Edith Wharton: The Custom Of The Country

[student]

Hello all, Titania and me have different views about the Custom of the Country, so i find it better to make a thread to discuss this important novel..
The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton's great novel published in 1913, the same year of Wharton's divorce..
The Custom of the Country tells the story of the beautiful and unconventional Undine Spragg from Apix City, whose family is not of important social name, yet they get the money that enables them to take their daughter to settle in New York's best Avenue.She is tutored to attain money and social prominence. Undine grows up to be an ambitious woman who wants to enjoy life to tread on social conventions and traditions. Sometimes, she is even a heartless opportunist who tries to get what she wants to the extent that she exploits her husbands and the sense of motherhood. She is the product of her society which values money above all other things. It is the moneyed commercial capitalist society which depends on exploitation for the success of its individuals.

[student]

Well I bellieve that it's not Undine's fault to be like this, but it's the fault of society. If we trace Undine's life from the beginning we'll find her partent have raised her to ambitious in the sense of being careless of what price her ambition may cost..her parents "passionately resolved that Undine should have what she wanted."
then it is her parents who make her divorce Moffatt just to take her to New York to find a rich husband who can introduce them to the New York society, they never care that she may love him or anything else.
And then her husbands..Ralph wants her to be a piece of art, a source of inspiration, not a human being. And De Chelles wants her to be a copy of his mother..they know her from the beginning.. she never lies about her ambitions, yet they accept to marry her.

[SilverSeason]

Undine grows up to be an ambitious woman who wants to enjoy life to tread on social conventions and traditions. Sometimes, she is even a heartless opportunist who tries to get what she wants to the extent that she exploits her husbands and the sense of motherhood. She is the product of her society which values money above all other things. It is the moneyed commercial capitalist society which depends on exploitation for the success of its individuals.

I don't think you and Titania are all that far apart. Wharton wrote a great novel about ambition in a woman. And in a man, for that matter. Elmer Moffat, Undine's first and fourth husband, also has ambition combined with ruthless indifference to the impact on others. His ambition plays out in the market place, while hers plays out in her marriages. If Wharton is demonstrating that Undine is what she is because she is an ambitious woman, that does not condemn Undine as a woman but as an ambition person. Moffat is also ambitious and ruthless, but people reading the novel seem to go right past that point.

Ambition in either gender should be controlled by moral principles and human feeling.

[student]

I don't think you and Titania are all that far apart. Wharton wrote a great novel about ambition in a woman. And in a man, for that matter. Elmer Moffat, Undine's first and fourth husband, also has ambition combined with ruthless indifference to the impact on others. His ambition plays out in the market place, while hers plays out in her marriages. If Wharton is demonstrating that Undine is what she is because she is an ambitious woman, that does not condemn Undine as a woman but as an ambition person. Moffat is also ambitious and ruthless, but people reading the novel seem to go right past that point.

Ambition in either gender should be controlled by moral principles and human feeling.[/quote]
Hi,
First thank you for participating..
Well then we agree that ambition is a good quality, but does it justify Undine's actions? In my opinion it's not ambition that draws Undine to act in that way (i mean being ruthless even with her son).. no it's society, isn't it?!! Doesn't she like Moffatt at the beginning even when he was not rich "she had been drawn to Elmer Moffatt from the first? she drove away with him..." yet her parents and society after them required her to divorce him and marry another?

[SilverSeason]

Well then we agree that ambition is a good quality, but does it justify Undine's actions? In my opinion it's not ambition that draws Undine to act in that way (i mean being ruthless even with her son).. no it's society, isn't it?!! Doesn't she like Moffatt at the beginning even when he was not rich "she had been drawn to Elmer Moffatt from the first? she drove away with him..." yet her parents and society after them required her to divorce him and marry another?

Ambition is a good quality, but within limits, like a lot of other good qualities. I do agree that she is drawn to Moffatt from the first -- before he had the money and power that came later -- but perhaps it was like being drawn to like. Moffatt knew what he wanted at a time when Undine was too young to have figured it out. Later, each was out to use the other, but there was still a mutual attraction.

Society set the terms within which she could act, but did not cause her to behave as she did. That came from within her own character.

Our discussion exemplifies that I appreciate about Edith Wharton. Her characters are real people and we react to them as real people.

[titania7]

When I am able to gather my thoughts and express them with even the slightest degree of profundity, I will join in on this marvelous discussion.
In the meantime, I am reading all the posts with great interest ;).

Oh. . .since I am not yet ready to contribute more of my opinions, I will share this insightful passage from The Custom of the Country:


Undine's estimate of people had always been based on their apparent power of getting what they wanted--provided it came under the category of things she understood wanting. Success was beauty and romance to her.

More soon. . .

~Titania