The Custom of the Country

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY marks Edith Wharton's return to the satiric tone of THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. She follows bored, passive Ralph Marvell, a gentle young man with the heart of a poet, as he squanders his family's modest inheritance in an attempt to find happiness. But the real star of Wharton's narrative is the beautiful, ambitious, and blatantly amoral schemer, Undine Spragg, who manipulates her nouveau-riche Midwestern parents into taking her East. There she rampages through New York society in search of a wealthy husband--who turns out, disastrously, to be Ralph Marvell. Wharton savages the vulgar Spraggs, who live only for money and what it can bring, while appreciating the culture and traditional values of the old guard. But her satiric eye spares no one: with the genteel Marvell family, Wharton illustrates how completely a corrupt society can affect individual characters no matter how they try to resist. Considered one of Edith Wharton's greatest novels, THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is also notable for the author's understanding of the power of the media--of gossip and sensationalism--even in the 1870s.