The Custom of the Country

Continuing my acknowledgement of the sesquicentennial of Edith Wharton's birth, I now take a look at another of her gilded age novels, the 1913 book The Custom of the Country. Lesser known than her other great works (it has never been made into a movie that I know of), the novel is nonetheless a stinging and often mordantly funny chronicle of the social-climbing Undine Spragg, a girl from the Midwest who desperately wants the better things, but is never satisfied. At the end of the book, when we think we're settling into a happy ending, we read: "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."

Undine is a great creation, but certainly not a sympathetic one. She and her family come from the fictional Midwest city of Apex, but have moved to New York City for her to get into society. She has to learn the rules of the upper crust of New York, mostly from a nearly illiterate masseuse who works for her mother. These early chapters are often very funny as the protocols and standards are spelled out: "For four or five generations it had been the rule of both houses that a young fellow should go to Columbia or Harvard, read law, and then lapse into a more or less cultivated inaction." Or, "'Don't you know it's the thing in the best society to pretend that girls can't do anything without their mother's permission? You just remember that, Undine. You mustn't accept invitations from gentlemen without you say you've got to ask your mother first.'"

Undine ends up marrying Ralph Marvell, from an old family, but she finds that he doesn't have as much money as she thinks he does, and they end up getting most of their money from her father. She decides to divorce him after having an affair with Peter Van Degen, the wife of Ralph's cousin. But her coldness to Ralph during his illness puts off Van Degen. She ends up in Europe and marries a marquis, but he, too, is cash poor, and refuses to sell his family's treasures, which she can't understand. In one of the great passages that highlights the difference between Americans and Europeans, the marquis explodes: "'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!'"

Lurking through the book like a shadow is Elmer Moffat, who knew Undine back in Apex. We eventually learn that he and Undine were married for two weeks but her father had the marriage annulled. Elmer represents the typical American, he may say "ain't," but he has common sense and is good at business. He says, "Millionaires always collect something; but I've got to collect my millions first." He looks out for Undine, but also for her satellites. Ralph, needing money in order to keep his son by Undine, invests with Elmeer, but though the deal will make Elmer a billionaire, it is not quick enough for Ralph, and when Ralph learns that Elmer and Undine were married, it makes him take a dramatic step.

I found this book mostly a delight, although there are some soggy sections. But there are gems like: "'To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do with it.'"

Or this description of a dinner party: "About them sat other pallid families, richly dressed, and silently eating their way through a bill-of-fare which seemed to have ransacked the globe for gastronomic incompatibilities; and in the middle of the room a knot of equally pallid waiters, engaged in languid conversation, turned their backs by common consent on the persons they were supposed to serve."

I suppose I'm fascinated with books and films about the idle rich, because I want to be among them. But of course they are so exasperating as characters. "If Mrs. Marvell were contemplating a Newport season it was necessary that she should be fortified to meet it. In such cases he often recommended a dash to Paris or London, just to tone up the nervous system."

The Custom of the Country may not be Wharton's most famous novel, but it is an enjoyable one, despite the frequent desire to thrash the lead character. But I suppose this makes us feel superior and allows us to tut-tut her, which makes us feel better.