14 Apr Book Review: The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Reading Edith Wharton always feels like peeling back the polished surface of high society to reveal the raw ambition and quiet rot underneath. The Custom of the Country might not be her most famous work, but it’s certainly one of her sharpest. It’s a biting social commentary disguised as a character study, built around one of literature’s most unapologetically ambitious anti-heroines. Undine Spragg is not here to grow or redeem herself—she’s here to win, and Wharton lets her. It’s delicious and brutal and oddly ahead of its time.

What’s it about?

At the heart of the novel is Undine Spragg, a young woman from the fictional town of Apex City, who arrives in New York with her nouveau riche parents and a burning desire to rise to the top of society. Undine is beautiful, cunning, and completely uninterested in things like self-reflection or modesty. What she wants is a glamorous life, complete with the right clothes, the right address, and most importantly, the right husband. Her father has the money to get her started, but it’s not old money, and Undine quickly learns that social climbing in New York’s elite circles isn’t just about wealth—it’s about pedigree, restraint, and subtlety. None of which are exactly her strong suits.

Undine’s first marriage is to Ralph Marvell, a man from a respected, though not particularly wealthy, old New York family. Ralph is sensitive, literary, and totally unequipped to deal with someone like Undine. Their marriage starts with promise, but it quickly dissolves under the weight of Undine’s dissatisfaction. She’s bored by Ralph’s ideals, unimpressed by his salary, and increasingly frustrated by the social doors that remain closed to her. When the arrival of a child doesn’t change things (and, in fact, only burdens her further), she begins plotting her next move.

That move eventually takes her to Europe, where she cycles through a series of marriages and near-marriages, each one calculated to improve her social standing. She becomes a duchess, divorces, manipulates, and maneuvers her way into increasingly rarefied circles, always chasing that elusive sense of “arrival” she’s certain is just around the next corner.

Wharton’s genius lies in how she never allows Undine to be just a villain. She’s shallow, yes, and often selfish to the point of cruelty—but she’s also a product of her environment. In a world that rewards beauty, compliance, and social acumen in women, Undine is playing by the rules she’s been given. She’s just playing them better than everyone else. The novel is as much about the culture that produces someone like her as it is about her individual flaws.

By the end, Undine has everything she thought she wanted—status, wealth, admiration—but she still finds herself wanting more. The final pages make it clear that her hunger isn’t going anywhere. In a society obsessed with appearances, there’s always another ladder to climb, another room to enter, another man to marry. And Undine, relentless as ever, will keep going.

What This Chick Thinks

Undine is awful—and fascinating

Let’s be real: Undine is not a sympathetic character. She uses people, lies easily, and doesn’t grow in the way most protagonists do. But I couldn’t stop reading her. There’s something deeply compelling about her single-mindedness. She knows what she wants and doesn’t apologize for it, even when it leads to ruin. Wharton could have written her as a cautionary tale, but instead, she makes her into something sharper—a mirror to the values of the world around her.

I kept waiting for a turning point, a moment where Undine might look inward or choose a different path. But the brilliance of the book is that she never does. She doesn’t need to. The world keeps rewarding her, and that’s the real tragedy.

Wharton’s writing is as biting as ever

Wharton doesn’t waste words. Her prose is elegant but always edged with irony. She has this way of capturing a character’s entire psychology in a single line or turn of phrase. The satire is sharp, especially when she’s describing the absurdity of social conventions and the ways people contort themselves to maintain appearances. Even when the plot slows down, the writing stays alive.

And the structure of the book—following Undine through marriage after marriage, each one more cynical than the last—creates this rhythm that’s oddly hypnotic. You start to anticipate her betrayals, her pivots, and the inevitable collapse that never seems to land the way it should. It’s a cycle, and that’s kind of the point.

Not an easy read, but a rewarding one

This isn’t a cozy book. There’s no emotional catharsis, no redemptive arc. It’s about emptiness, about chasing something that can’t be caught, and about a woman who is, in many ways, a victim of a system that only values her for how well she can decorate someone else’s world.

At the same time, it’s surprisingly modern. Undine could easily be the star of a prestige TV drama—ambitious, manipulative, endlessly fascinating. Her world might be gilded and mannered, but her story hits with real contemporary force.

Final Thoughts

The Custom of the Country is sharp, unflinching, and surprisingly fun in its ruthlessness. It’s a critique of high society wrapped in the glitter of Gilded Age New York and Europe, with a protagonist you’ll love to hate—or at least hate to love. It might not make you feel good, but it will definitely make you think.

Rating: 9/10

Try it if you like

• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray – Another classic about a social-climbing woman who refuses to play by the rules of virtue.
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton – If you want a more tragic take on women and social expectation in the same world.
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe – A modern (and male-centered) social satire that digs into ambition, ego, and societal performance.