The Custom of the Country

Undine Spragg, a beautiful and monstrously self-centered young woman from the fictional midwestern town of Apex, arrives in New York with a single ambition: to climb as high as money and marriage can carry her. Edith Wharton follows her through a chain of husbands and divorces, from the old-money Ralph Marvell to a proud French aristocrat to the ruthless financier Elmer Moffatt, each discarded the moment he stops being useful. Sharp and often bitingly funny, the novel skewers a Gilded Age culture in which marriage has become a transaction and appetite recognizes no limit. Wharton’s portrait of Undine remains one of the great studies of American ambition and its costs. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.