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l LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

Wharton's Women in The Reef
and The Custom of the County}r

presented by

Kathleen D. Hadley

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. English

degree in

 

 

- it, (1 k211i -M;

Major professor

Date 2—23-88

 

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

MSU

LIBRARIES
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RETURNING MATERIALS:
Place in book drop to
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WHARTON'S WOMEN IN THE REEF
AND THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY

Kathleen D. Hadley

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1988

ABSTRACT

WHARTON'S WOMEN IN THE REEF
AND THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY

Kathleen D. Hadley

Criticism of Edith Wharton's novels has typically been

more concerned with Wharton's male characters than her women
characters. This thesis discusses the women in Wharton's 1hg_
352£_(1912) and 2h; Custom Q§_th§_Countrx (1913) and analyses
the ways in which the male characters perceive them. All
three of the major women characters in these novels—-Sophy
Viner, Anna Leath, and Undine Spragg--are considerably more
complex than the male characters perceive them to be. The
simplistic ways in which the male characters view them are

self-serving and cause tremendous difficulties for these

women .

© Copyr ight by
KATHLEEN D. HADLEY
1988

All Rights Reserved

DEDICATION

To my husband, Curt Hadley, whose patience, support, and
understanding frees me to do my work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Professor Linda Wagner-Martin, not only for her
tremendous scholarly assistance, but for encouraging me as a
scholar.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...........................................1
Chapter One: :3; Egg; ............... ..... ..............7
Chapter Two: The Custom g; the Country ................37
Conclusion ............................................75
Notes ................. ...... .... ...................... 79
Bibliography ..........................................84

General References ...............................87

vi

INTRODUCTION

Criticism of Edith Wharton's fiction has typically dealt
more extensively with her male characters than her female r
ones, and when critics have discussed women characters, they

have tended to rely heavily on male characters' perceptions

 

of them. For instance, in his discussion of The 332;,
Geoffrey Walton accepts George Darrow's view of Anna Leath,
saying that Anna "nags on and on to the verge of hysteria"
and ultimately concludes, based on George's refusal to give
Anna details of his affair with Sophy, that: "Darrow‘s moral
stature has been growing as [Anna's] has declined, and he
ends with a dignified repentence as well as an implied
condemnation of her" (68-69). walton's tone suggests that
this attitude toward Anna is appropriate, that George’s view-
point is basically correct.

The effect of this tendency to view women characters from
male characters‘ perspectives, as the above quote suggests, is
to discourage any serious consideration of these women as
complex, carefully drawn characters. Hence, for instance,
there are many detailed critical studies of The Custom 9; the
Country's Ralph Marvell, but until recently, relatively few of
Undine Spragg. The exceptions are often the type of summary,

dismissive opinion most notoriously exemplified by Edmund

Wilson, who calls Undine "the prototype in fiction of the
‘gold-digger,’ of the international cocktail bitch" (Ammons
101). Clearly this stereotype allows for no consideration of
Undine as a three-dimensional character who, whether or not
'she has any redeeming qualities, may at least have complex
motivations and needs.

Recently, critics such as Elizabeth Ammons, Mary Suzanne
Schriber, and Cynthia Griffin Wolff have recognized the inap-
propriateness of viewing Wharton's women characters primarily
through her male characters' eyes. Ammons, far from accepting
Newland Archer's Opposing views of May welland and Ellen
Olenska in Th; 53; g; Innocence, notes that he "mythicizes May
after her death, and he does so out of fear of the dark,
‘grown up' woman," Ellen (152). Similarly, Schriber discusses
how Wharton's female characters' "behavior is often miscon-
strued" or ”rendered invisible and therefore unappreciated if
it in any way outstrips ordinary expectations of woman"l (189).
And Wolff astutely says of Lily Bart and Undine Spragg, "Both
crave the reflecting reassurance of the mirror to assuage an
otherwise intolerable inner loneliness, and both are immensely
vulnerable to the standards of others" (248). These are not
qualities which would be apparent for either character, if
considered solely through the eyes of Lawrence Selden and
Ralph Marvell or Raymond de Chelles.

Wolff's ability to look beyond male characters' percep-
tions and into the text itself also enables her to say of
Undine, ”she is not intended to be perceived as intrinsically

monstrous: too much effort has gone into making the reader

intermittently sympathetic with her" (255). Our sympathy
comes from understanding Undine's thoughts and the limitations
placed on her, the first of which Ralph Marvell and Raymond de
Chelles are not privy to, and the second of which they do not
perceive as a problem for a woman.

In fact, the interplay between Wharton's women characters
as they are depicted in the texts, and the male characters'
often erroneous perceptions of them, is what gives Wharton's
fiction much of its interest. ghg_§gggg_gg_gigtg, for exam-
ple, would lose much of its poignancy if Lawrence Selden did
not consistently judge Lily on the basis of such things
as seeing her leave Gus Trenor's house at night, while the
reader knows of Lily's innocence. And much of Wharton's irony
is attributable to the mismatch between the reality of a woman
character's motivation and attitudes and a male character's
view of her, as in The Custom 9; thg_Country when Ralph per-
ceives that Undine wants to be rescued from the social "In-
vaders,” while this is precisely the group to which she
schemes to belong. Another example of such irony is in The
Age 2; Innocence, where Newland assumes May is ignorant of his
feelings for Ellen, while she plots relentlessly to separate
him from Ellen.

Nor should the simple facts that Wharton was a wgmgg
writer creating these women characters, and that she expressed
her concern with her characters' psychological development, be
overlooked. In his biography of Wharton, R.W.B. Lewis tells

of her assertion to a friend: "‘I am never interested in the

misfortunes of my personages, only in their psychological
evolution'” (325-26). Ammons has pointed out the difficulties
Wharton had in developing empathetic male characters (14).
But as a woman, Wharton could and did draw heavily on her own
experiences and feelings in her development of women char-
acters: Ellen Olenska, whose love of art, like Wharton's, is
criticized by society; Anna Leath, introduced in The Regg_as
an ever-proper lady whose background sounds so similar to
Wharton's; and so on. If Wharton was concerned with her
characters' ”psychological evolution," she must certainly have
been concerned with that of her fictional women as well as her
fictional men.

In The gggf_and Thg_Custom g§_§hg_Countr , Wharton
creates particularly complex women characters and thoroughly
explores the ways in which male characters perceive them.
The two women of §2h§g_§;gmg_prove to be quite similar to each
other, although Ethan perceives them as opposites. There is
Maddie, the young girl who Ethan considers fresh and impres-
sionable, and Zeena, who he perceives as an old woman. Yet
Maddie and Zeena are undeveloped characters, refracted through
Ethan's, and his male narrator's, eyes. In 1hg_ggg§, Wharton
takes a situation that is similar in its basic elements--two
women, one primary male character, in seclusion--and depicts
two very complex women. The text shows both Anna and Sophy in
a variety of roles and situations which belies George
Darrows's simplistic categorization of them into two different
"types.” .

The character of Undine Spragg is also very different

from what the men in her world expect. That Wharton was
concerned with depicting a believable, three-dimensional
Undine is suggested by the history of this novel's develop-
ment. Blake Nevius, in his Wharton biography, documents that
Wharton had actually started Thg_Custom g; the Country by
1908, before she wrote §§h§g_gggmg_(160). It has been said

that Wharton needed to come to terms with the end of her own r

1
marriage before she could complete her novel about divorce.

But the way in which she returned to the motif of two women

 

categorized as different types by a man--a1ready dealt with in
her 1907 ghg_§£git_gg'ghg_grggf-suggests that Wharton also
needed to work out the issue of two separate, complex women
more thoroughly before she was ready to handle such an ex-
tremely complicated single-woman character as Undine Spragg.2

Because of the setting of The Reef, Wharton could focus
on Anna and Sophy without distractions. Then, in The Custom
g; thg_Country she could use the entire Western world as her
setting, and bring in numerous other characters, without
detracting from her depiction of Undine Spragg. Thus the
intense psychological study of two women in The 392; may have
prepared the way for Wharton's creating Undine.

Undine's story appears to be the successful counterpart
to Lily Bart's, in The ggg§g_g£_fli£§g (1905). Lily descends
in society, Undine ascends. But, while she can break into
society in some ways, Undine can never overcome the barrier of

her sex, which precludes her entering the male world. In this

sense, Undine is very much like Anna Leath and Sophy Viner.

The complexity of all three women's characters is denied by
the men around them, and this over-simplification effectively

makes them outsiders to the male world.

 

Chapter One: The Reef

Passion is central to The Reef, It is the factor that
most strongly connects Anna Leath and Sophy Viner, who are
not the opposites George Darrow perceives them to be. Both
women struggle to be true to their experiences; Anna, having
paid for her silence in the past by losing George, attempts
to communicate with him now, and Sophy refuses to deny her
feelings for George. Conversely, George uses language as a
tool of diplomacy, first as he seduces Sophy, and later as he
attempts to downplay that affair to Anna. The two women are
under constraints that do not affect George. For them,
sexual-passion is to be confined to marriage, and both Sophy
and Anna suffer when they fail to honor this constraint. But
as a man, George can dismiss his‘affair with Sophy as’ .
unimportant. He exempts himself from responsibility by
viewing Anna and Sophy in ways that, in his mind, excuse his
behavior.

The structure of gh;,ggef suggests the conflict between
women's characteristics and men's perceptions. Anna Leath is
not directly presented until Book II, and even then she is
initially shown through a narrator's eyes. The narrator
speculates that "she seemed...to be looking about her with

eyes to which, for some intimate inward reason, details long

since familiar had suddenly acquired an unwanted freshness"
(81-82). That this "was in fact the exact sensation of which
Mrs. Leath was conscious" is then confirmed, and much of the
story is henceforth seen from Anna's perspective (82). By
starting Book II with a narrator, as well as neglecting to
name Anna at first, Wharton distances the reader from her.
There is a sense of being still closer to George Darrow's
perspective, which dominates the opening of the novel. We are
initially shown Anna as he would see her: "a lady," calmly
taking in her surroundings (81). The effect is to suggest not
only Anna's reserve, but the complexity of her character.

In the same sentence that we are assured of Anna's per-
spective, she is also named-~though as someone else's wife.
The use of her married name leads naturally into "Mrs.
Leath's” memories of her first marriage. Looking about her at
Givre, Anna remembers her attitudes and expectations as‘a
young bride. She had expected love to be a "magic bridge"
from the "unreality" of her New York girlhood, into life (86).
She had had "romantic associations" about the "chateau" and
had expected a "noble and dignified" fate there (82).
Elizabeth Ammons, discussing Wharton's use of fairy tales in
Ethan_§ggmg_and The Reef, points out that Anna's earlier
vision of marriage had been a ”fantasy," ”not of escaping but
of passively being freed, being saved, being awakened and
reborn into life by the love of a man-—the fantasy, in short,
of Sleeping Beauty's being awakened by Prince Charming..."
(80). But in her life with the sedate Fraser Leath, Anna had

found herself "farther than ever removed from the strong joys

and pangs for which she felt herself made," and she had since
become used to the house as ”the shell of a life slowly ad-
justed to its dwelling," a place where she was comfortable,
though not happy (94, 83).

Anna's renewed way of looking at Givré as she antici-
pates George's arrival ironically mirrors her perception as a
young bride. In trying to look at the house through George's
eyes, Anna "seemed to be opening her own eyes upon it after a
long interval of blindness” (83). She perceives of the court
as ”full of a latent life" and feels herself likewise filled
with "a latent animation." Despite the disappointments of
her first marriage, Anna is capable of anticipating her
marriage to George with the same naive eagerness. Ammons
explains Anna's perspective as follows: "Fraser Leath
failed, but his widow blames the man, not the dream, and
therefore looks forward to marriage with her old friend
George Darrow.” (82-83) Anna's ”blindness” was her return
to Sleeping Beauty's long sleep as Fraser Leath's wife and
then his widow, from which she now expects gggggg to awake
her. Her blindness has the additional meaning of the
inability to see how the experiences of her first marriage
suggest caution in putting her life into a man's hands a
second time. Ironically, the ”veil” that had always existed
between her and life, which Anna believes has now been lifted
by George, will be lowered again by his deception (84).

The references to Anna's girlhood are essential to

3
understanding her character. In her parents' world, "people

 

10

with emotions were not visited," and Anna felt isolated in
her interest in ”the passions and sensations” of poetry.

Anna became externally "conquered” by this society but
developed a "visioned region of action and emotion" that
contrasted with her increasing reserve (85). The one-dimen-
sional tag with which George will label her had long ago been
put in place; other mothers interpreted her reserve as "lady-
like repression," just as George would later note the reti-
cence of his ”lady" (86).

As a result of these attitudes, the young Anna Summers
had been unable to express her intense emotions to George.
When they were together, she would behave coldly, "while hot
and cold waves swept over her, and the things she really
wanted to say choked in her throat and burned the palms of
her hands.” When they were apart, Anna would resolve to act
differently (87). She wanted to overcome her parents' atti-
tude toward emotions and expression, but was unable to do so;
she was bound by a society which ensured that women, as
Florence Nightingale said, ”‘mg§t_act the farce of hypocrisy,
the lie that they are without passion'” (DeLamotte 217).

Now, the adult Anna perceives herself as ”not used to strong
or full emotions," although she clearly was as a girl and as
a young bride (83). She denies having those feelings which
her parents' world shunned, even as she remembers several
times when her emotions were extremely "full." Anna has
conflated her feelings with her behavior in her own mind, so
that she now thinks of herself in terms of the person she

presents to others.

 

11

 

George's perceptions of the adult Anna also fail to go
beyond this external self. His view of her implicitly relies
on her coldness toward him as a girl. The novel begins with
George's reaction to a telegraph from Anna, telling him to
postpone his visit. He assumes ”her ‘reason', whatever it
was, could, in this case, be nothing but a pretext; unless he
leaned to the less flattering alternative that any reason

seemed good enough for postponing him!" His thoughts

 

continue, "She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest
way to tell him so.” ($23,332:, 8) He is clearly insecure
about his relationship with Anna, but rather than considering
what his insecurity might suggest about himself, George
focuses on Anna's character. He muses, "In such an existence
as Mrs. Leath's, at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew
how small a complication might assume the magnitude of an .
‘obstacle'...” (8). But his work keeps them apart for months
at a time, and George is indignant that ”She flung back the
fortnight on his hands as if he had been an idler indifferent
to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist who, to
respond to her call, had had to hew his way through a very
jungle of engagements!" (8) The implication is clear:
George must not be inconvenienced in the least, but Anna
should let nothing come between herself and a visit from this
important man who has made tremendous sacrifices to be with
her.

