for ten months of the year, fulfilling her wifely duties and always having to submit to the will and age-old traditions of the family. It is this portion of the book which displays French social customs as even more stifling than those of New York, and it is perhaps the only part in which we feel Undine has some justification for wanting out of the marriage.
Interestingly, Undine’s first and last marriages are to fellow Apex alumni Elmer Moffatt. The first time was a youthful elopement hastily terminated by Undine’s parents before their move to New York, and the second time was when Moffatt had made it big in business in New York and Undine had divorced de Chelles. Moffatt is of the same background as Undine and is abundantly wealthy, so provides her with everything she had ever wanted throughout the entirety of the novel, yet even then her inexhaustible selfishness sees her wanting more still at the close of the novel.
The Custom of the Country is a sharp and fascinating commentary on early twentieth century society, and expertly demonstrates how veils of respectability hide a world of self-centred ambition and a mutual disconnection between men and women. Marriage is portrayed as universally unsatisfying, while the triumph of divorce as an escape is only ephemeral, as it leads only to the next disappointing marriage. Though it may seem too cynical, I would definitely recommend this book because it forces you to realise the cutthroat nature of people trying to make it in the world through a string of scandals.
Happy reading,
Imo x
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