well written, but also tedious description of moneyed people in the early 20's. very few likable characters. even though i was very familiar with ethan frome for many years, this book held surprises for me. i certainly learned more history than i needed to learn. ( )

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton should be subtitled “The Social Climbing Adventures of Undine Spragg”. (Yup, that is the name of the main character; her parents’ pet name for her is, I kid you not, “Undie".) Her birthplace is the small Midwestern city of Apex where her businessman father is doing fairly well. Somewhat mysterious circumstances involving Undine bring the family to New York City. They live in a semi-upscale hotel and this provides a sufficient launching pad for Undine to propel herself into the upper echelons of New York Society, and beyond. She is aided in this endeavor by her stunning good looks and the advice of Mrs. Heeney, a masseuse/manicurist who services the Spragg women, and who acts as a kind of Gilded Age social media watcher. Naturally, Undine intends to reach her goals via marriage, and off she goes. Unlike other literary social climbers, e.g. Becky Sharpe or Lucy Steele, Undine possesses no sympathetic qualities whatsoever. Having been spoiled rotten by her parents, she is a bottomless pit of selfishness, egomania, and greed. Much of the psychological profile Wharton paints of her is shocking, and the tolerance for and indulgence of her monstrous behavior borders on the unbelievable. She also causes (and cares not one bit about) a lot of pain and suffering to others. On the other hand, look at the era we live in today. She would probably get elected to public office. This novel is a masterful character study and critique of American values. ( )

This was a tough one. Wharton is such a skilled writer with a keen observant eye for her social milieu, but I really think she missed her mark with Custom. I've had an ongoing argument with my partner about whether this could be considered a feminist work; I think it is one of her few novels that is pointedly anti-feminist, and more socially conservative. By creating the monstrous character of Undine Spragg, who is horrible in such an over-the-top way, Wharton seems to be satirizing the social climbers who are willing to trample on relations and customs in order to achieve material success. The older more established New York families seem to be the only ones who see Undine for what she is, and Ralph Marvell is the only truly good person, a tragic hero whose old ideas of marriage are not able to cope with Undine's need for riches and glory.

Some critics have called the novel a satire on marriage and divorce. Undine is a satirical character in that she is a pure consumption machine who has no character arc - she represents the voracious capitalism of the era that corrupts everyone who touches it. Elmer Moffat is the male counterpart, the crude business genius who confidently knows what he wants, which is more stuff. Everyone else resists Undine's corruption, although it is hinted that her neglected son Paul will eventually succumb to the amoral pursuits of his putative parents. ( )

Ghastly though our anti-heroine is, I found it difficult to put down. The end is a one-page triumph for the authot.
In this edition the editor's asterisks are somewhat irritating, leading to endnotes listed by page number, explaining such things as Pegasus was "the winged horse of the muses", which isn't quite the case! ( )

Edith Wharton was did not like the "new rich" who were taking over New York around the turn of the century, and in "The Custom of the Country" she makes it very clear why. The heroine, Undine Spagg, a midwestern beauty who comes to New York in search of the social advancement she has always craved, is not likeable, but she is VERY compelling. The story traces the ups and downs of her quest for the level of social advancement that will finally make her happy. Along the way, the novel pillories the new rich, and holds the old rich up to a regretful examination. The book is a great read -- you may not like Undine, but you do want to find out what she does next -- and extremely witty. Wharton's ability to turn a phrase was unparalleled. I wish someone would -- could -- write a book like this about today's 1%. ( )

Firstly: how can you fail to love a novel whose main character is UNDINE SPAGG? This story of manners and morals in Gilded Age Manhattan and Paris centers on a shallow woman whose beauty entraps the men who strive to install her in their trophy cases. Out of all her suitors, only the point of view of her first husband, Ralph, is heard. In his mundane upper class life, he seeks in Undine a purpose and a direction for himself, realizing too late, and tragically, that she sees nothing beyond improving her social standing and acquiring clothing and jewels. As she continues on her upward trajectory, Undine leaves behind the parents who funded her voyage and her young son. Obstacles in the form of her own transparency and the unforgiving social strictures trip her up, but never for long. The author sees her and the hypocrisy that surrounds her, especially in regards to the place of women of that time, all-powerful at evening soirees but with nothing to do but depend upon the business success of their husbands. A cruel world for sure, but most others are starving in unheated tenements, so it's hard to muster up much sympathy for Undine and her cohort. ( )