George finds this postponement especially rankling
because, as he perceives it, Anna had already "submitted so

tamely to the disarrangement of their plans" within the

12

previous few weeks (8). He is referring to her "family
obligations" which had interrupted their reunion. He remem-
bers that, on their last evening together--together also with
Anna's step-son Owen and her mother-in-law--"they had had an
almost decisive exchange of words" (7). Yet his own memories
show that they did not have any plans; he had not told Anna
of his "calculations,” but simply assumed that she was "walk-
ing to him down the years” and ”would come straight to where
he stood.” Anna simply cannot win. George considers her at
one moment too cold and reasonable because she has asked him
to postpone his visit for, he assumes, a trifling reason; and
at the next moment, he silently charges her with failure to
use her ”ingenuity" to overcome whatever is keeping them
apart_(8).

Much of George's frustration with Anna appears to stem
from his lack of influence on her life thus far.4 He
believes he had missed his chance, when Anna was young, to
"put warmth in her veins and light in her eyes: [he] would
have made her a woman through and through." He speculates
that Anna "was still afraid of life" because she has always
been sheltered, and concludes,

A love like his might have given her the divine

gift of self-renewal; and now he saw her fated to

wane into old age repeating the same gestures...and

perhaps never guessing that, just outside her

glazed and curtained consciousness, life rolled

away, a vast blackness starred with lights, like

the night landscape beyond the windows of the
train. (29)

George thinks that without his early influence, Anna must be

somehow incomplete. His disdain for her "curtained

 

13

consciousness" is ironic in light of George's later attempts
to keep Anna ignorant of certain areas of his life, most
notably his affair with Sophy Viner. All of these thoughts
about Anna occur on the train to Paris, on which George
shares a compartment with Sophy. He considers his traveling
companion ”free without hardness" (29). Finding himself
disappointed by his fiance and in the company of a younger
woman, George allows himself to compare the two women, to
Anna's great disadvantage. This comparison paves the way for
his affair with Sophy.

As a girl, Anna loses George because she cannot tell him
what he means to her. Soon after George's arrival at Givré,
we are told they are happy in each other's presence, ”Yet
Anna was intensely aware that as soon as they began to talk
more intimately they would feel that they knew each other
less well.” (108) Anna correctly anticipates the same old
problem of communication, but this time it is primarily
caused by George's deceptiveness, rather than by her reserve.
Their first real conversation since his arrival is based on
George's interest in letting Anna think he read a letter from
her which, in the midst of his affair with Sophy, he had in
fact thrown on the fire unopened. Anna persists in trying to
discuss this letter, and their misunderstanding about her
telegram delaying his visit, because "‘Between you and me
everything matters,'”--she wants complete understanding
between them--and because ”she wanted no less than the whole

of her happiness." (111) Anna senses that she is an outsider

14

to much of George's world and perceives of any secrets
between them as a threat to her happiness. Her reference to
their first romance carries a double meaning that she is as
yet unaware of herself: ”‘It's curious how, in those first
days, too, something that I didn't understand came between
us.'” (110)

George's ability to have a casual flirtation, even a
physical relationship, with another woman while courting her

is what Anna couldn't understand in the past and, rather than

I lu—-_

the ostensible misunderstanding about their correspondence,
is the underlying cause of her uneasiness now. Anna's
attempt to deal with her perplexity shows that she remembers
the lessons of their previous courtship and will not let
George go so easily this time. Yet her obtuseness about
George's affair indicates that, contrary to the complete
understanding Anna claims to want, she is willing to pay the
price of ignorance in some areas in order to keep him. When
she mentions the pink cloak Owen said he saw at the theatre,
Anna shows how accurate her instincts are. But when George
does not immediately give her a full confession of his
infidelity, Anna dismisses her suspicions (114-15). By
denying her perceptions Anna protects herself from fully
understanding the truth, even when it appears the truth should
be most obvious to her, throughout most of the novel.

Their inability to communicate with each other belies
George's earlier visions of rescuing Anna from the memory of
her first marriage in which there had been no "communion" (4-

5). He assumes this lack of communion, not because of any-

15

thing Anna says, but because "her very reticence betrayed
her" (5). What Anna does not say to gym, George takes as
evidence of a lack of communion with Fraser. Anna's thoughts
about Fraser prove George right, but in their case, Anna is
the only one interested in honest communication, while George
is snared by his lie about the letter from her which he never
read. Even the "deeper feeling of communion" which George
believes he and Anna had shared in an earlier meeting is a
figment of George's "fancy," and is not based on speech (5).

Once Anna begins to suspect what happened between George
and Sophy, her feelings are in constant fluctuation. Richard
Lawson says that Anna's real concern is whether or not her
fiance is in love with the "other woman":

Anna, true daughter of her society, can

countenance, however reluctantly, George's having

sown wild oats. But she fears and dreads the

possibility that he might be in love with Sophy,

despite his protests to the contrary. (58)
The text, however, does not at all support the idea that Anna
could ”countenance" this particular sowing of oats. Anna is
especially devastated by the fact that George had this affair
‘LILLLQ. he m gr_:_ the w_a_z the her, to persuade her to marry him.
She is also unable to accept the idea that George has no
responsibility to Sophy. When he says, "there's nothing I
can do for her that will help her half so much as your
understanding her would," Anna responds, ”Nothing you can do
for her? You can marry her!” The exchange continues:

"You certainly couldn't wish her a worse fate!”

"It must have been what she expected...relied

on..." He was silent, and she broke out: ”Or what
is she? What are you? It's too horrible! On your

16

way here...to me..." She felt the tears in her
throat and stopped. (The Reg; 292)

Anna's view that George should marry Sophy indicates her
failure to accept the standard by which men operate in her
society; she is as much appalled at his actions as she is at
Sophy's.

This is quite different from George's own perspective,
by which he considers Sophy unsuitable for Owen but does not
seem to have any compunctions about his own status as Anna's
fiance.5 George has already rationalized this double
standard by classifying women according to "types." He ”had
had a fairly varied experience of feminine types, but the
women he had frequented had either been pronouncedly ‘ladies'
or they had not” (25). And then we see George's arrogance
(and Wharton's irony) at its height:

Grateful to both for ministering to the more

complex masculine nature, and disposed to assume

that they had been evolved, if not designed, to

that end, he had instinctively kept the two groups

apart in his mind, avoiding that intermediate

society which attempts to conciliate both theories

of life. (25)

This extremely reductive view of women enables George to
enjoy Sophy's sexual ”ministering," on the basis of which he
categorizes her as "not lady,” without perceiving that their
affair stigmatizes him in any way. The idea that George
”liked his ‘ladies' and their rivals to be equally unashamed
of showing for exactly what they were” also suggests that
George does not like the ”rivals," such as Sophy, to attempt

to cross over into the other category (25). This is later

confirmed by George's "obscure indignation" at Sophy when he

l7

discovers she is engaged to Owen Leath and his ”doubt as to
the disinterestedness of the woman who tries to rise above
her past" (187).6

When Anna declines to view George's affair as he does,
George changes tactics and tries to blame the affair on her.

”I was on my way to you....At the very last minute

you turned me back with a mere word....I'm not

saying this to justify myself. I'm simply trying

to make you understand.” (293)
But clearly George is trying (as he does at the beginning of
the novel) to take attention off of himself by focusing on
Anna's faults. George also tells her that ”a woman like
you”--the lady-type he had earlier admired so greatly--cou1d
never understand the "miseries and humiliations" that
influenced Sophy to have an affair with him: she is "too
fine“ to grasp the fullness of life of which his affair with
Sophy Viner is a part (293, 295).7 Thus George rationalizes
his affair with Sophy on the basis of Anna's presumed coldness
and her inability, as a "lady,” to understand the complexities
of life. But Anna has had miseries and humiliations directly
related to George, of which he is not aware and would not
understand. His earlier flirtation with another woman, when
Anna had thought they would be together, is ironically the
major experience that has influenced her to speak more openly
with George in their new relationship.

Anna's conflicting urges,

to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion of

a world in which such things could be; and at the

same time...to know more, to understand better, to

feel herself less ignorant and inexpert in matters

Ygggh made so much of the stuff of human experience
I

18

also suggest a greater complexity to her character than George
credits her with. And she can be much more insightful than
her initial refusal to comprehend George's unfaithfulness
suggests. Although Anna cannot view her fiance objectively,
she does come to understand a great deal about him and the
male world in which she lives. Listening to him explain his
affair with Sophy,

She wondered at his composure, his competence, at

his knowing so exactly what to say. No doubt men

often had to make such explanations: they had the

formulas by heart ... A leaden lassitude descended

on her. (294, Wharton's ellipsis)

This insight is so overwhelming to Anna that "For a
moment she simply ceased to feel.” (295) Her eyes are now
also opened to other times when such "formulas" may have been
at the ready but were unneeded because of her own blindness:

It had never occurred to her that (Fraser) might

have passions, interests, preoccupations of which

she was absolutely ignorant....8he tried to picture

him...walking furtively down a quiet street, and

looking about him before he slipped into a doorway.

(321)

Anna can no more imagine this than she can understand what
George's affair with Sophy was like. She realizes that, by
supposing her first husband may have had affairs, she was
”simply trying to justify Darrow" so that she "could hope to
keep" what she ”could not give up." (322). This is true, yet
it is also true that Anna now understands much more about the
male world--and her status, as woman, as an outsider to that
world--than she ever had before, Fraser's actually being

faithful or unfaithful notwithstanding.

Anna resents her new insight and becomes extremely upset

19

with herself for seeking the truth; "...suddenly she was
filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her
disastrous attempt to see. Why had she forced the truth out
of Darrow? If only she had held her tongue nothing need ever
have been known," and "there flashed through her the longing
to return to her old state of fearless ignorance” (322).
Ironically, while George attempts to make others responsible
for his actions, Anna focuses bitterly on herself just for
demanding to 5921,

George attempts to reassure Anna of his committment to
her by dismissing his affair as "a moment's folly" (293).
But as Margaret McDowell comments,

Anna is not at all reassured when Darrow makes

light of the affair as only a moment's diversion.

For Anna, such an admission is only a sign of

Darrow's callousness, insensitivity, and masculine
complacency. (60)

)

Anna's new perspective completely undermines the rest of her

interactions with George. She begins to see manipulative
intentions in everything he says and does. She distrusts his
explanation of how he was able to return to Givre, because "he
had looked and spoken in the same way when he had answered her
probing questions about Sophy Viner,“ and Anna realizes "she
would never again know if he were speaking the truth or not”
(324-25). When he had first returned, Anna noticed that ”‘he
always knows what to do," but rather than comforting her,
”The idea that his tact was a kind of professional expertness

8
filled her with repugnance..." (323).

Later, as they sit together before the fire, Anna's

tranquility is disrupted when she realizes "that she knew

20

nothing of the inner thoughts of this man who was sitting by
her as a husband might" (330). What had not mattered with
Fraser has become essential with George, since his duplicity
regarding his affair has taught her not to assume their
thoughts will always be in harmony.

The idea that she cannot know George's mind is extremely
threatening to Anna. She begins to question the depth of his
love and worries that he will leave her when she ages.

He loved her now; she had no doubt of that; but how

could she hope to keep him?....She thought with a

pang of bitterness; ‘He won't grow any older be-

cause he doesn't feel things; and because he

doesn't, I §h§l_,..” (331, Wharton's end ellipsis). “a
Her musings appear to focus on inadequacies Anna perceives in
herself; she may not grow old gracefully, and "She put no
faith in her own arts” to hold George (331). But Anna did not
have such concerns until she knew about George's affair with
the young and beautiful Sophy, and her real concern is that
she may be unequal to overcoming George's shallowness. Anna
expects to age more quickly as she internalizes all the pain
she associates with George's insensitivity, as she has already
internalized both the knowledge of his affair and his noncha-
lance about it.

Anna's anxiety about her appearance is in contrast to
her earlier confidence in George's love, which had made her
feel that "a; shg_!§§, with her flattened hair, her tired
pallor...he would like her even better, feel her nearer,

dearer, more desirable, than in all the splendours she might

put on for him" (124). The irony of this contrast is

21

heightened by the fact that Sophy's naturalness--to which
George had compared Anna--was one of the major factors that
had attracted him to her (27-28). Anna's fears are especially
poignant in that she is looking ahead to a time when George
.may stop loving her, and comparing that time to a present in

which he can have an affair with another woman while he still

loves her.

Anna's feelings are complicated by her strong sexual
passion for George. Even before she has any hint of his
unfaithfulness, this passion overwhelms her. In her essay

about The Reef, McDowell says:

every detail that connects [Anna] with Darrow be-
comes sexually charged: she finds that his letters
give a keener edge to her senses as she touches
the paper;...she hears his voice from a distance
before anyone else does. As he approaches, she
feels the plants that she arranges become suffused
with vital energy. (59)

McDowell is right to stress the importance of Anna's passion,
for it continues to guide her after the revelation of
George's affair makes her wish she could break away from him
completely. When George accuses Anna of not understanding
"‘the strings that pull us,'” she thinks, "I g2 understand.
I've understood ever since you've been here.!"

For she was aware, in her own bosom, of sensations

so separate from her romantic thoughts of him that

she saw her body and soul divided against them-

selves....in herself, she discerned for the first

time instincts and desires, which, mute and

unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim passages

of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry
of mutiny. (316-17)

Such passion is all the more overpowering to Anna because it

was completely lacking in her marriage to Fraser Leath, whose

22

kiss ”dropped on her like a cold smooth pebble." Even then
Anna had ”questioned the completeness of the joys he
offered," since she had already experienced some passionate
feelings for George (91). She does not want to be cheated of

those feelings now that they have been renewed and
9
intensified.

