"THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY"
Three husbands seem to be the customary allowance granted by
novelists to the pushing, climbing, heartless type of American
woman, who will sacrifice everything to her social ambitions and
insatiable love of pleasure. Three husbands, it will be
remembered, were given by Robert Grant to Selma White, the heroine
of Unleavened Bread; three also by Winston Churchill to the
heroine
of
A Modern Chronicle; and similarly, Mrs.
Wharton is equally generous to Undine Spragg, the central figure of
her latest volume,
The Custom of the Country. It is a
brilliantly cynical picture of feminine ruthlessness, and a
fundamental inability to conceive of father, mother, friends and
husbands having been created for any other purpose than to gratify
every passing whim of this one beautiful and utterly spoiled young
woman. Mrs. Wharton has painted Undine Spragg with an unsparing
mercilessness that almost makes the reader wince. It is a splendid
and memorable piece of work, a portrait to form a worthy contrast
to the equally unforgettable one of Lily Bart. But there is little
object in analysing in detail the separate episodes which make Miss
Spragg successively Mrs. Ralph Marvell, the Marquise de Chelles,
and Mrs. Elmer Moffatt. They are of a nature that cannot be
adequately conveyed at second hand; it is not what happens that
matters, it is the play of human motives and human limitations
behind the happenings that makes this volume one of Mrs. Wharton's
finest achievements. And the final touch of the closing paragraph
is a perfect climax, a crowning touch of comprehension of
monumental and perennial dissatisfaction:
Under all the dazzle a tiny black cloud remained. She had
learned there was something she could never get, something that
neither beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her.
She could never be an ambassador's wife; and as she advanced to
receive her first guests, she said to herself that it was the one
part she was really made for.
