The Custom of the Country: Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton`s novels of manners seem to grow in stature as time passes. Here she draws a beautiful social climber, Undine Sprague, who is a monster of selfishness and honestly doesn`t know it. Although the worlds she wants to conquer have vanished, Undine herself is amazingly recognizable. She marries well above herself twice and both times fails to recognize her husbands` strengths of character or the weakness of her own, and it is they, not she, who pay the price.