But because Anna had come to believe in her outer re-
serve as a reflection of her inner self, she views her ”sense
of incompleteness, of passionate dependence” on George as
”somehow at variance with her own conception of her char-
acter" (319). Anna is forced to readjust her thinking about
herself and come to terms with this passion. She realizes
"she knew now" what George and Sophy know about themselves;
she "knew weaknesses and strengths she had not dreamed of, and
the deep discord and still deeper complicities between what
thought in her and what blindly wanted..." (320, Wharton's
ellipsis). This passage foretells the difficulty Anna will
have as she tries to leave Darrow. Her past behavior is
echoed in the attempt; when away from him, ”she exhausted
herself in appeal and interrogation, she formulated with a
fervent lucidity every point in her imaginary argument” to
break their engagement. But her passion overcomes these
efforts:

as soon as she was alone with him something deeper

than reason and subtler than shyness laid its

benumbing touch upon her, and the desire to speak

became merely a dim disquietude, through which his:

looks, his words, his touch, reached her as

through a mist of bodily pain. (329)

Anna's dilemma is complicated by her awareness that Sophy

 

23

has experienced George's passion in a way that sheas yet can
only imagine. Anna feels ”humiliated" that George does not
act upon her passion, "as though his forbearance, his tacit
recognition of her pride, were a slight on other qualities she
wanted him to feel in her," and she feels ”Exasperated by her
helplessness" (343). Her long habit of repression has left
Anna without any words to express her passion to George, no
matter how acutely aware of it she is herself, just as her
upbringing in New York society had rendered her unable to
express her love for him as a young girl.

The problem is not resolved when George stops her from
leaving his room one night, for now Anna fully understands
what she has missed, and the experience makes her extremely
possessive of George. As they travel to Paris the next day,
”She had an intense longing to be with him, an almost morbid
terror of losing sight of him for a moment," and when he goes
to buy a paper, ”she felt as though she should never see him
again” (344). Anna's possessiveness and "morbid terror”
hardly suggest healthy sexual fulfillment. Her passion has
simply taken over. ”Her scruples were not overcome; but for
the time their voices were drowned in the tumultuous rumour of
her happiness.” (345)

Her scruples do re-surface, however. Even before they
reach Paris, Anna has calmed down sufficiently to recognize

that her love for George contains a "new element": ”a sort of
' suspicious tyrannical tenderness that seemed to deprive it of
all serenity” (346). This is a key sentence, for it indicates

that their relationship must yet end. Anna's physical union

24

with George cannot alter her knowledge of him, and the next
several pages of the novel continue to catalog her destructive
suspicions and insecurities. When George becomes impatient
with her efforts to discuss Owen, Anna fears he will "grow
indifferent to me as he did to peg...” (347, Wharton's ellip-
sis); when Anna suggests a restaurant in Paris, she "fancied
she saw a shadow on his face,” and concludes that George had
been there with Sophy (354); and after they return from a
night at the theatre, Anna thinks about George and Sophy doing
the same, and pulls away from George's touch (357). It is at
this point that George tells her, "things can't go on like
this'” and starts to leave, but Anna stops him. She simply
cannot let George go, and the novel ends without a definite

break between them.

Sophy's introduction to The Reef parallels Anna's,

 

although it comes much earlier. We initially see Anna
through the eyes of a narrator; we first see Sophy through
George's eyes. Like Anna, Sophy remains unnamed for several
paragraphs, but this is because George cannot remember who
she is. The fact that George cannot name Sophy for so long
(although she immediately remembers hig_name) symbolizes his
failure to ever get to know her beyond a superficial level.
‘We first see Sophy in distress over her broken umbrella: "Oh,
dear, oh, dear! It's in ribbons!" (10) Her preoccupation
‘with this fact suggests Sophy may be a shallow, hysterical

(girl. George apparently thinks so; he "smiled at the inten-

25

sity of her distress” and mused how ”side by side with such
catastrophes as his'--he had just gotten the telegraph
delaying his visit to Anna--"human nature was still agitating
itself over its microscopic woes!” (11) But they are
standing in a "driving rain,” a ”gale," and Sophy's frus-
tration is not unreasonable. As with Anna's telegram, it
does not occur to George that this woman may have something
more important on her mind; she is unemployed and enroute to
friends on whose charity she must rely. When Sophy hears
that the boat is delayed for two hours, she says, "How
lucky--then I can find my trunk!” (11) Her response is both
positive and practical. George makes no comment, perhaps
because Sophy has just contradicted the smug, condescending
view he had already begun to form of her.

Sophy is a greater abstraction to Darrow than Anna, and
she will continue to be so in many ways. .While Anna is
initially described as "a lady,” Sophy is "a helpless female
arm” holding a broken umbrella, then a ”young lady,” and "the
loveliness in distress under his umbrella,” and ultimately
"his companion" (11-12). The progression of these terms
suggests both the progression of their relationship and
George's perception of Sophy, which undergoes a series of
adjustments. In his mind, Sophy changes from damsel in
distress, to a woman associated with something "unpleasant,"
to a pitiable ”creature," and finally to prostitute. The
something ”unpleasant” that Sophy was part of is the "Murrett
mob,” a group with which George had associated but towards

which he clearly feels superior. In another setting he may

26

have dismissed her completely at this point, but since George
feels angry and hurt by Anna, and because Sophy is both
beautiful and "amusing," he does not yet abandon Sophy.

(ll, 16) George considers himself Sophy's rescuer, much as
he imagines himself rescuing Anna from the memories of an
unsatisfying first marriage.

George's shifting perception of Sophy makes it difficult
for him to categorize her effectively: "She might be any one
of a dozen definable types, or she might-~more discon-
certingly to her companion and more perilously to herself---
be a shifting and uncrystallized mixture of them all.” (60)
But the fact that George persistently fails to mail Sophy's
letter telling the Farlows that she is in Paris suggests that
the fourth stage of his perception begins forming early in
George's mind. In fact, George's ”persistent sense con-
necting her with something uncomfortable and distasteful"
(13), which sums up his attitude toward the Lady Ulrica in
his past, also foretells the sensations in which his brief
affair with Sophy will end.

When Sophy and George do become lovers, George can then,
presumably, fit her into the category of those women who are
”decidedly not" ladies. It takes only ten days for him to
grow tired of Sophy, and he laments to himself that rainy
weather has made him think about his "situation” by keeping
him inactive. (75) George considers his drab hotel room in
terms of its "anonymous part,” and as he listens to Sophy's

step in the next room, he thinks, ”It was strange how much

 

27

better he knew it than the person to whom it belonged!" (73,

76) George knows Sophy only as a physical being, a set of
movements; to him she is as anonymous as the hotel room in
which their affair takes place.10

George doesn't accord Sophy the intelligence or adult-
hood of a woman of his class; he thinks of her as a "child,"
even though he knows she has been on her own and has worked
to support herself for some time. From her enthusiastic
acceptance of a night at the theatre, he concludes she is '
"starving” for amusement, which he can provide. (55) By
trivializing her enthusiasm, George discounts Sophy's
interest in acting as a profession, something she might do to
maintain her independence. Her reaction to the play supports
this: even George recognizes her interest in ”observing the
details" of the play's ”interpretation" on stage, and Sophy
displays a ”sharp apprehension” of "things theatrical” (46-
47).

Yet George does distinguish Sophy from Anna on the basis
of class, including Sophy's "avowed acquaintance with the
real business of living” (26). George discounts Sophy's
experiences so that he can treat her condescendingly as a
child, yet he then paradoxically remembers Sophy's exper-
iences so that he can treat her condescendingly as a lower-
class woman, as he does when he later encounters her as the
governess of Givre and the fiance of Owen Leath. Later,
reflecting on their affair, George remembers that Sophy's
conversation had gradually diminished and remembers that ”The

mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added

28

immensely to her charm." (265)

George's pygmalion impulses are also revived through
Sophy, in whom he sees "the effects of a perfectly fresh
impression on so responsive a temperament,” and for whom "he
felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate fgghhig,ggg,
amusement.” (50, my emphasis) George's desire to entertain
Sophy is completely self-serving, as this quote reveals. He
finds it amusing to exercise control over this young woman,
who he considers ”intrinsically young” and malleable. (46)
George finds Sophy beautiful--”He had dashed past that to
reach Lady Ulrica Crispin!;--and "the candid approval of her
eye" helps him recover "his usual sense of being a personable
young man" (15, 16). Sophy serves a purpose for George by
assauging his ”wounded vanity” in this way, a purpose that is
confirmed by his pleasure at being seen with her around Paris
(46, 48). Yet the limits of his pleasure are revealed later,
as George muses about Anna: "to be loved by a woman like that
made ‘all the difference' ... He was a little tired of
experimenting on life..." (127, Wharton's middle ellipsis).
His affair with Sophy, and with Lady Ulrica before her, is
simply an experiment.

One immediate drawback to this experiment, for George,
is that Sophy does not stay within the bounds of socially-
acceptable discourse. She expresses surprise that George
perceives of his time among the "Murrett mob" as "‘so awfully
long ago,'" when her time at Mrs. Murrett's is so fresh in

her mind. Yet George considers Sophy's comment a ”thrust" of

29

"doubtful taste" which ”chilled his growing enjoyment of her
chatter." (15) George wants the pleasure of talk with a
beautiful young girl, but he wants the talk kept on a super-
ficial level. Sophy continues to speak openly of Lady
Ulrica, who she says was ”false from head to foot" and "took
apart clike a puzzle" (l7). Sophy embarrasses herself by
such talk--she blushes and breaks off--yet her insight toward
the woman George had once sought after indicates that Sophy
is on a different level than Lady Ulrica. Unlike Undine
Spragg, who consciously mimics those she admires, Sophy indi-
cates no desire to have Lady Ulrica as a role model. She
does, however, admit to enVying her because she had ”all the
things I've always wanted: clothes and fun and motors, and
admiration and yachting and Paris...” Sophy tells George:

"And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort of

thing about her day after day, and never wonder why

some women, who don't seem to have any more right

to it, have it all tumbled into their laps, while

others are writing dinner invitations, and

straightening out accounts, and copying visiting

lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching

ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their sul-

phur? One looks in one's glass, after all!” (18)

Nor does Sophy want only thin s; her mention of
admiration, which echoes Lily Bart, suggests that she is
lonely and not nearly so superficial as George had

11
thought. Sophy speaks more candidly than the young Anna
Summers, who had lost George because she could not express
herself. But by listing admiration in the middle of a list
of objects, Sophy reveals this part of herself while keeping

within the boundaries of what young girls were supposed to

want. At this moment, even George sees her face as "no

30

longer a shallow flower cup but a darkening gleaming mirror
that might give back strange depths of feeling." He con-
cludes, "the girl had stuff in her--he saw it...” (18) The
realization that Sophy has "stuff" in her is the closest
George ever comes to recognizing any complexity to her
character.

Sophy is not being coy; she knows she is attractive and
that there is no inherent difference between her and Lady
Ulrica that should keep her from having what she wants. It
is not necessarily just Lady Ulrica that Sophy has in mind,
either; "some women" could encompass George's other "types"
as well, including Anna Leath. Thus the passage foreshadows
the two couples at Givre, but with a twist: ultimately,
neither Sophy nor Anna will "have it all;" Anna loses her
opportunity for a marriage of passion, and Sophy, largely
because of her passion, forfeits the financial security of
marriage.

Sophy's reaction to the play George takes her to also
reveals something about her character. She does not have a
formal education through which to view the production, but
she "felt” in the play ”the ineluctable fatality of the tale,
the dread sway in it of the same mysterious ‘luck' which
pulled the threads of her own small destiny.” (59) This
echoes Sophy's thoughts about some women having "it all"
while others do not; that, too, is a matter of luck. Her
interest in and enjoyment of the play further muddies

George's perception of Sophy; himself bored with the pro-

31

duction, he had assumed that she was merely feigning interest
in the play and was too polite to express her true opinion of
it (57-58). In this case, rather than George making ”a per-
fectly fresh impression" on Sophy, Sophy enables George to
see the play differently. Following her response, he
"pierced to the heart of its significance" and felt anew the
play's “supreme and poignant reality." (59)

There is an additional significance to this passage.
George had just layed his hand on Sophy's, and when he asks
her opinion, his own preoccupation with what he is doing
makes him ”only half-aware of his words” (58). And by
pouring out her impressions of the play, Sophy avoids acknow-
ledging George's hand on hers. Similarly, Sophy's declara-
tions about marriage a short while later are a defense. She
tells George, ”‘Oh, I never mean to marry,'” and when he
questions her, she continues:

”I'd like you to see the only men who've ever

wanted to marry me!....I'm not so sure that I

believe in marriage. You see I'm all for self-

development and the chance to live one's life.

I'm awfully modern, you know.” (61)

In response to this George ponders, "It was just when she
proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she struck him as
most helplessly backward...” (61). "Backward” is George's
term to describe attitudes he does not understand because
they don't fit neatly into his view that women are made to
please men.

But even without George's commentary, Sophy's procla-

mation does seem defensive. She may be quite truthful in

that she does not believe in marriage as it has been pre-

32

sented (and offered) to her, yet Sophy's rhetoric, and her
later engagement to Owen Leath, suggests that she would like_
to believe in marriage. She simply does not have the faith
in it that Anna does. Sophy calls herself ”awfully modern,”
but as Ammons points out, Sophy is ”in bondage to

the past" like other Wharton heroines, "because the liber-
ation, the ‘progress,' that America boasted of for women was,
in her [Wharton's] view, a mirage...Marriage and the New
Woman are antithetical, Wharton argues..." (49). Since
George is of a different social class than Sophy, and there-
fore no one she would perceive as a possible mate for her-
self, it is no wonder Sophy makes a disclaimer against
marriage as he stands there with his hand on hers. Later,

Ammons continues:

Sophy is...a New Woman: she is modern, self-confi-

dent, practical. She is also completely unable to

free herself from certain traditional notions and

impediments. Her lack of marketable skills, her

vulnerability to the double standard, and her own

romantic infatuation with George Darrow keep her

from gaining authority over her own life. (89)

Paradoxically, while Sophy's feeling of being in love
with George shows that she is bound to the past, it also
indicates that she is unwilling to accept a tradition which
separates love and marriage. Because of her affair with
George, and because he did provide an escape for her (however
temporary), Sophy has a feeling for him which she, using the
rhetoric society gives her, interprets as love. In this
sense, tradition does hold Sophy. Yet she, knowing there is

no chance of marriage with George for her, rejects the

33

alternative: marriage with Owen, who she ultimately realizes
she does not love.