For some, the pursuit of the object you desire never leads to peace, but only emptiness. ( )

Meet the character Undine Spraggs, nickname Undie (lol). She's a spoiled rotten young woman who thinks that to succeed in this life, you only have to be beautiful. On the outside. Due to her parents inability to put down a firm foot on her constant "wants," she goes through her shallow, materialistic life using people. Parents are for giving you money, also husbands. If you don't give her enough, she will get rid of you and find a richer one. Her parents move to succeedingly downgraded hotels because of the money drain that is Undine Spraggs.

This is a deliciously-written novel, seriously hard to put down until the bitter end. Edith Wharton is a superb storyteller and observer of humans and their ridiculous foibles. ( )

41. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
editor: Linda Wagner-Martin (introduction and notes, 2006)
published: 1913
format: 384-page Penguin Classic
acquired: July read: Aug 1-30 time reading: 15:29, 2.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic novel theme: Wharton
locations: New York, Paris, and elsewhere in France
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

One of Wharton's better-known novels is a quite fun and disturbing look at the New York City leisure class she was famous for attacking. She is playing with social Darwinism, and looking at the interaction between the those who came to New York and struck it rich on Wall Street and the old moneyed families of New York, often with Dutch sounding names, who are very protective of their turf. (There are a few striking parallels to [The Great Gatsby], a later novel. But this one would be from Daisy's point of view.) The nouveau riche are presented like an invasive species in the more ancient other's habitat. One old-family character is described as having "bratracian" (frog-like) features. His last name is Van Degen. Your smartphone, being a good literary critic, may try to autocorrect that to "degenerate". Another, uselessly poetic, is describe as "a survival", a doomed species.

Wharton centers her book on a magnificent villain. Undine Spragg is a stunningly beautiful young woman who cannot be satisfied. The daughter of Wall Street new-comers, she strives for what she cannot get, access to the old rich families. But she is relentless in pursuit of whatever it is she thinks she wants. And, it‘s never enough; and nothing, nor anyone, is sacred. She is like an insatiable predator. But she hides this in a meek outwards appearance, like a shiny fishhook, snagging the interest of single and married men. But what is it she ultimately wants and why? And why doesn‘t there seem to be anything underneath?

I think I was horrified by Undine, especially as I watched other characters stumble into her storm, unaware. But I also I think with Undine, Wharton has created a masterpiece. She is, in a way, an allegory of practical cutthroat Wall Street then and now, the perfect goddess of soulless economy.

The novel isn‘t perfect IMO, but Undine maybe is. Recommended to anyone interested in Wharton.

2022
https://www.librarything.com/topic/342768#7923228 ( )

My new favorite writer is Edith Wharton. I have read four of her wonderful novels this year and I intend to read all of the others in time. She is one of the sharpest observers of mankind that I have ever come across. You could believe that she sat and studied the people around her and then drew them in flesh and blood (that often ran red) on the sheets of paper in front of her. They are real, they breathe, and they make me wish to cry with them, comfort them or slap them with a fervor that is generally reserved for non-fictional human beings.

Undine Spragg is one of the most complex characters ever drawn. Much of what she is can be easily understood by viewing her background and seeing her struggle to haul herself up from the acceptable but somewhat meager beginnings in Apex, NC to the elevated status of a New York society maven. She seems to have no scruples about how she elevates herself, however, and she can recognize none of the greater qualities in people. When she has driven her loving and devoted husband to the point of suicide, her reaction is one of wondering why she is always required to pay such a heavy price to obtain those things that are rightfully coming to her (in this case his money). She has so little regard for her child that she is willing to use him as a pawn in a game of ransom, and she will marry or exploit anyone she thinks will push her up the ladder of society. What is sadder still is that she has no recognition of what true genteel society is. She marries into that with Ralph and despises it. Her true match is the conniving, exploitive, and unrefined Moffat, who is also just a social climber. They have one thing in common, all their values are defined by money and position.

