Undine Spraggâs Life in Objects
Undine Spraggâs Life in Objects
Beauty, charm and luck all factor into the social ascent of Edith Whartonâs ambitious protagonist â but money, crucially, matters the most.
Mrs. Sidney Smith, P. A. Clark, Mrs. James T. Burden, Stanford White, James Henry Smith, Norman Whitehouse, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish and Sidney Smith (seated) at the 1905 James Hazen Hyde costume ball.Credit.Byron Company/The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY
By Samuel Rutter
This article is part of Tâs to R.S.V.P. to a virtual conversation, led by Claire Messud, about âThe Custom of the Country,â to be held on Jan. 28.
How Can We Read Edith Wharton Today?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/t-magazine/edith-wharton-custom-of-the-country.html
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How Can We Read Edith Wharton Today?
Published in 1913, “The Custom of the Country” follows the social rise of Undine Spragg, a fictional character who, in many ways, feels very modern.
An undated photograph of Edith Wharton.Credit.Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
This essay is part of T’s
(1913),
like much that Edith Wharton wrote, can be described as a novel of manners. That’s to say, a social fiction in which the carefully observed customs of a particular society shape the characters’ actions and the plot. The designation somehow implies frivolity, or at least, traditionally, the feminine or domestic sphere (Jane Austen could be considered the first author of such works); and in this period of profound crisis in American society, it might seem easy to dismiss the r