Sophy is vulnerable not only to the way the double stan-
dard condemns women who have affairs, but exonerates men; she
is also vulnerable to a woman's need for the security of
marriage. Initially, she becomes engaged to Owen eye; though
ghe-ig.ngt_§gge.ghg.lgyeg'gym. She credits George with
warning her "That I'd be miserable if I married a man I
didn't love," and when George chides her for not telling Owen
sooner, Sophy answers, ”‘I told him as soon as I knew'" (260).
Even if she really does not gang to believe in marriage, Sophy
had understood that it is the role she must accept if she is
to stop being a governess and is to get those things she wants
in life. This does not mean Sophy is cold or calculating; she
is forced to depend on someone, and Owen is a "good match."
Sophy is free from Anna's illusions about marriage (if not her
illusions about love), but as Schriber says of marriage at
Wharton's time, "The investment by heroines of an enormous
portion of themselves in marriage or its pursuit grants to
that institution an inordinate power either to make or break
their lives" (189). While this is true for both heroines of
The Reef, Sophy is clearly more financially vulnerable. Her
situation makes her decision to face her feelings for George,
and her lack of feelings for Owen, quite impressive.12 Des-
pite a tremendous cost to herself, Sophy cannot maintain the
pretext that she knew George only casually. But the cost, in
one sense, may not be as high for Sophy as it appears. She

recognizes that she does not love Owen and, contrary to the

34

conventions of her society, Sophy decides she is unwilling to
pay that cost for security: a life quite possibly without
passion, a life like Anna's with Fraser Leath.

That Anna and Sophy are not such opposites as George had
originally believed is demonstrated throughout the novel.13
One major similarity between the two women is Anna's
”visioned" life and Sophy's desire to be an actress. In the
background about Anna, we are told that she lived largely in
her imagination as a girl; "It was in the visioned region of
action and emotion that her fullest hours were spent...” And
while she never expected her visions to be "translated into
experience” as a girl (85), Anna came to believe in her dream
of love and rescue through marriage and to expect it to come
true, first through George, then Fraser, and finally through
George again. Similarly, Sophy dreams of becoming an act-
ress—-a life which, by definition, would involve living partly
in her imagination. But just as Anna's sexual repression is
largely responsible for keeping her visioned world from coming
into existence, so Sophy's economic dependence--the fact that
she must take a governessing position far from Paris, rather
than taking acting lessons--keeps her dream of acting from
coming true. In a sense, Sophy's desire to act is an inver-
sion of Anna's visioned world. Anna had retreated into her
imagination to escape from a world where she was known as a
”model of ladylike repression;” and for Sophy, acting would
take her out of a world where she must be dependent on other

people to survive. Ironically, it is Anna who has always

35

played a role in her life, and Sophy who cannot act the part
14
of innocence in the presence of her former lover.

Another indication of these women's similarity is Anna's
natural sympathy for Sophy, despite their difference in age
and social status. Before Anna knows of the affair, she
encourages Sophy to be open with her and to trust her.

She had, in truth, so many reasons for wanting

Sophy to like her: her love for Owen, her solici-

tude for Effie, and her own sense 9; the girl's

fine mettle. She had always felt a romantic and

almost humble admiration for those members of her

sex who, from force of will, or the constraint of

circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from

which fate had so persistently excluded her.

(236, my emphasis) 5
Ironically, Anna does not yet know that part of this "con-
flict' is Sophy's sexual involvement with a man on whose
kindness she has depended, and to whom Anna happens to be
engaged. Rather than denigrating Sophy as a person of
inferior social rank, Anna recognizes her as another woman,
and as one who is admirable for having faced life in a way
that Anna has not had to do. It is because of this under-
standing that Anna can promote Sophy's marriage to her step-
son Owen, despite Madame de Chantelle's disapproval. Anna
also trusts Sophy with her little girl; she comments on how
Effie ”expands" when she's with Sophy and feels at ease about
leaving Effie with Sophy, who is "gay and kind and human"
(222).

Even after Anna knows Sophy has had an affair with
George, she still acknowledges the similarities between her-

self and Sophy. Meditating on her own passion for George and

the passion on which Sophy acted, Anna "thought of the girl

36

with a mingling of antipathy and confidence. It was humili-
ating to her pride to recognize kindred impulses in a charac—
ter which she would have liked to feel completely alien to
her.” Yet Anna also has an "absolute trust" in Sophy because
she had {instantly obeyed the voice of her heart when it bade
her part from the one [Owen] and serve the other [Georgel”
(320-21). Anna wants to see Sophy completely as the "other"
but cannot, any more than she can condemn Sophy but exonerate
George. Both women have experienced intense passion for
George, and both have loved him. The major difference is
simply that Sophy has acted on her passion, while at this
point, Anna has not.

In fact, Anna ultimately sees Sophy as the only one who
can ”save” her, and plans to regain her serenity by finding
Sophy and telling her she is giving up George (361). In ’
effect, Anna is trying to create in herself the firmness she
phas noted in Sophy by announcing her resolution to Sophy. But
when she meets Mrs. Birch, the prostitute, Anna's empathy and
admiration for Sophy disintigrate. She sees in Mrs. Birch's
face "a suggestion...of what Sophy Viner might, with the
years...become” (365). Sophy becomes in Anna's mind, as in
George's, the other, the prostitute. Only by viewing Sophy in
this way, it appears, can Anna finally separate her own self
from this woman. She and Sophy are neither complete opposites
nor two halves of a split heroine. They are simply two very
complex women characters who differ in some important ways but

who, as women, also have much in common.

Chapter Two: The_Custom g; ghg_Country

While The Reef addresses sexual passion, The Custom 2;
the Country is concerned with its heroine's passion for
acquisition. Undine Spragg suffers from none of the upheaval
of sexuality that characterizes Anna Leath and Sophy Viner.
For Undine, men's sexual feelings are simply factors to
consider in her efforts to form ever more socially and finan-
cially rewarding partnerships with them. Charles Bowen, the
male character who watches Undine from a distance, says she
is a "perfectly monstrous result of the system” in which
”money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe" a
woman is paid ”for keeping out of some man's way!" (208)
Criticism that relies on this view and that draws parallels
between Undine's manipulations and those of the male business
world shows more appreciation for the complexity of this
character than previous criticism which dismissed her as
completely evil. But to focus exclusively on the business
aspects of Undine and her world is still to oversimplify her
personality. Just as George Darrow attempts to categorize
Anna and Sophy, the men in The_Custom g; the Country operate
according to serious‘misconceptions of Undine, whether they
perceive her as a ”result of the system” or assume that she

wishes to adopt their values. In fact, Ralph Marvell's

37

38

misconceptions are ultimately fatal.

The_Custom g; the Country, unlike Thg_gee§, begins with.
the heroine; "Undine Spragg'" are the first words of the
novel. Undine's immediate introduction is appropriate not
only because she is the central character in the novel, but
because she is herself completely egocentric. Other char-
acters exist solely in relationship to her, at least in
Undine's perspective. Wharton explores this egocentrism
partly through Undine's love of mirrors. Undine's ”delight”
in dressing up and playing "‘lady'" in front of a mirror ”had
outlasted childhood" and as an adult, "she still practised
the same secret pantomime" (22). Preparing for a dinner at
the fashionable Mrs. Fairford's, Undine yields to the ”joy of
dramatizing her beauty” and practices her "incessant move-
ments' because "she thought it the correct thing to be
animated in society" (22). The passage reveals Undine's
vanity, but more importantly, it anticipates her way of
dealing with the world. As the narrator says,

Undine was fiercely independent and yet pas-

sionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every

one by her dash and originality, but she could not

help modelling herself on the last person she
ut'eee (19’.

She is imitative in both senses of the word; copying and
artificial. Undine mirrors people externally but fails to
improve her inner self. Her concern with the external,
established so early in the novel, anticipates Undine's con—

stant search for new and better mirrors as she moves from one

16
segment of society to another.

Much later, when Undine has a dealer come to appraise

39

the Chelles tapestries, she looks at them ”as complacently as
though they.had been mirrors reflecting her own image" (529).
The tapestries are symbolic of mirrors for Undine because
their sale could buy her several seasons in Paris, where her
beauty would be reflected in, and appreciated by, the society
she craves. Undine needs this type of reflection because she
relies on the "mirror” of others' views as much as she relies
on literal mirrors; the ”image of herself in other minds” is
”her only notion of self-seeing" (401). Even as a girl
Undine had craved the approval of others; she thrived on "the
public triumph which was so necessary to her personal
enjoyment" (549).

At the same time, just as a mirror can reflect only what
is within its range, so Undine can ”see" only those who are
reflected in her mirror, those who are with her and who
complement the image she sees of herself. At the Opera,
Undine perceives herself as reflecting all of society; she is
the "core” of the auditorium, "the sentient throbbing surface
which gathered all the shafts of light into a centre” (60).
Later, Undine is surprised to learn how much has happened to
Elmer Moffatt while she has been living at Saint Desert,
because "It never occurred to her that other people's lives
went on when they were out of her range of vision..." (412).
In this sense she is like an infant, unaware of anything it
cannot see.

Undine's egocentrism is also suggested by her tendency

to blame others whenever something goes wrong. Although

40

Undine believes ”she was ready enough to acknowledge her own
mistakes,” she rarely seems to think she has made any (58).
Wharton establishes this characteristic with the relatively
trivial episode of the opera box. Undine Sexulted” when her
father bought her a box for every other Friday, after he had
initially refused to buy her one at all. But on her first
night in this hard-won opera box, Undine laments, "now she
saw that it might but emphasize one's exclusion. And she was
burdened with the box for the rest of the season! It was
really stupid of her father to have exceeded his
instructions" (68).

Later, married to Ralph but enjoying Popple's flattery,
Undine reflects: "Popple's homage seemed the subtlest proof
of what Ralph could have made of her if only he had ‘really
understood' her. It was but another step to ascribe all her
past mistakes to the lack of such understanding...“ (190).
And, ”Since it was never her habit to accuse herself of such
mistakes” as her decision to marry Ralph, "it was inevitable
that she should gradually come to lay the blame on Ralph"
(193). Undine pities herself for marrying Ralph. ”She found
a poignant p1easure...in the question: ‘What does a young
girl know of life?'" (193-94). The question is ironic for
Undine, who had been married once before and engaged three
times.

Undine attributes all her problems to external sources
because she believes the world owes her happiness. She '
considers herself "essentially peace-loving" and believes she

”would have preferred to live on terms of unbroken harmony

41

with her parents."

But she could not help it if they were unreason-

able. Ever since she could remember there had

been "fusses" about money; yet she and her mother

had always got what they wanted, and apparently

without lasting detriment to the family fortunes.

It was therefore natural to conclude that there

were ample funds to draw upon, and that Mr.

Spragg's occasional resistances were merely due to

an imperfect understanding of what constituted the

necessities of life. (45)
In Undine's eyes, anything that interferes with her will is
"unreasonable." She refuses to acknowledge any need for mod-
eration; such things as opera boxes have become "rights” to
Undine simply because she has never been denied them (44).

Wharton explains her parents' oversolicitousness by
refering to the death of the Spragg's only other two children
by typhoid fever (80). Undine is the ultimate stereotypical
only child; she is twice as spoiled because she is all her
parents have left of their three offspring. Yet early in
life, Undine underwent the "terrible initiation” of discov-
ering that others were not content with the things she had
thought worth having. She came to believe that ”There was
something better beyond" and that ”it was always her fate to
find out just too late about the ‘something beyond'” (54).

Much later, when Undine regrets accepting money from Van
Degen, she reflects: "What she wanted was not a hand-to-
mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one with her gifts
the privileges of life should come openly.” (234) This is
the message Undine has gotten from a mother who "seemed to

have transferred her whole personality to her child” (11),

and a father who allows her to cajole him into the most

42

impractical expenditures. The feeling that she is always
missing out on something, plus her attitude that life should
treat her in a privileged way, keeps Undine from ever being
fully satisfied with what she has.

Because she had learned early that money was always
available, Undine continues to assume that whenever someone
fails to meet her "needs,” that person does not care about
her. When her third husband, Raymond, refuses to sell his
ancestral tapestries, Undine pants to Elmer Moffatt: ”he'd
rather see me starve than part with one of his grand-father's
snuff-boxes" (559). This single complaint indicates the way
Undine glorifies her problems and trivializes others' posi-
tions. Undine's idea of starving is going without one more
expensive dress, or not taking over the top floor of the
Chelles' home in Paris. In contrast, she equates the Chelles
tapestries, extremely valuable heirlooms whose ”‘history has
been published,'” with "snuff-boxes.” (530)

As the above discussion suggests, Undine's egocentrism
results in a great deal of selfish thinking and behavior.
For example, "Partly as a result" of her financial ”excur-
sions' with money she has borrowed from van Degen,

she had a ‘nervous breakdown'...and her physician

having ordered massage and a daily drive it became

necessary to secure Mrs. Heeny's attendance and to
engage a motor by the month. Other unforseen
expenses...were added to by a severe illness of

little Paul's....During these days Ralph's anxiety

drove him to what seemed to Undine foolish exces-
ses of expenditure... (229)

Undine happily pampers her own illness (which the passage

suggests may be feigned), but resents money spent on her

43

son's illness as "foolish.” In contrast, Undine attempts to
use a later illness of Paul's to her benefit. Before she
and Raymond leave Paris one season, ”a doctor hgg_bgen,gggng
to say that Paul...was in urgent need of sea air" because
Undine does not want to return to Saint Désert (491, my
emphasis).

Also, as the Marquise de Chelles, Undine "felt no com-
punction in continuing to accept an undiminished allowance,”
although her allowance breaks her parents financially. She
does feel "a sentimental pity for her parents," however.
"Aside from all interested motives, she wished for their own
sakes that they were better off." Ironically, among Undine's
supposedly disinterested motives is the idea that "renewed
prosperity would at least have procured them the happiness of
giving her what she wanted" (562). Undine can't imagine that
her parents might have interests outside herself.

The harshest indicator of Undine's selfishness, however,
is that she views Ralph's death as a financial advantage.