Watching Undine claw her way to the top is like watching an automobile accident in the making. You can scream at her to apply the brakes, but she has got too much momentum to ever stop the vehicle. To carry the analogy a step further, if she survives the accident, she will only think she is safer in a bigger, heavier car. She will not really learn to drive any better.

Her selfishness is unbelievable (and yet, sorry to say, I have seen women just like her in my own lifetime...want, want, want and never any satisfaction. In fact, even when she has Moffatt in the end and all the money she could ever wish, her poor French husband’s family heirloom tapestries hanging on her wall, and the power to manipulate most of society into admitting her because of her money, she is dissatisfied.

Wharton’s last poke at Undine is “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. And there had been moments lately when she had had to confess to herself that Moffatt did not fit into the picture. At first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for,and more than she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors--who were gradually becoming merged in her memory--would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in such and such a case. And the comparison was almost always to Moffatt's disadvantage.”

She will never be happy or satisfied and she will always make others suffer for her desires and shortcomings. Moffatt will be the next to be made miserable in trying to satisfy Undine, but at least Moffatt will be someone who will be armed against her, as he is her kind and her equal.

While it is tempting to concentrate on Undine, since she is the character that moves all the action forward, one should not forget how beautifully Wharton draws all the other characters in this tale. Ralph Marvell is a stupendous character. He is an iconic picture of the old guard that is being squashed in favor of the nouveau riche. (I thought of Ashley Wilkes in GWTW, a man who has outlived the lifestyle he was intended for) All the qualities that make him exceptional are also the things that now hold him down in the society he inhabits. He has his name and little else and we can clearly see the Dogenets are a family falling from power. Peter Van Degen is a great example of someone who is from the old-school families but is learning to navigate perfectly in the new, less moral world of Wall Street investors, and Undine’s father is someone who seeks to become part of a world that does not improve his lot or make him happier. He was a big fish in a small pond in Apex, in New York he barely knows how to fit into the society he seeks. It is easy to see that if not of Undine, he would have been happily prospering in Apex. Every lesser character, from little Paul Marvell to Ralph’s cousin and sister, are drawn with precision and depth and seem real and essential to the understanding of this world.

I could not be more pleased to have added this wonderful book to my growing list of Wharton missives. She is a masterful, insightful, splendid writer; a professional in the art of character study; and an expert in the art of flowing, expressive prose. If you have not come to her yet, you are missing one of the great writers of the early twentieth century.
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It was difficult to really enjoy this because the main character, Undine, is so utterly unlikable. She is beautiful and shallow but completely ruthless in getting whatever she thinks she deserves, which is often that next thing beyond her reach. If there was any shred of humanity about her, you might almost feel sorry for her but there isn't and you don't. I only felt deep pity for the anguish she put everyone around her through. The writing is wonderful and the final sentence is just brilliant.

EXCELLENT BOOK. good writing andinterestist ( )

An enjoyable read though notably saying less than both Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. A solid choice for a Wharton fan. Otherwise, read her more famous works -- they are, rightly, more lauded. ( )

One of the best endings I've ever read. ( )

A young girl, trying to get in with the right crowd, worrying about her clothes, exasperated with her parents who refused to give her money for going out, gossiping with and about the latest scandals — sounds like a typical teen novel, right? Now consider that this novel was written and published nearly a century ago, and then consider whether teens today have really changed all that much.

Undine Spragg and her parents have come to New York City from the small town of Apex; Undine intends to have as much fun as possible heedless of expense, while her parents are hoping more conservatively for their daughter to make a good match. As the novel opens, Undine is fretting over a note from the sister of a “little fellow” in whom she has no interest — until she discovers that Ralph Marvell is a member of one of the first families of New York society. This seemingly insignificant young man will eventually become Undine’s husband, and is one of the most sympathetic characters in the entire novel, along with Mr. and Mrs. Spragg, for Undine does not mature gracefully, or perhaps at all throughout.

