The Custom of the Country

Edith Wharton's lacerating satire on marriage and materialism in turn-of-the-century New York features her most selfish, ruthless, and irresistibly outrageous female character.

Undine Spragg is an exquisitely beautiful but ferociously acquisitive young woman from the Midwest who comes to New York to seek her fortune. She achieves her social ambitions-but only at the highest cost to her family, her admirers, and her several husbands. Wharton lavished on Undine an imaginative energy that sugg...