His suicide

brought about a sudden change in her situation.
She was now no longer a divorced woman struggling
to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for her remar-
riage, but a widow whose conspicuous beauty and
independent situation made her the object of law-
ful aspirations. (483)

A subsequent line suggests that Undine does take some respon-
sibility for Ralph's death; "she continued to wish that she

could have got what she wanted without having had to pay that
particular price for it” (487). But the appearance is decep-

tive. Undine is actually feeling sorry for herself, as her

44

reaction to Paul's inheritance confirms:
she wished she could have got (the moneyl some
other way--she hated the thought of it as one more

instance of the perverseness with which things she

was entitled to always came to her as if they had
been stolen. (488)

Undine turns Ralph's tragedy, and the windfall which comes to
her through Paul as a result, into an occasion to pity
herself.

Undine's attitude toward the male business world also
reflects her self-absorbed perspective. Undine does not want
to be a part of the male business world, as Wharton

indicates:

Her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did
when [her father) alluded to business. That was
man's province; and what did men go "downtown" for

but to bring back the spoils to their women?
(44)

This passage is a clue to much of Undine's subsequent
behavior. She expects to be lavishly supported, without
being bothered with the details of the way money is earned.17
Wharton confirms Undine's view later in the novel when,
preparing for her wedding to Ralph, Undine and her mother
feel "secure in their invariable experience that, once
‘father' had been convinced of the impossibility of evading
their demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means
with which his womenkind need not concern themselves" (127).
Undine's persistent ignorance of the business world
cannot be wholly attributed to men's attempts to shelter her.

Ralph does initially try to take over Mr. Spragg's role of

providing everything Undine wants, but he soon realizes that

45

her ”disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get
on without it but merely a blind confidence that it will
somehow be provided" (149). When he tries to explain their
financial situation, however, Undine objects; ”it was always
hard to make her see why circumstances could not be bent to
her wishes” (171). Although Bowen editorializes that women
are ”bribed" by material goods to stay out of men's way
(208), this assessment does not apply to Undine. She instead
refuses to understand so that she can avoid taking responsi-
bility for her expenses. And Wharton shows that Undine is
perfectly capable of understanding finances when she sees a
direct connection to herself. From Moffatt's scheme to buy
some real estate from Ralph's firm, Undine ”finally
extracted, and clung to, the central fact that if the ‘deal
went through' it would mean a commission of forty thousand
dollars to Marvell's firm, of which something over a fourth
would come to Ralph” (251). Undine's face is ”alive with
interest” when Ralph later discusses the deal with her, and
she wants to know if he intends to make the sale (255).

Undine's carefully maintained ignorance of the male
business world is just one aspect of the business Undine 929s
understand: marriage. Ammons, in discussing the way Undine
makes marriage her business, says Undine's ”avaricious
approach to marriage" is "simply realistic” in her world
(101). Ammons goes on to explain how Undine's business world
parallels her father's:

Wall Street is the field of battle for the modern

robber baron, and although his female counter-
part...is denied that battleground, she is given

46

her own stock exchange: the institution of mar-

riage in which she herself is the stock exchanged.

To create her empire, she invests herself in the

right marriage--an enterprise Undine understands

and embraces. (Ammons 107)

This enterprise requires certain adjustments in Undine's
thinking. For instance, she initially perceives Ralph as "a
little fellow" whose primary distinction was being in the
same room with the more overtly-stylish Claud Popple (5).
After learning of Ralph's social status, however, Undine
decides he is ”so much less negligible than his brilliant
friend” (23), an assessment which is followed by a new appre-
ciation for Ralph's physical appearance (69). Undine ulti-
mately convinces herself that she is in love with Ralph: "It
was pleasant...to meet Ralph's grey eyes, with that new look
in them, and to feel that she had kindled it” (92).

Yet this feeling "was only part of her larger pleasure
in the general homage to her beauty” at her engagement din-
ner, and "in the sensations of interest and curiosity excited
by everything about her, from the family portraits overhead
to the old Dagonet silver on the table--which were to be hers
too, after all!” (92) Love, for Undine, means both power
over another, a type of "possessorship" (97), and possessor-
ship of things. At this dinner Undine plays one of her major
roles. She tells herself that the ”part” of a young woman
"very much in love, and a little confused and subdued by the
newness and intensity of the sentiment" was ”not hard to
play, for she w§§_in love, of course" (91). But Wharton

flakes it clear that she i§_playing a role; she feels none of

this intensity of emotion toward Ralph, as a later reference

47

to ”her first impersonal affection" for Ralph confirms (226,
my emphasis). Undine is--and remains--completely detached
from such intense feelings, as Ralph will come to realize
after they have been married a while.

Undine's talent for rationalizing helps her evade her
true motive for marrying Ralph. Dismayed that he will be
expected to support the newlyweds, Mr. Spragg suggests that
Undine break her engagement. Undine wonders, ”Did he suppose
she was marrying for money? Didn't he see it was all a
question...of the kind of people she wanted to ‘go with'?"
(123) Even if Undine's lack of concern for money is
accepted, she clearly expects Ralph to serve a purpose:
getting her into society. She is not marrying him for love.
The following passages confirm that Undine is marrying for
money, as well. When Mr. Spragg says that if she's in love'
with Ralph, ”‘you and he won't mind beginning in a small
way,'" Undine reacts by theatrically tearing off her engage-
ment ring and threatening to tell Ralph, "‘I thought he was a
rich man, and now I see I'm mistaken----” (124-25).

Ralph initially fails to understand the extent of
Undine's egocentrism because he, too, is egocentric.18
Just as George Darrow perceives of women as ”designed" to
please men, Ralph perceives of Undine in relation to himself,
rather than as a separate person who may have very little in
common with him. Based on a conversation with Undine's
mother, Ralph concludes that the Spraggs "had been ‘plain

people'” and that this ”drew them much closer to the Dagonet

48

ideals than any sham elegance in the past tense" (82). From
here, Ralph makes the leap to speculating, "To save her
(Undine) from Van Degen and van Degenism: was that really to
be his mission--the ‘call' for which his life had obscurely
waited?" (82)

At first, Ralph thinks he judges Undine clearly; he
recognizes ”her crudity and her limitations," but views them
as "a part of her grace and her persuasion” (83). He assumes
that Undine shares her mother's "virgin innocence” and "unaf-
fected frankness" and can yet be spared from "swelllingl the
ranks of the cheaply fashionable" (81-82). But Undine is
frank because ”some intuition had already told her that
frankness was the tone to take with him" (69). Wharton makes
it clear that Ralph falls in love simply because he is ready
to; ”his faith in the great adventure" of romance to come in
his life is what "made him so easy a victim when love had at
last appeared clad in the attributes of romance...” (83).
Having lost his first love, Clare, because he waited too
long, Ralph is quick to assume Undine is suitable for him.19

Ralph's egocentric view is also apparent in his attempt
to change Undine.20 While he recognizes Undine's ”sensitive-
ness to new impressions” and "obvious lack of any sense of
relative values,” he dwells on these characteristics as
enhancing Undine's vulnerability, rather than as negative
qualities to consider before deciding to marry her. He
envisions her as a "lovely rock-bound Andromeda” and imagines

himself ”whirling down on his winged horse...to cut her

bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue” away

49

from the ”devouring monster Society careering up to make a
mouthful of her...” (84). As Collins notes, Ralph's motive
for rescuing Undine is largely an attempt to "restore his own
self-esteem” (201). Ralph takes on the project of rescuing
and protecting, he assumes, an as yet unspoiled daughter of
the Invaders.

In discussing The Custom 2; the Countr , Ammons comments
on Ralph's Pygmalion attitudes: "A would-be artist who has
never been able to finish a single work, he sees Undine as
raw material for his creative impulse." (112) Ralph, how-
ever, has always been a passive artist (he lies under trees
and waits for poetic words to drop on him like leaves), and
the project of molding a living being into his desired shape
is far more than he can handle. As Ammons concludes,

Ralph assumes that Undine wants to be lifted and

will adopt his unostentatious way of life, his

taste for reserved people, and his educated

aestheticism. He assumes, in other words, that

she wants to become a supportive, emotionally and

intellectually dependent wife--both the object and

the nurture of his creativity....His wife simply

will not adopt his values, especially his belief

in the innate passivity of female human nature.
(Ammons 113)

Undine initially has no idea of Ralph's view and is puzzled,

during their engagement, by his "reluctance to introduce her

to the van Degen set” (93).

Ralph's attitudes cause frustration for Undine, who
expects certain rights as a partner in the marriage-business.
Afraid Ralph will thwart her growing friendship with van
Degen, Undine muses, "It was hard to be criticized for every

grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the

50

reaching for her!" Undine ”felt herself trapped, deceived"
because, she realizes, Ralph will "not achieve the quick rise
to affluence which was man's natural tribute to woman's
merits” (227). In her view, Ralph fails the partnership
because he does not support Undine adequately, although he
stops trying to control her activities. Collins suggests
that Undine's relationship with her father influences her

view of Ralph:

From her father, Undine derives her energy and her
pleasure in complicated manoeuvers designed to advance
her own social position. She weedles him into giving
her money....In contrast, Ralph's refusal to bring home
enough money to satisfy her desire for luxury, and his
inability to understand her desire to barter for what
she wants...prove disappointing. (205)
But Ralph does not refuse to provide enough money; he simply
does not have the business training which would enable him to
do so. Besides, Ralph perceives that "his business” is to
defend Undine from her "weakness" for van Degenism and "lift
her above it” (177), not to provide her with unlimited funds.

As Undine then asserts her independence, Ralph notes
that she "had so amply shown him her ability to protect
herself. The pang lay in the completeness of the proof--in
the perfect functioning of her instinct of self—preservation”
(163). Ralph takes no pleasure in his wife's ability to
function as an adult, since it means she will not be easily
molded. For the same reason, Ralph dislikes Undine's prac-
ticality. He is upset by her suggestion that they ask the
Marvells for money, ostensibly because "it was always she who

made the practical suggestion, hit the nail of expediency on

51

the head. No sentimental scruple made the blow waver or
deflected her resolute aim" (165). Yet as Carol Wershoven
"since the Spraggs have made a life-long commitment to
‘helping out' Ralph," Undine's suggestion "hardly seems an
audacious request" (63). Ralph cannot accept his wife's
ability to take charge where he has, in her opinion, failed.
Ralph treats Undine as he does because he perceives her
as a child. As Undine begins to resist him, Ralph holds firm
to his purpose of protecting and molding her. He realizes
that she can be inconsistent, as when she complains that he
hastened their marriage. But he is "still enchanted" by her
and, when Undine complains about being hidden away in Italy,
he says, "We'll go wherever you please-~you make every place

the one place,'" ”as if he_were humouring an_irresistible

 

22119? (145, my emphasis). Ralph's tendency to view Undine
as a child is consistent with his desire to protect her; if
he thought of Undine as an adult, he would realize that she
can function without his constant guidance. Later, as Ralph
takes Undine into his arms, "he felt her resign herself like
a tired child" (152). But again, this is his perception; the
context ironically reveals that Undine is only "resigned" in
allowing him to hold her. "She had never shown any repug-
nance to his tenderness, but such response as it evoked was
remote and Ariel-like...” (152).

Finding her response not up to the level of his passion,
Ralph briefly emphasizes Undine as goddess. He daydreams

about the "pot-boiler" novel he plans to write and thinks,

52

”Did not the worshipper always heap the rarest essences on
the altar of his divinity?" (155) A goddess does not need
protection from a mortal, however, and Ralph soon returns to
his view of Undine as a child.21 He ”told himself that there
is always a Narcissus-element in youth, and that what Undine
really enjoyed was the image of her own charm mirrored in the
general admiration" (157). Because he considers this a
characteristic of youth, rather than an intricate part of
Undine's personality, Ralph expects Undine to outgrow her
need for general admiration. ”With her quick perceptions and
adaptabilities she would soon learn to care more about the
quality of the reflecting surface...” (157).

As Ralph becomes disillusioned about Undine and recog-
nizes her "instinct of adapting herself to whatever company
she was in," he becomes concerned about ”what her ignorance
might expose her to" (160). When Undine doesn't accept his
view of her friends, Ralph is "exasperated by what seemed a
wilful pretense of ignorance” (161). When Undine says she
can choose her own friends, Ralph patronizingly responds,
"No, you can't, you foolish child. You know nothing of this
society you're in...” (161). Ralph is surprised later when
Undine refuses to give up her journey on Van Degen's

Sorceress.

He was used to women who, in such cases, yielded
as a matter of course to masculine judgments: if
one pronounced a man "not decent" the question was
closed. But it was Undine's habit to ascribe all

interference with her plans to personal motives...
(179)

Still, Ralph believes he is ”learning to influence her

53

through her social instincts" and expects Undine to drop van
Degen once back in New York (180). But Undine does not do
so, and subsequent events show just how little influence
Ralph has had over her.

By the time of Undine's pregnancy, Ralph has given up
enough of his illusions to notice her true reaction. He is
struck by the ”chill of her tone” as she bewails the year she
will lose to her pregnancy, and he perceives her thoughts
about "the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of
the general unnecessary disorganization of their lives"
(185). He responds "bitterly” to Undine, but Ralph wants to
”disguise from himself the hateful fact that he felt it [the
same way] too” (185).

Years later, when Undine misses a birthday party for
their son Paul, Ralph reflects, "For a long time now feminine
nearness had come to mean to him...the ever-renewed dread of
small daily deceptions, evasions, subterfuges." The dis-
covery that Undine had reset her jewelry, after telling him
she would not, had marked "the point beyond which there was
no returning" from disillusionment (213). Ralph now
realizes,

it was admiration, not love, that she

wanted....and her conception of enjoyment was

publicity, promiscuity--the band, the banners, the

crowd, the close contact of covetous impulses, and

the sense of walking among them in cool security.