Despite its age, readers will find timeless characters in this novel. For instance, anyone who has dealt with strong-willed children or teens will recognize this right away: Undine had “two ways of getting things out of [her father] against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the harsh-lipped and cold… as a child [her parents] had admired her assertiveness, had made Apex ring with their boasts of it; but it had long since cowed Mrs. Spragg, and it was beginning to frighten her husband.” Though originally published in 1913, Edith Wharton’s novel about the spoiled daughter of well-meaning parents hoping to make a foray into New York Society will still ring true amongst those who work with adolescents and young adults, who despite all the years between, still often long for glamor and adventure regardless of society and financial barriers. ( )

A drag and a disappointment, considering how much I love her other books. Wharton stacks the deck to ensure that we hate Undine: she's shallow and vain and grasping and selfish and petulant and cruel and an insatiable money pit of a wife. Also, needless to say, a terrible mother. But the real *reason* she is all these things is because she is a small town girl from an insignificant family, who has the temerity to believe she's the equal of Wharton's beloved New York "society". I think, in Wharton's better-known books, her snobbery certainly comes through, but it is mixed with an incisive critique of the very society that produced her. Here, her critique is mostly directed at the nouveau riche rubes and bumpkins who dare to infiltrate Fifth Avenue, and it just makes Wharton look petty and mean.

https://donut-donut.dreamwidth.org/803915.html ( )

I enjoyed Undine’s self-absorption and social climbing, she’s consistently awful to anyone who loves her, manipulative and unapologetic which doesn’t make her likable but I didn’t mind that, there were moments I was eager for her plans to come to fruition and other times where I very much wanted them to blow up in her face so she made for an entertaining read.

However, as much as it entertained me to anticipate ups and downs in Undine’s life, in actuality, I wanted a bit more of an arc to the story. I don’t mean a growth arc for Undine, plenty of people in real life don’t change over time, I didn’t need her to change, but I did need the plot to change more than it did. With the exception of a life-changing decision made by one male character, for the most part the story followed the same pattern over and over. As mentioned, it wasn’t without entertainment value, I just felt like the plot could have used a few more sharp turns, a few more unexpected challenges for a character as formidable as Undine to bump up against. I wish the tides hadn’t always turned quite so easily for her, even a character made to seem from the start like they’re going to throw a wrench in the works for Undine, ultimately doesn’t prove to be much of a foe.

While the plot didn’t twist quite as regularly as I might have hoped, I’d still recommend reading this, at this point in time pop culture is overflowing with anti-heroes but there still aren’t that many anti-heroines out there and even the ones that do come to mind like Scarlett O’Hara, have the occasional redeeming moment, the same cannot be said of Undine, so in that respect her character is a fairly unique reading experience. ( )

There's something likeably unlikeable about Undine. The ending is perfect. ( )

Edith Wharton is truly a woman of letters. I cannot think of a contemporary writer who even comes close to matching her style and use of language. It is a pleasure to read her prose, and not difficult or archaic as some may think “Classic Novels” to be. Along with her beautiful prose is her keen insights into human nature, and her ability to skewer and satirize every social class with knowing intimacy.

Wharton daringly takes a wholly unlikeable and unsympathetic character, Undine Sprague, and makes her the main character of this novel. Undine is one of the most spoiled characters I have ever read about in a novel; she and Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair seem to be tied for this title. While Undine has brief flashes of insight and understanding of her world, her ambitions and those around her, they are very brief and she dismisses them quickly so as not to lose sight of the next rung up on the Social ladder in which she is ascending.

While this is not my favorite Wharton book, (Undine is just too unsympathetic for that) I would absolutely recommend it, if for no other reason than to read beautiful prose, something that seems to be a lost art today in “literary fiction.”
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Read this about a year ago. Absolutely fan-freaking-tastic. Having read all her four major novels now, I can state that this is her finest. I have dissected, discussed, and debated the wonderful, evanescent, completely insane and thoroughly relatable Undine Spragg more than any other character in literature. The plot is marvelous and unforgettable. The closing sentence is up there with Gatsby's. Between the bank failure of '08, conspicuous consumption, attitudes to childrearing & divorce, educational gaps, and Donald Trumpism, this is THE book America needs now. Thank you, Issaquah Library, for the introduction. The big shocker midway is probably my favorite scene in literature, period. "At last, she would get what she wanted!" Hypocrite lecteur - Undine - ma sœur! ( )

A very clearly written emotional treatise on the mores of the American upper class before the Great War, about its constituency and relationships with the Old World aristocracy, and, more narrowly and poignantly, about the role of women there and then.

