Ruthless and predatory, Edith Whartonâ s seductive young heroine Undine Spragg exploits a series of husbands from the American west to New York and France in her search for one with the ideal combination of social power, money, and material possessionsâ something â more luxurious, more exciting, more worthy of her!â Whartonâ s criticism of the leisure-class marriage market becomes a brilliant satire on the nature of desire, as the novel links marriage and divorce with selfish ambition and the culture of consumerism.

This Broadview edition provides a critical introduction and appendices that include Whartonâ s outline for and correspondence about The Custom of the Country, excerpts from Friedrich de la Motte Fouquéâ s novella Undine, and passages from works by Charles Darwin, Emma Goldman, Henry James, and Thorstein Veblen, among others.