(223—24)

This, Ralph's most accurate perception of Undine, does

not help him address their problems. He simply resigns

himself to the idea that "They were fellow-victims in the

 

54

noyade of marriage" and concludes that "if they ceased to
struggle perhaps the drowning would be easier for both..."
(225, Wharton's ellipsis). His progressive disillusionment
with Undine includes an escapist attempt to return to his
first love, who he had lost to the ”Invaders" long before he
met Undine. As his marriage disintegrates, Ralph begins to
compare Clare and Undine, just as George Darrow compares
Sophy Viner and Anna Leath. Ralph begins to see Clare more
favorably; she is "light and frivolous” like Undine, but
Clare ”would never have lied to him or traded on his tender-
ness” (215). Yet Ralph views Clare in much the same conde-
scending way he had previously viewed Undine. He is content
in Clare's presence because she makes him feel important;
”With her eyes on him he felt the exquisite relief of talking
about himself as he had not dared to talk to anyone since his
marriage.“ (321) He also takes solace in her quiet company
and believes she "wanted him to know that she had never
wholly been any one else's" (320). She is the one he would
have been able to mold and protect.

Ralph cannot stop struggling over the ”drowning" of his
marriage, however. During Undine's long visit to Europe
without him--which ultimately ends in their divorce--Ralph
becomes obsessed with her letters and tries to envision her
through them. Sometimes ”he saw her, closely, palpably
before him, as she sat at the writing-table, frowning and a-
little flushed, her bent nape showing the light on her hair,
her short lip pulled up by the effort of composition...”

55

(308). But this vision of Undine completely and earnestly
involved in communicating with him, as if she is away from
Ralph against her will, is destroyed by the letter in which
she says: ”‘Everybody's talking to me at once, and I don't
know what I'm writing.'" (308) As Ralph realizes, "Though
his feeling for her had changed, it still ruled his life."
(309) He begins to blame himself for their failed marriage,
not because he made no effort to understand Undine, but
because perhaps he had not ”done all he could to draw her
half-formed spirit from its sleep" (309). To the end, Ralph
refuses to understand that Undine could not be transformed
into the woman he wanted her to be.

Yet despite all he has learned about Undine since their-
marriage, so sure is Ralph that she had been innocent as his
bride, that he is thrown into complete shock by the revela-
tion of Undine's previous marriage. This news closely fol-
lows the revelation that a business venture with Moffatt has
gone bad, leaving Ralph both without the money he needs to
buy his son's custody and unable to repay Clare's loan, the
money she had been saving in order to someday escape "van
Degenism.” Ralph cannot accept the fact that not only had
Undine been married before, she had been married to ”This
man...thi§,man...,” Moffatt, "this coarse-grained man with
whom,” he had just been thinking, ”he hadn't a sentiment in
common” (466, 464). The impact of all this on Ralph causes
him to feel that he is "stumbling about in his inherited
prejudices"--the ones which had made him believe he could

rescue Undine from the Invaders--"like a modern man in

 

 

56

mediaeval armour," so that ”the whole archaic structure of
his rites and sanctions tumbled down about him" (469).

Even with his perception of society destroyed, however,
Ralph's view of his role toward Undine somehow fails to
change. He sees Undine herself quite differently; the "over-
whelming sense of her physical nearness which had once so
haunted and tortured him” now "filled the room with a mocking
glory” (471-72). Realizing that his life's project had been
a sham because it had already been too late to influence
Undine in the way he had envisioned, Ralph commits suicide.
But even in the act of suicide, Ralph perceives himself as
rescuing Undine. "He said to himself: ‘My wife...this will
make it all right for her...'" (474, Wharton's ellipses). In
his confusion, Ralph apparently understands that his death
will enable Undine to remarry and so, unable to bear the
strain of knowing she had been married before him, he tells
himself that he is really doing this for her.22 In the midst
of unbearable disillusionment, Ralph cannot relinquish his
vision of himself as his wife's savior.

While still married to Ralph, Undine begins her attempt
to negotiate a marriage to Van Degen, who could both support
and display her lavishly. Undine had long since rationalized
her friendship with van Degen; "it ennobled her in her own
eyes to influence such a man for good,” since he ”was noted
for not caring for ‘nice women'” (201-02). Undine does not
admit to herself how much he may be influencing Egg, As

subsequent events show, in fact, Van Degen does not view

57

Undine any differently from the other women she places
herself above.

When they do become involved with each other, Van Degen
refuses to enter a partnership with Undine, partly because he
does not trust her to uphold her side of it. After Undine
divorces Ralph, van Degen won't see her. As her friend
Indiana Rolliver reveals, "‘He says that the very day you
went off with him last year you got a cable from New York
telling you to come back at once to Mr. Marvell, who was
desperately ill.'” (358) Yet Wharton makes it clear that
Undine did not return to Ralph because she did not believe he
really was ill. Just as she later perceives Raymond as
acting when he confronts her about the Chelles tapestries,
Undine quickly assumes Laura's cable saying that Ralph is 111
is an act, an attempt to force her to return to New York and
”spoil her pleasure” (297). ”Ralph was always perfectly
well--she could not picture him as being suddenly at death's
door and in need of her....what if the cable were a device of
the Marvell women to bring her back?" (297) Herself aware of
playing roles throughout the novel, whether young girl in
love, noble mother, or incorruptible American woman, Undine
readily assumes that others do the same. Of course, it is
also a matter of convenience for Undine to rationalize away
Laura's cable in this way; she is about to begin her affair
with van Degen when the cable arrives.

When Undine rightfully points out that Van Degen went
with her anyway, Indiana explains, "‘One day when he wasn't

feeling very well he thought to himself: ”Would she act like

 

58

that to me if I was dying?" And after that he never felt the
same to you.'" (360) Yet Undine still feels certain she can
win him back ”‘if I could only see him.'" (357) What she
really means is if he would only see he;; she expects Van
Degen to be hers again simply because of her beauty.

Undine clearly saw her affair with van Degen as a
business move; "It had been a bold move, but it had been as
carefully calculated as the happiest Wall Street ‘stroke.'"
(364) During their affair, Undine "had preserved her self-
respect by telling herself that she was really [van Degen's)
wife, and i_,_g,ggy,§g,pl§me_if the law delayed to ratify the
bond” (364, my emphasis). She takes credit for her affair as
a business move but denies any moral responsibility. Her
"business" during their affair was to "make each of their
days so agreeable that when the last came he should be
conscious of a void to be bridged over as rapidly as pos-
sible; and when she thought this point had been reached she
packed her trunks and started for Dakota," for the divorce
court (366-67). Consequently, she has trouble understanding
why the "move" didn't work. Undine had failed to take into
account any emotional needs, other than passion, in her
attempt to form a marriage partnership with Van Degen.

Undine also fails to realize the extent to which she,
like Anna Leath and Sophy Viner, is an outsider to the male
world. She is an outsider to the world of business by
choice, as I have discussed. But Undine discovers with Van

Degen that even in her business, men play by different rules.

59

Just as in The Reef George Darrow brands Sophy unfit as

 

Effie's governess because of their affair, yet considers
himself a fit step-father for the same child, so van Degen
can have both a wife and a mistress, with no apparent loss of
social status.

van Degen perceives Undine's initial refusal to "‘be a
little fond'" of him as an act (233-34), not realizing how
repulsive she finds him. Undine had noted his "grotesque
saurian head, with eye-lids as thick as lips and lips as
thick as ear lobes” the first time she saw him (49). She
never does overcome her physical repugnance for van Degen;
when he first kisses her, ”she felt a moment's recoil” (294).
But as Undine learns more about the extent of van Degen's
wealth, and has been married long enough to realize the
dearth of Ralph's, she decides she likes his type of "‘exclu-
siveness,'” which is a "contempt for everything he did not
understand or could not buy” (192). He is "nice" to listen
to her financial problems (and give her two thousand dol-
lars), so Undine decides she wants to marry him despite being
repulsed by him.

During their affair, van Degen seems perfectly aware
that Undine wants the social and financial security of mar-
riage with him. While he never explicitly agrees to marry
'her, he does nothing to correct her expectation that he will.
He ”seemed in no way disturbed" by her references to
(divorcing Ralph, and "though Undine could not remember his
ever voluntarily bringing up the subject of their marriage he

<3id not shrink from her recurring mention of it" (366). Thus

60

Peter, by seeing clearly aspects of Undine's character to
which Ralph was initially blind, is able to control his
relationship with her and end the relationship when it no
longer suits him.

Undine realizes too late that:

her companion's view of their relation was not the

same as hers. She saw that he had always meant it

to be an unavowed tie, screened by Mrs. Shallum's

companionship and Clare's careless tolerance...
(365).

This is partially a rationalization for Peter's never coming
to Dakota; Undine doesn't want to believe that anything she
did had such a negative effect on him. But Undine's percep-
tion is also supported by what we have already seen of van
Degen. This is not his first extra-marital affair, and he had
said much earlier--in Undine's presence--”‘Marry somebody who
likes all the things you don't, and make love to somebody who
likes all the things you do.'” (174) This is precisely what
van Degen has done.23 While van Degen retains his place in
society after his affair with Undine, she, now divorced,
experiences the ”lost advantage” of no longer being Mrs. Ralph
Marvell. "Her new visiting-card, bearing her Christian name
in place of her husband's, was like the coin of a debased
currency testifying to her diminished trading capacity.”
(361)

Because Van Degen entered into an affair with her, Undine
had thought he was in love with her. She believed that the
”cool spirit within her" which "seemed to watch over and

regulate her sensations" made her ”capable of measuring the

61

intensity of those she provoked" (294). Undine reflects,

It was wonderful how cool she felt--how easily she

could slip out of his grasp! Any man could be

managed like a child if he were really in love with

one... (294, Wharton's ellipsis).
What had been true with Ralph does not apply to Peter,
however, and Undine miscalculates her control over van Degen.
Her failure to understand van Degen's rules led Undine to
bargain away the prestige of the Dagonet-Marvell line without
receiving the superior display she expected in return.

Feeling devalued, Undine becomes defensive. "She feared
to be associated with ‘the wrong people,‘ and scented a shade
of disrespect in every amicable advance. The more pressing
attentions of one or two men she had formerly known filled her
with a glow of outraged pride..." (361). When Indiana chides
her for leaving van Degen in the middle of their affair in
order to get her divorce from Ralph, Undine responds: "‘But
what could I do? I'm not an immoral woman." (346) Undine
can still view herself this way because

The pleasures for which her sex took such risks had

never attracted her, and she did not even crave the

excitement of having it thought that they did. She

wanted, passionately and persistently, two things

which she believed should subsist together in any

well-ordered life: amusement and respectability...

(353-54)
Being thought sexually immoral damages the respectibility
Undine wants, so she protects her self-image by believing
that, because she has no intrinsic interest in sexual
"pleasures,” she is immune to criticism on that basis. As

.Ammons points out, even women such as Undine ”still live

through men" because "In Wharton's view the woman who wants to

62

make it to the very top of the American pyramid still has only
one route: confederate with a man already up there, or one on
the way." (Ammons 112) Undine's period of social ostracism
confirms this in her mind, and she procedes next to allign
herself with_Count Raymond de Chelles.

If Ralph fails his partnership with Undine primarily
because he cannot provide enough money, Raymond fails because
he refuses both to fund Undine's extravagances and to display
her.24 Undine had believed she was truly flattered by
Raymond's courtship;_"Nor was there anything calculated in her
attitude" (401). But Undine's persistent "want of money" is
soon mentioned again, and it is not surprising when she ex-
plores the possibility of buying her way into a marriage with
Chelles. She assumes both that he would end her financial
problems and that her "scarcely-gained footing” in French
society would be secured (402-05). When Indiana (now Madame
de Trézac) suggests that she become Chelles' mistress, Undine
self-righteously invokes the moral standards of Apex; when her
friend responds, "‘Personally, of course, I've never quite got
used to the French view--,'" Undine says, "‘I hope no American
woman ever does.'” (404)

There is more to Undine's refusal to have an affair with
Raymond than moral scruples, however. She had already been
"cut” by society after her affair with Van Degen and her
divorce from Ralph, and Undine does not intend to make the
same mistake with Chelles. Thus, "her demeanour to Chelles
was that of the incorruptible but fearless American woman, who

cannot even conceive of love outside of marriage," and she

63

determines to "give up Chelles unless he was willing to marry
her” (404-05). She is learning to adjust her strategies to
the rules by which men play.

But once they are married, Raymond requires Undine to
”report of every hour she spent away from him" because he
considers her ”too young and good looking” to be "mixed up"
with Princess Estradina's "crew” (481-82). After a season in
Paris, he takes her to Saint Desert, where "At first she was
sure she could laugh Raymond out of his prudence” and convince
him to spend more freely on her. But Raymond, like Ralph,
initially expects Undine to understand the limitations on
their finances; ”he appealed to her good sense....But his
economic plea was as unintelligible to her as the silly prob-
lems about pen-knives and apples in the ‘Mental Arithmetic' of
her infancy.:.” (495-96). Then, Undine notices,

He had apparently decided that his arguments were

unintelligible to her, and under all his ardour she

felt the difference made by the discovery. It did

not make him less kind, but it evidently made her

less important; and she had the half-frightened

sense that the day she ceased to please him she

would cease to exist for him. (496)

From this point on, the story of Undine's marriage to
Raymond is the story of a woman who is increasingly an out-
sider to her husband's world. Raymond leaves Undine at Saint
Desert, where only her in-laws visit, while he takes care of
.family affairs--usually getting his brother out of debt.
Whenever he returns from a trip Undine, very much aware of her

isolation from his life, ”had a curious sense of his coming

back from unknown distances and not belonging to her or to any

64

state of things she understood.” Undine ”learned to hide her
feelings," and tries not to challenge her situation (497).
Discussing Undine as outsider to Raymond's world, Wershoven
notes, "This is a terrible punishment for Undine, who can
define herself only through other people's eyes.” (68) The
only eyes watching her at Saint Desert are those of her disap-
proving in-laws.

After their argument about leasing the premier to
Raymond's brother and his bride, Raymond shuts Undine out even
more. When his efforts to discuss literature and world
events with her fail, they stop talking. And, while the
Chelles family judges Undine inadequate for her failure to
have a baby, the fact is that Raymond will not sleep with her
(506, 509-10). Yet Raymond, like his wife, lacks an under-
standing of business; he thinks Harry's American father-in-law
is in the military because he's ”General Arlington," a
”‘General Manager, whatever that may be'” (499). By dis-
playing Chelles' ignorance of the business world, Wharton
underscores that, despite Bowen's assessment, it is not only
in American society that women are outsiders. The situation
is the same in French aristocracy as in American business.

