Enriched edition. A ruthless social climber in 20th-century New York exposes class, marriage, gender, and wealth inequality in American realismBy Edith Wharton
Published in 1913, The Custom of the Country anatomizes the brisk commerce of status in New York and Paris through Undine Spragg, whose radiant will-to-consume turns marriage, art, and lineage into negotiable currency. With cool, surgical irony and supple free indirect discourse, Wharton stages a transatlantic comedy of manners whose settings—from clubrooms to divorce courts—expose the hinge between old money's codes and new money's appetites. Even the title plays on habit and tariff: the custom that sanctions predation, and the customs that tax every crossing. Wharton wrote from inside knowledge. Born into Old New York and later resident in Paris, she observed both genteel hypocrisies and raw plutocratic energies at close range. Her difficult marriage and cosmopolitan circle, including Henry James, sharpened her sense of marriage as marketplace and of women's agency constrained by law, money, and decorum. Recommended to readers of James and Balzac, to scholars of gender and capitalism, and to anyone curious about consumer modernity, this novel feels startlingly current. Its crystalline sentences and unsentimental intelligence make Undine's ascent both exhilarating and terrifying—a classic that clarifies the prices we pay for wanting everything.
Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.
