Edith Wharton

Question 1

Undine is in a sense right to despise the Ralphs and Clares of this world, for

Answer 1

by a process of natural selection they are bound to fall behind and become extinct.

Question 2

The irony of Undine Spragg’s victory over the unfit (in the social Darwinistic sense) Ralph and Clare is that

Answer 2

she is defeated by the custom of the country; the sort of revenge enacted on the triumphant outsider by the well-born and the well-established.

Question 3

Undine Spragg wants money and position. These are perfectly respectable, it would seem, once

Answer 3

you have them; the problem is acquiring them.

Question 4

Undine Spragg wants money and position. These are perfectly respectable, it would seem, once you have them; the problem is acquiring them. This implacable creed conceals the subtlety of the novel. We are shown

Answer 4

the immovable prejudices of those in possession at the same time as we are shown the indiscriminate hungery of those who seek to rise.

Question 5

What does Mrs Heeny typify in Custom of the Country?

Answer 5

The marginal outsider, always seeking to be informed, never instinctively knowing what is in order. (She never visits without her bag of clippings.)

Question 6

The Custom of the Country is taken from an eponymous play by what two writers? Discuss.

Answer 6

John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. (1619-23). In this Jacobean tragicomedy, an Italian governor (Clodio) asserts driot du seigneur to obtain Zenocia, who is married to Arnoldo. After several narrow scrapes with a number of figures who outrank her and exert their authority against her, she is at last reunited with Arnoldo.