Undine responds to this isolation in her usual way; by
focusing on her appearance at the expense of any intellectual
development: ”her dresses were more than ever her chief preoc-
cupation” and, because Undine perceives that "her complexion
was less animated, her hair less shining," ”she scanned the
fashion-papers for new scents and powders, and experimented in

facial bandaging, electric massage and other processes of

- 55‘

 

65

renovation" (520-21). This process fails to regain her hus-
band's affection and does not, as Undine discovers, secure her
place in French society. Madame de Trézac tells Undine that
the members of Raymond's ”set” "think you beautiful....But a
woman has got to be something more than good-looking to have a
chance to be intimate with them: she's got to know what's
being said about things.'" (541)

Undine appears to take this criticism very seriously,
believing ”she had never lacked insight into the cause of her
own failures," and having noticed herself that "Her entrances
were always triumphs; but they had no sequel." (541) But she
is unwilling to work at improving her mind and is unable,
finally, to take seriously the idea that beauty alone does not
always suffice (although her failure with Van Degen should
have convinced her of this truth). Rather than balancing the
time spent on her appearance with intellectual pursuits,
Undine gives up what attempts she was making to learn, "pro-
longed her hours at the dress-maker's and gave up the rest of
the day to the scientific cultivation of her beauty" (542).

As a result, Undine remains an outsider not only to the male
world but to all of French aristocracy. ”As soon as people
began to talk they ceased to see her" will continue to be the
response to this beautiful but uninformed woman (541-42).

As Ammons says, "The almost literal imprisonment she
suffers at Saint-Desert erodes her confidence in her own power
and rectitude,” and so Undine becomes petty and vicious

25
(118). The next phase is that "Her constitutional

66‘

restlessness lapsed into an apathy like Mrs. Spragg's..."
(522). Like her mother, Undine is becoming subdued by her
environment. But while her mother had channelled all her
energy into her, Undine, who is daughterless--and effectively
childless, at this point--channels all her resources into the
one project that has always concerned her: her physical
appearance. '

Raymond's condescending treatment of Undine is similar to
Ralph's. When Undine complains that Raymond leased the
premier to his brother without consulting her, Raymond
replies, "But, my dear child, you've always professed the most
complete indifference to business matters...” (502). What we
know of Undine suggests this is probably true. Yet by calling
her a ”child,” Raymond indicates that like Ralph, he does not
consider his wife an adult whose opinions matter..

Finding herself treated like a child, Undine reverts to
the child-like behavior that had worked with her father in the
past. Frustrated at Raymond's keeping her from Paris, Undine
”wanted to burst into sobs like a child." And she rebels,
telling Raymond, ”‘You can do as you please; but I mean to go
to Paris.'” (525) Undine's subsequent attempt to fund a
season in Paris with the Chelles tapestries completely disil-
lusions Raymond. Like Ralph, he is genuinely appalled at
Undine's lack of concern for his heritage and traditions.
During their confrontation about Undine's having the
tapestries appraised, Raymond ”stood looking at her coldly and
curiously, as though she were some alien apparition his eyes

had never before beheld" (545). He lumps her into the class

 

67

of Invaders, declaring "you're all alike," and:
”You come among us speaking our language and not
knowing what we mean; wanting the things we want,
and not knowing why we want them; aping our weak-
nesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridi-
culing all we care about...and we're fools enough
to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick
up our slang you understand anything about the

things that make life decent and honourable for
us!" (545)

Raymond now fully understands Undine's superficiality.
Judith Fryer notes that, unlike Ralph, Raymond ”asserts him-
self in the face of her power" through speech. Raymond "as-
serts his own ability to see clearly, and to speak clearly,
over her inability to see anything at all beyond herself..."
(Fryer 114).

Raymond's impassioned speech, however, is lost on
Undine, who perceives him as acting:

He stopped again, his white face and drawn nostrils

giving him so much the look of an extremely distin-

guished actor in a fine part that, in spite of the

vehemence of his emotions, his silence might have

been the deliberate pause for a repligue... (546)
Because Undine understands emotions only as an act, she can
discount Raymond's feelings. She protects herself from the
force of his anger by assuming he is playing a part.26 Thus
she can answer, "waiting long enough to give the effect of
having lost her cue,” ”‘Do you mean to say you're going to
refuse such an offer?'” (546) But Raymond's protests are
valid, and Undine can respond only by leaving him and
returning, through marriage to Elmer Moffatt, to the world

Raymond now recognizes she has come from.

The story of Moffatt's social and financial rise covers

68

the length of The Custom 9; the Country. Undine's feelings
for him come closest to romantic love. After meeting Elmer in
New York, following years of separation, Undine returns home
crying and shaken (116-17). ”She had been drawn to him from
the first” (548) and, years later, Undine is still attracted

by Elmer's strength and power (537, 563). Her father had

 

successfully gotten their first marriage annulled because, as

Undine says, "‘I was so young...I didn't know anything...'”

(110, Wharton's ellipses). After learning that Elmer has

”enough wealth to be ”‘The greatest American collector'” (530), '
Undine develops a desire to "cry out her wrath and wretched- I
ness" to him. At first, "She did not think of Moffatt as a 1
power she could use, but simply as some one who knew her and \
understood her grievance.” She soon realizes she wants to
"keep him from everyone else, to keep him for herself alone"
(566-67). Yet as Undine sees pieces of Elmer's collection
scattered about his room, "her heart beat at the signs of his
altered state” (567). Undine wants to be with Elmer both
because she is still attracted to him and because he now has
the means to support her in the way Raymond has not.

Unlike Ralph and Raymond, Elmer understands Undine
clearly and is able to use his understanding of her to further
his own success. When they met in New York early in the
novel, he blackmailed her with hints of revealing their past
marriage, because he knew how desperately Undine wanted it
kept secret. She had told him, "If any of (Ralph's) folks

found out, they'd never let him marry me....And it would kill

me, Elmer--it would just kill me!” (114)

69

If she realizes Elmer understands her, Undine also recog-
nizes that she is an outsider to his world;

he gave her, more than any one she had ever known,

the sense of being detached from his life, in

control of it, and able...to choose which of its

calls he should obey. If the call were that of

business...she knew she would drop from his life

like a loosened leaf. (563)
This is no condemnation of Elmer, however. Undine perceives
that "He used life exactly as she would have used it in his
place." (563) Elmer's ”place" is that of a man. While Anna
Leath faults herself for not living life as fully as her step-
son Owen, Undine sees in Elmer someone whose dealings with the
world are not limited by gender, as hers are.27

Wharton uses this relationship as another gauge of
Undine's ignorance, which is related to her inability
to feel anything deeply. Undine simply does not page about the
things other people do. This flaw is most fully explored in
the contrast between Moffatt's genuine love of art and
Undine's complete indifference to it, except as an indication
of wealth. The contrast is especially important because they
are so alike in other ways. When she takes Moffatt around to
look at various art objects, Undine finds that "the things he‘
looked at moved him in a way she could not understand,”
whereas she "had lived in almost total ignorance" of such
objects, and now simply "acquired as much of the jargon as a
pretty woman needs to produce the impression of being well-
informed..." (563, 561; my emphasis). The contrast between

Elmer's and Undine's reactions to art confirms Ralph's earlier

perception of Undine as "a creature of skin-deep reactions"

 

70

who "remained insensible to the touch of the heart" (224).

As she reminisces with Elmer about their first romance,
Undine tells him that her life so far has "‘all been an awful
mistake. But I shouldn't care if you were here and I could
see you sometimes. You're so strong...'” (568). And, we are
told, ”She had never spoken more sincerely. For the moment
all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt
again...the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with
his.” (568) She tells Elmer that their relationship "‘was the
only time I ever really cared--all throughi'” Undine cries
out, "‘Oh, Elmer--if I'd known--if I'd only known!‘" What she
really means is that if she'd known how well Elmer would do,
she could have stayed with him in the first place and foregone
her other marriages. This is symbolically cenfirmed by the
way she "turned away, touching with an unconscious hand the
edge of the lapis bowl among his papers" (570).

By now, Undine has gained respectibility as a French
Marquise and sees a way to gain amusement without losing this
respectibility. She proposes to Elmer that she become his
mistress. This is Undine's attempt to have what men in French
society have (and in American, given Peter Van Degen): both
respectibility and sexual freedom. The plan appeals to Undine
because it would not entail the vulnerability that she had
faced as divorced mistress to Van Degen; ”she had no wish to
affront again the social reprobation that had so nearly
wrecked her” (564).

Elmer Moffatt, however, does not want a mistress; he

wants a wife. He tells Undine, "‘if you want to come back

 

71

you've got to come that way...walk in by the front door, with
your head up, and your Main Street look'” (572). He will not
accept the bargain Undine offers, and presses her for an
official contract. That Undine expects to overcome this
scruple is clear in her belief that "the great moment of her
life had come at last--the moment all her minor failures and
successes had been building up with blind indefatigable hands"
(572). But Moffatt stands firm, and her ”great moment” ends
in finally deciding to divorce Raymond and remarry Elmer.

Just before her marriage to Raymond, Undine had asked
Elmer if he intended to marry. He answered, "‘Why, I
shouldn't wonder--one of these days. Millionaires always
collect something; but I've got to collect my millions
first.'” (419) Once he does, Moffatt is ready to ”collect"
Undine and give her, along with the Chelles tapestries, the
display for which she has longed. Blake Nevius has said that
Undine ”is bound to fall short of her goals because her ideals
are incompatible" (152).28 But Undine's situation
shows that, in her world, respectability and amusement are
incompatible only for women.

Ultimately the most sympathetic male character in this
novel is the least developed--Undine's son, Paul. As The,
Custom 2f,§he_Country nears its end, Wharton strips away
whatever sympathy there was for Undine by showing her through
Paul's point of view.29 Paul has no memory of Ralph, so he

thinks of Raymond as his father (582). He is sickened to

learn how his mother got her divorce from Raymond:

72

She said things that weren't true...That was what
he had always feared to find out...She had got up
and said before a lot of people things that were
awfully false about his dear French father... (586,
Wharton's ellipses).

Paul's thoughts echo those of Ralph, just before he committed
suicide. Like his father and the other men in his mother's
life, Paul experiences tremendous disillusionment about
Undine.

Wharton leads to Paul's disillusionment with several
pages describing his wanderings through Undine's new house,
contrasting these ostentatious surroundings with Paul's lone-
liness. A brief reference to "pictures he would have liked to
know about" suggests a greater depth to this child than we
have seen in his mother. Paul especially likes vandyck's ghgy_
ggy because the boy looks "so sad and lonely that he too might
have come home that very day to a strange house in which none
of his old things could be found” (578).

Paul's perspective is credible because Undine had
previously shown so little interest in him. Before she wanted
to marry Chelles, Undine had ”consoled” herself "by thinking
of him [Paul] as ‘better off' with Ralph's family, and of
herself as rather touchingly disinterested in putting his
welfare before her own” (370). But Undine actually wanted to
keep herself free of ”the additional burden” of caring for
Paul (370). The extent of her feelings for Paul is revealed
in the following lines: "She could forget him when...things
were ‘going her way,‘ but in moments of discouragement the
thought of him was an added bitterness, subtly different from

her other bitter thoughts, and harder to quiet.” (370)

 

-ud

 

73

Wharton allows Undine some maternal feelings only to use them
to emphasize her shallowness. Having been raised to put
herself first, Undine cannot understand her vague feelings for
her son. Her superficial view of Paul is also revealed in the
thought, "It was dreadful that her little boy should be grow-
hay; hated.” (406, my emphasis).

Undine's feelings for Paul suddenly become important when
Moffatt suggests she press her claim for custody, in order to
get the money from the Marvells that she needs to buy her way
into marriage with Chelles. Undine says to Moffatt, ”‘I can't
tell you how I miss him,'” with ”a ring of truth that carried
conviction to her own ears if not to Moffatt's” (417). Undine
has completely convinced herself that she would rather have
her son with her but has given him up for his own good.

Undine "seemed to see her-little boy as though he were in the
room with her; she did not understand how she could have lived
so long without him...” (418, Wharton's ellipsis). Only now
does Undine find the separation from her son unbearable.

With all her manipulations, from her affected frankness
toward Ralph to her belatedly demanding custody of her son, Undine
appears to be successful in her social climb. With the excep-
tion of her affair with van Degen, she enters into increas-
ingly more prestigious, if not increasingly satisfying,
marriages. Undine ultimately seems to have everything she
wants. She has respectibility as the wife of a famous art

collector, the amusement provided by Moffatt's tremendous

 

 

74

wealth and his interest in the same social group she enjoys,
and the bonus of finally being with a man for whom she feels
some physical attraction. But as Judith Saunders argues,
Undine ultimately fails in that there is always something she
cannot have.30 When Undine learns that Moffatt cannot be an
ambassador because she is divorced, she ”burst into an angry
laugh” and is insulted, ”as if the rule had been invented to
humiliate her" (594). The novel ends with Undine saying to
Iherself, "it was the one part she was really made for” (594).
Undine is not nearly so sympathetic as the women in ghe_
395;, but like them, she is believable. Undine leaves behind
a trail of divorces and other heartaches (Ralph's suicide,
Paul's isolation, Moffatt's purchase of the Chelles heirloom
tapestries) because she is constantly driven to reach whatever
is currently out of reach, and because, with her egocentric
view of the world, she can behave cruelly toward others while
still perceiving herself as a good person. Because they are
seen in comparison to Undine, the male characters in 1h;
Custom Q£_§hg Country are more sympathetic than George Darrow.
But except for Moffatt, who understands Undine but considers
her another acquisition, they nevertheless misunderstand
Undine's character and treat her as a child. The difference
is that in Th3 Custom gg_hhe Countr , unlike in IE2.§EE£: the
men generally suffer as a result of their failure to perceive

Undine as a complex adult.

 

 

CONCLUSION

Although the scope of these two novels is quite differ—
ent, Wharton's careful efforts to create complex women char-
acters are apparent in both Th2 822! and Ihe_Custom g; hhg’
Country. In some ways, Undine Spragg is similar to Sophy
Viner; both women see marriage as their only route to se-
curity in their society. But while Sophy ultimately refuses
to accept marriage to a man she does not love, Undine moves
from one marriage to the next with little concern for such
emotional concepts as love. Because of this difference, Sophy.
is a more sympathetic character. While Undine's story ends in
bitterness despite her apparent social success, Sophy makes a
graceful exit from 1h5,gge§_(Anna's final judgment of her
notwithstanding). Sophy acknowledges her feelings and acts
upon them, a fact which even Anna admires. Undine represses
what little emotion she has, such as her feelings for her son,
or channels her feelings into projects of acquisition, as when
she tries to convince Elmer to make her his mistress.