The protagonist, a young and beautiful small-town parvenue serves as a spotlight as she ascends gradually into her dream world of high social status and unlimited dress-making and thing-having arcade, dragging all sorts of obsolete notions and deprecate concepts out into the light and brutally dispensing with all that. As it turns out, high social status is not unconditionally linked with unlimited resources for dress-making and such, but is involved in some kind of obscure semantics which implies incomprehensible limitations and obligations. Is it maturity? Responsibility? Oh God.

Wharton's prose is incisive, her latinate phrases never stray from their aim of describing desires and emotions pretinent to the case in hand. Being highly rational and avoiding poetic stances and lyric effusions suits her purpose well; "Undine" the heroine (named after a successful line of products sold by her father) while remaining explicitly infantile in her wishes and aspirations never lets any emotions cloud her judgment, nor any castle-in-the-air type ethical codes deter her from getting it right. Most of the characters further the author's purpose in a similar way, smartly doing their jobs. People are but gears in that huge social machine (rolling on towards the War one cannot help but think), and characters are gears, springs and screws in the novel as a vehicle, but this suit is just too tight for a work of literature.

The ideas toward which Wharton seems to move the novel are absolutely worth consideration and she - thankfully - does not solve them for the reader; there is vigor and precision in the movement, but it is not gracious enough to turn the bulk of text into a novel. Dramatic dialogues that could be staged without even turning the non-spoken islets of prose into stage directions; abnormal psychology, bouts of anger, mourning is either treated as an exercise in dostoevskian writing or spared to the reader - and the writer; eerily cinematic panoramas are dealt with by conspicuously introducing observers and "off-screen" interpreters who do not drive the narrative... I imagine an excellent series of articles for a first-rate periodical, or - better - a multipart documentary, names changed, interviews restaged with actors, commentaries by leading university professors, history, sociology, philosophy and some delightful costume and make-up artist features.

It is possible that I just missed all those features that make Wharton original, only looking for the familiar and begging the question by proclaiming it stale and vicarious; if, say, "House of Mirth" comes my way I'll not hesitate to review my opinions, but for a while I'm gonna pretend Undine is a name I seem to recall from a very interesting piece of investigative journalism in the New Yorker or the Boston Globe and look for Belles-lettres on another shelf. ( )

”Even now, 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.”

Meet Undine Spragg, possibly the most unlikable woman in literature and that quote just about sums her up. She’s not completely happy because there may be something out there that she wants if only she actually knew about it. That quote comes up towards the end of the book but pretty much lays out the journey Wharton takes you on from the beginning. Undine cares about only one person. Undine. The rest of society is only there to supply her with an audience to note how beautiful and wonderful she is. She needs money; lots of it and beginning with her father, every man in her life needs to supply her with plenty of funds to buy the things she just has to have. I kept hoping someone was going to say, “Undine stop. There’s no money left for that.” But the bills just keep coming.

The fact that Edith Wharton is able to portray this self-centered social climber without making the reader throw the book against a wall is all to her credit. But isn’t that what Wharton always does? Whether it was Lily Bart in The House of Mirth or Ethan Frome and Zeena and Mattie she always manages a psychological portrait of her characters that will surprise, maybe shock, but will be in keeping with the ugly reality that is life, in this case life among the wealthy of New York and Paris in 1913. You know it’s satire but it’s all so believable I had to wonder if Wharton knew people like Undine.

The writing, as is always the case with Edith Wharton, is sublime and the pages practically turn themselves. Very highly recommended. ( )

Oh Undine!

I have to address you, but I must confess that I am very nearly lost for words. I have never met anyone quite like you – in fact or in fiction – and you have made such an impression. You really are a force of nature. You had to be, to have lived the life that you have lived.

Looking back it’s hard to believe that you were the daughter of a self-made man, that you came from Apex in North Carolina. But, of course, you were the apple of your parents’ eyes, and they were prepared to invest everything they had, and to do without themselves, to help you reach the very highest echelons of New York society.

You always got what you wanted. Always.

Did you appreciate what they did for you? Did you understand how much they sacrifice? I think not; there was nothing in your words, your actions, your demeanour to suggest that you did.

At first I was inclined to blame your parents for spoiling you, but I came to realise that it wasn’t them, it was you. I began to feel sorry for them.

