Publisher's Synopsis
The Custom of the Country is a 1913 tragicomedy of manners novel by American Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Undine Spragg, a Midwestern girl who attempts to ascend in New York City society.The Spraggs, a circle of relatives of midwesterners from the fictitious metropolis of Apex who have made money through relatively shady monetary dealings, arrive in New York City at the prompting in their beautiful, formidable, however socially naive daughter, Undine. She marries Ralph Marvell, a could be poet and member of an old New York circle of relatives that has social status but now not enjoys substantial wealth. Before her wedding, Undine encounters an acquaintance from Apex named Elmer Moffatt, an ambitious and rather unpleasant character with "a genuine disdain for religious piety and social cant", as the pupil Elaine Showalter observes. Undine, who seems to have had a courting with Moffatt that would show embarrassing to her, begs him no longer to do something so one can endanger her wedding to Ralph. Elmer agrees.