Anna Leath is also a more sympathetic character than
Undine, because of her strong feelings and her attempt to
achieve genuine communication with the man she loves. Anna's
romantic expectations and her desire for complete communica-
tion with George are in contrast to Undine's view of marriage

as a business arrangement, and her expectation that she need

75

76

contribute only her beauty and her showiness to a marriage.
But like Sophy and Undine, Anna mistakenly looks to marriage
as an escape from an unsatisfying life.

These women share a desire to have something more in
life. Sophy wants financial independence as an actress; when
this does not work out for her, she becomes engaged to a
wealthy man. Anna, who had become used to her unhappiness,
revives her hopes for romantic fulfillment through George; and
Undine spends her life constantly seeking more--more money,
more amusement, more respectibility. All of these women are
dissatisfied with their lives and try to find ways to fulfill
their wants. Undine is simply the most extreme case of
grasping for more.

All three women also misunderstand the male double stan-
dard, and suffer as a result. Sophy, having decided she is in
love with George, can neither hide nor disregard her feelings
for him. Anna naively expects George to marry Sophy because
he has had an affair with her, and cannot resolve her feelings
of disgust and insecurity toward George, both for the affair
and for his subsequent indifference toward Sophy. And Undine
discovers that, while an extra-marital affair may have little
lasting effect on the life of a man like Peter van Degen, it
can cost her her place in society. The women differ, however,
in that while Anna is emotionally destroyed by George's affair
with Sophy, Undine uses the lesson of her social ostracism,
after van Degen fails to marry her, in her careful dealings~
with Chelles; and Sophy decides not to marry Owen because she

realizes she will be unhappy.

77

Much of our sympathy for Anna and Sophy results from the
fact that they are more clearly victims than Undine. Wharton
detracts sympathy from Undine partly by increasing our empathy
with the people she hurts, as in the chapter devoted to
Ralph's emotional deterioration, and in the brief switch to
Paul's point of view. Most of George's point of view in 292.
535;, in contrast, indicates his superficiality and his view
of women as different ”types” created to serve men.

In fact, in Thg,Custom g; hhg_Country Wharton appears to
invert the gender roles of Thg,gggg by depicting a superficial
woman and an emotional man. Ralph's obsession with his
estranged wife's letters is strongly reminiscent of Anna's
passionate sensitivity to George's presence. Yet the appear-
ance is deceptive, for as I have discussed, Ralph--and the
other male characters in The Custom g; hhe_Country—-seriously
misunderstands Undine and, like George in ghg,§gg§, expects
her to behave according to his expectations of women. Both
Ralph and Raymond de Chelles react to Undine's refusal to be
molded in much the same way that George responds to Sophy for
loving him: they are completely surprised and unable to accept
that a woman could step out of the categories in which they,
as men, have placed her.

As Wharton makes clear in the ending of 1h; Custom 9f,§hg,
Country, Undine is saved by marriage no more than Anna or
Sophy. All three women's attempts to fill their needs through
marriage utimately fail. Anna, disillusioned first by her

passionless marriage to Fraser and then by George's

78

infidelity, decides she cannot marry George, but never breaks
completely from him. Sophy rejects a loveless marriage which
would free her from the world of Mrs. Murrett, and apparently
returns to the role from which she had been trying to es-
cape.31 Although Undine appears to benefit from men's miscon-
ceptions about her, she, like the women in ghe,§ggg, has also
suffered. Undine's success is superficial and leaVes her only
with bitterness, coupled with a man who, because he is a man,

has been able to live his life as she would like to have done.

In the end, we find none of these women "having it all.”

NOTES

1

See "The Business of Marriage,” Ammons 97-124, for
instance. Ammons says that the ”buried affinity" between
Wharton and Undine probably explains why Wharton had trouble
writing this novel, and that "her long stagnation on the book 3
broke...at about the same time that her marriage collapsed
completely" (98-99). Regarding the timing of these novels,
Ammons says, ”It is almost as if Ethan Frome freed her to
create Th9 Reef, which freed her to complete Th2 Custom g; Eh;
Country" (78). Wolff also discusses Wharton's difficulties
with Th3 Custom gg_hhe_Country. See Wolff 205 and 223-30.

2 .

Wolff calls Sophy Viner "a significant step beyond
Justine Brent; a link, as it were, between Justine and Undine"
(229).

3

R.W.B. Lewis, in Edith Wharton, notes the similarities

between young Anna Summers and Edith Jones (326).
4

Ammons discusses George's "Pygmalion” attitudes toward
Anna (94).

5

The blatant hypocrisy of George's position was noted as
long ago as 1950 by Josephine Lurie Jessup. She comments:
”The idea of confiding the child Effie to Miss Viner he finds
‘peculiarly repugnant,‘ although he does not question his own
suitability for the role of stepfather, any more than he
questions his right to marry the child's mother, at the termi-
nation of his former liaison” (25). More recently, Richard
Lawson succinctly states the three reasons why George opposes
Sophy's marriage to Owen; George "is acting out of an exqui-
site blend of self-interest, class consciousness, and an
unquestioning assumption of a double standard of sexual
morality” (57).

6

Lady Ulrica--about whom he now has such unpleasant
feelings--is a third type: "the woman who uses the privileges
of one class to shelter the customs of another” (25).

7

George's attitude reflects his profession as a diploma-
tist. Part of the Oxford English Dictionary's 1933 definition
of diplomacy is "artful management in dealing with others." A
diplomatist is ”a shrewd and crafty person" (QEQ 385-86).
These definitions apply to George as he attempts to manage
both Anna and Sophy, and as he attempts first to make Sophy

79

 

80

leave Givre without revealing their affair, and later to
overcome Anna's scruples.
8

The phrase ”professional expertness" echoes two earlier
uses of ”expert” in the novel. George had initially con-
sidered Sophy ”expert enough to understand his intention and
spare him the boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations"
(264). Later, Anna wants "to feel herself less ignorant and
inexpert" about such things as George's affair with Sophy
(294). The concept of expertness underscores both the rele-
vance of George's profession as diplomatist to his perception
of women, and his miscalculations about these two particular
women. Sophy, as he discovers too late, is not an ”expert" at
having affairs; and Anna understands far more than either
George or she herself give her credit for.

9

Ammons similarly discusses Anna's "dilemma" of being
unable to renounce George, although ”she loathes her be-
havior.” Anna is both overwhelmed by her passion for George,
since she "has been repressed for so long," and caught in her
romantic dream, ”the hope for deliverance through love, with
marriage following as a matter of course” (Ammons 85-86).

10

Wolff, commenting on George's perception of Sophy and
his compartmentalization of women into two major "types,"
says:

Clearly Sophy will fit into neither of these com-

fortable compartments, principally because they

are ways of construing the feminine nature that

make it entirely ancillary to masculine needs.

(211)

11

See 1h; House g; Mirth, 71-79. Annette Zilversmit

notes that while critics tend to pity Lily for desiring ad-
miration, this is a perfectly normal thing for a person to
want ("New Directions”). The same applies to Sophy, who
buries her desire for admiration by mentioning it in a string
of ”things."

12

Both Lawson and Ammons point out that the effect of the

novel's final scene is to show how much Sophy has overcome.
Ammons says this scene ”implicitly admires rather than pun-
ishes Sophy Viner: against all odds, she has managed so far to
avoid her sister's fate" (91). Lawson, while not agreeing
that Wharton intended this effect, says "The overkill [of the
final scene] may well induce the modern reader to sympathize
with Sophy all the more because she has the integrity to
emerge from such an environment as an honest, attractive
person....[wh01 instinctively tells the truth, however painful
for herself.” (59-60)

13Ammons also notes similarities between Anna and Sophy
but focuses on their relationships with other characters and
their similarities to fairy tale heroines. She sees Sophy and

 

81

Anna as a ”split heroine,” ”the would-be fairy-tale heroine
who is rescued from a miserable life by some sort of Prince
Charming hero.” Anna resembles Sleeping Beauty, and Sophy
resembles Cinderella. Although on one level Sophy is a foil
for Anna, Ammons says, they are connected by their love for
George, Sophy's engagement to Anna's step-son, and Sophy's
role as care-giver to Anna's child (Ammons 80, 91-92).

14 ~
Eugenia DeLamotte says that acting is "the center of
nineteenth-century woman's relation to her world" (217).
Although the Wharton character with whom she is concerned is
Lily Bart, the observation also applies to Anna.

15

Similarly, Anna views Owen's ”humours' as "the voice of
her secret rebellions," and, we are told, "her tenderness to
her step-son was partly based on her severity toward herself.
As he had the courage she had lacked, so she meant him to have
the chances she had missed; and every effort she made for him
helped to keep her own hopes alive” (96). Although Anna
attributes the difference between them to her lack of courage,
it is apparent that Owen can rebel because he is a man. By
attempting to support his choice of a bride, Ann is in a sense
trying to live vicariously through him.

16

Ironically, Undine's "originality” is mostly comprised
of switching between models. McDowell comments, ”when Undine
changes her life style by changing her friends and husbands,
she does so in order to find more significant mirrors for her
beauty and untried ranges of behavior to copy" (80).

17

Ammons discusses the way Undine's idea of marriage fits
Thorstein Veblen's description of ”the function of the rich
man's wife, who should be ‘supported in idleness by her owner.
She is useless and expensive, and she is consequently valuable
as evidence of pecuniary strength'" (Ammons 113). But of
Undine's husbands only Elmer, who sees her as another item to
collect, adheres to this view.

18

Since I am primarily concerned with Undine, I will
consider Ralph's character only in relation to how he per-
ceives her. Several critics have responded to Ralph in
greater depth. See, for instance, Collins, Ammons (112-14),
and Stein (244-46). McDowell discusses how Wharton uses

Ralph's perspective to deliniate Undine as "more than a
stereotype” (81).
19

As Collins notes, these two mistakes indicate that
Ralph ”lacks the practical know-how to use marriage as a way
to success in the business world" (201).

20

Gary Lindberg notes, "what he is really trying to do is
not to rescue her from social submersion but to protect her
from a particular class that he abhors" and ”what most dis-
turbs him is not her general moral deficiencies but her
specific obtuseness to the delicacies that inform his own

 

82

class” (73).
21

James Bailey has discussed the resonances of Undine's
name and Wharton's use of the undine, or water sprite, myth in
Thg_Custom g; hhg Country. Bailey notes that while in the
myth the undine must relinquish her power in order to become
mortal, Undine Spragg wants the "best bargain: love that
empowers" (”Wharton's Water Sprite”).

22

Auchincloss questions the credibility of Ralph commit-
ting suicide because ”his gy-wife had been secretly married
and divorced before she had married him" (104). But Ralph
never really perceives Undine as no longer his wife, and the
shock of learning about her previous marriage is the culmina-
tion of a series of shocks to Ralph.

23

Nancy Morrow makes a similar point. Morrow, however,
does not believe there is anything more than van Degen's use
of the double standard involved in his failure to marry
Undine. Morrow says, "that van Degen suddenly reproaches
Undine for leaving Ralph practically on his death bed must be
seen as simply the most graceful retreat he can manage, and
not as some kind of moral awakening, as his story implies”
(35). Van Degen clearly is rationalizing his actions, but
that does not mean he wouldn't be disturbed by the way Undine
treated Ralph.

24

Ammons notes that "His lovely jealousy...is not a sign
of affection but of power" and that ”the ‘charming' Raymond is
simply a nightmarish exaggeration" of Ralph (115-16), and
Allen Stein says Undine's third marriage ”is essentially a
repetition of her marriage to Ralph, only now rendered
satirically" (247).

25

Wershoven similarly notes that this part of the novel
is sympathetic to Undine ”because of the particularly cold and
imprisoning nature of the trap Undine has married into” (68).

26

In contrast, the reference to Chelles as a "fine actor"
has been cited to suggest that his outbreak should not be
taken too seriously. See for example Wershoven, who says
Raymond's expression when he delivers his “long and angry
speech" contributes to ”a sense of an innate phoniness" which
was already established when he ”took the part of ardent
suiter" during their courtship and ”Undine seemed to sense
that he was acting” (69). But again, this is Undine's percep-
tion; having acted, but never felt ardent herself, she does
not think others actually have such feelings either.

27

Stein notes how Undine is affected by her lack of
power:

Barred because of her sex from the sources of power
available to men and incapable of understanding the
underlying causes of her resultant sense of

 

 

83

frustration in the role of consumer forced on her

by her training in modern America, she is

chronically restive, dissatisfied, grasping--

seeking feverishly in possession, social position,

and men the power for which, largely unbeknown to

herself, she really longs. (244-45)

28

Nevius suggests that the real reason Undine cannot

ultimately succeed is because "Undine's notion of amusement
and Edith Wharton's notion of respectability can never be
joined” and that Wharton had slowly withdrawn her sympathy for

Undine, ”which, even at first, seemed tentative and forced"
(151-52).

 

29 Beth Kowaleski-Wallace has discussed how Wharton's use
of Paul's perspective manipulates the reader to feel outraged
for Paul, thereby keeping us distanced from Undine. Wallace
also convincingly argues that we are harsher toward Undine as
a failed parent than we would be toward a man ("The Reader as
Misogynist").

30

Judith Saunders has discussed how, in Wharton's
fiction, characters tend to repeat struggles that do not
succeed. Thus, as Saunders notes, Undine's story appears to
be one of upward movement, but there is actually a theme of
failure because she is never satisfied (”Repetitive Action”).

 

31 That Sophy and Owen actually elope at the end is a pos-
sibility which, as far as I know, criticism has not addressed.
Both leave on a long trip, and Owen's inability to face Anna
when they last meet may suggest more than his discomfort about
everything that has happened so far. Even if we entertain the
possibility that Sophy and Owen elope, however, that ending
still leaves Sophy unrescued, since she does not love Owen.

 

B I BLI OGRAPHY

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DeLamotte, Eugenia. ”The Power of Pretense: Images of Women
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IV.

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