You made some mistakes as you climbed the ladder, because you didn’t quite understand quite how that rarefied society worked, but you were a wonderfully quick learner. You changed your behaviour, your appearance, your expectations, to become the person you wanted to be, the person you needed to be, to achieve your ambitions.

And you succeeded. You drew the attention of Ralph Marvell, the son of one of the oldest, grandest families in New York. He loved your beauty, your difference; and you loved everything that he stood for. And so you married …..

Sadly, it wasn’t a happy ending.

You didn’t understand that the families at the pinnacle of society were not the wealthiest. You couldn’t understand that Ralph didn’t share your ambitions – I don’t think that you even realised that was possible – and certainly it was quite beyond your comprehension that he dreamed of a writing a novel. He never did, he had not one iota of your drive and ambition, and I suspect that he lacked the talent. Ralph drifted through life, disappointed that he could not expand your narrow horizons, that he could not open your eyes to the beauty of the art and literature that he loved.

He was part of an old order that was dying, and you were part of a new order that would adapt and survive. You learned how to bend and even change society’s rules to allow you to do exactly what you wanted to do. You really didn’t understand him, you broke him, and my heart broke for him.

I even began to feel at little sorry for you, despite your selfishness, because there was so much that you didn’t understand. There are more important things than money, luxury, fashion, and social position. Things can’t really make you happy, because there will always be other things to want, there will always be things beyond your reach. You learned so much, but you never learned that.

There would be more marriages, more travels, more possessions ….

There would be more damage. My heart broke again, for the son you so often seemed to forget you had. And though you would never admit it, you were damaged by your own actions. But you were a survivor Undine, weren’t you?

You did learn a little; I learned a little about your past, and I came to feel that I understood you a little better; most of all, I do think that when you finally married the right man it made all the difference. It wasn’t quite enough for me to say that I liked you, but I was always fascinated by you.

Now I find myself wanting to do what Alice did at the end of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I want to throw you in the air and say, “You’re just a fictional character!” But I can’t. Because you are so utterly real; not a heroine, not a villainess, but a vivid, three-dimensional human being, with strengths and weaknesses.

You are perfectly realised; your world and everything, everything around you is perfectly realised. The telling of your story is compelling, beautiful and so very profound. It speaks of its times and it has things to say that are timeless. Because, though times may change, human nature stays the same.

Edith Wharton was a genius – it’s as simple as that. ( )

If you’re the kind of person who gets angry while reading about annoying characters to the point of wanting to punch them in their fictitious faces, don’t read this book. Wharton does paint an enduring portrait of a gold digger in Undine Spragg, but at 500+ pages, it gets to be a little much. She also satirizes ‘new money’ in America, both how it was made, through unscrupulous backroom deals and connections, as well as its lack of grace and culture. Undine has an extraordinary amount of ambition, but as a woman can only channel this by using her charms to marry a rich man, and someone with connections in society. As with all greedy, selfish people, no amount of material possessions are ever enough for Undine, and she can only improve her situation by divorcing and remarrying, something that carries a stigma in America and is not possible in France, where she lives for a portion of the novel. Wharton’s writing is great, but none of the characters are likeable, so it’s a bit of a masochistic read. It’s the 8th novel I’ve read by her and was far from a disappointment, but I would recommend ‘The Age of Innocence’, ‘The House of Mirth’, ‘The Reef’, or good old ‘Ethan Frome’ instead.

Quotes:
On beauty, a sign of the times then (and again now), and I liked the last phrase:
“She was tall enough to carry off a little extra weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular.”

And this one, on being admired:
“What could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it?”

On men:
“He put it to her at last, standing squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her.”

On moments of rapture, and writing; the best passage of the book:
“It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one’s self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fullness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.” ( )

What a wonderful reread this was. Undine Spragg is a fantastic character, right up there with Becky Sharp and Emma Bovery. She is both a product of her culture and a victim of it and you just don't know whether to slap her or cheer her on.

The Wharton biography I am currently reading made me especially attentive to certain elements in the novel - the restlessness of the characters, the brilliant descriptions of locations and interiors, and Wharton's powerful indictment of marriage and the non-education of women. ( )