The Custom of the Country is a 1913 novel by Edith Wharton. Undine Spragg, its heroine, is an ambitious young woman from the American midwest. Raised in the fictional town of Apex, she’s the product of a family who has risen to a certain social status through sketchy financial dealings.

Undine strives to rise in New York City society through a succession of marriages and divorces that ultimately lead to her undoing.

Undine Spragg has often been compared to Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, minus any of the charm. It has occasionally been supposed whether Edith Wharton, though a woman herself, was a misogyynist.  Read More→