The Custom of the Country (1913) by Edith Wharton
In 1913, Edith Wharton wrote a novel called The Custom of the Country, in which the country is America and the custom is divorce. It is the first novel to portray America in all its materialistic harshness and superficial commercialism, the ultimate novel of capitalism and commodification. The ruthless anti-heroine, Undine Spragg, is the spoiled, ignorant, shallow, amoral, and utterly selfish product of the economically booming American hinterland; she is named after a hair-curler her father “put on the market the week she was born,” which is a reminder of her humble origins as she begins her social climb. Undine is about to rise to the top of wealth and status by a series of shrewd marriages, using her good looks as a commodity. She aggressively pursues her ambition of getting a husband who can fund the lifestyle that she has read about in society columns.
[Edith Wharton by Edward Harrison May]
At the beginning of the novel, her nouveau riche parents have moved Undine from Apex, the Midwestern town she grew up, to a hotel in New York. She spends her days shopping and gossiping with her mother’s manicurist, reading tabloids, and pining to know the people she reads about. Her great break, socially speaking, comes when she meets the Ralph, from a patrician New York family. After a brief courtship she marries him, only to notice that his finances are too restricted to give her the wealthy life she is dreaming of. She goes on to have an extramarital affair, divorces Ralph, moves to Paris, marries a French Count, divorces him as well and finally, he marries an American millionaire - who happens to be a boy from her hometown - which means that at least she is now socially on the same level as her husband, which was not the case with her previous two marriages, where she could not keep up with her new environment.
The institution of marriage changed dramatically in Wharton’s lifetime. Divorce rates in the US doubled between 1880 and 1900 and by 1920 had more than doubled again. This was due to new laws in Western states. And if you lived in a state with stricter laws, like New York, you could go out west to get a divorce, which is exactly what Undine does. “Cool” is the word Wharton most frequently uses to describe Undine’s reactions to men. After her marriage to Ralph, Undine even approaches adultery coolly. Love, for her, is a commodity.
As a social climber who uses serial marriage to get the material things she wants, Undine seems rather disagreeable, but on the other hand she is also a hilarious and often delightful character to read about. Whether or not the reader likes her, she entertains, and is vivid on the page.
“The Custom of the Country” is by no means the earliest novel in which marriages are dissolved, but it is the first novel in the Western canon to put serial divorce at its center, and in so doing it sounds the death knell of the “marriage plot” that had invigorated countless narratives in centuries past (think Jane Austen). The once high stakes of choosing a spouse are dramatically lowered when a bad choice can easily be undone by divorce. “The Custom of the Country,” which is a story of mistakes without lasting consequences, ends with the cartoonish spectacle of Undine’s marrying the soon-to-be richest man in America and still not being satisfied.
The Custom of the Country is in the public domain and available at Gutenberg.