Edith Whartons The Custom of the Country :: Edith Wharton Custom country Essays

Edith Whartons The customs of the CountryIn The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton weaves business and greed into the society of her original. Undine, the heroine of the novel, has insatiate wants, complete disregard for anyone elses needs and frightening precision in getting what she desires. Although the novel very rarely treads into the offices of Wall Street and and alludes to the business practices making and breaking the characters, business is brought into the parlor and even bedroom of Undine Spragg,She had done this incredible thing, and she had done it from motive that seemed, at the time, as clear, as logical, as free from the distorting mists of sentimentality, as any of her fathers fiscal enterprises. It had been a bold move, but it had been as carefully calculated as the happiest Wall Street stroke. She had gone away with Peter because, after the fateful scene in which she had put her power to the test, to yield to him seemed the surest means of victory. (p.22 9)In this passage she goes over the recent unfavorable events of divorcing her sickly husband and then, flexile her respectability, goes about with Peter Van Degen. She describes this play with only regret that she had been thwarted in her plans. The language of this reflection is all business, a disturbing subject field of the novel. She does not feel even compassion for the hard-working husband who forfeited his health to give her what he could, and thinks of her relationship with Van Degen as a endorse of cat and mouse. Undine and her comrades of the nouveau riche social climbers embody the sense of the modern American woman, so effected by the commerce infused atmosphere, they become their own kind of entrepreneurs. feel for husbands they go about their work with precise study and in Undines case, careful emulation, hoping for a glamorous lifestyle for which their husbands will merely cater a good name and unlimited funds. This passage exemplifies Undines philosophica l system on how to go about life by calculating and trading. Undine in her constant need to emulate and fit in, takes from the business background of the novel the same skills and puts them to use in her own selfish plots.