Dissertation :

Wealth & Fame in The Custom of the Country.

devoir de Marianne B.
noté14,

obs du correcteur : formuler la problématique
de façon plus explicite dans l'introduction.

In The Custom,.. published in 1913, E. Wharton depicted the supplanting of Old NY by a class of newly rich capitalists at the turn of the century. She shows that, for this emerging class, wealth & fame are equated with the idea of success.

However, we will demonstrate that for other characters, the members of the traditional set or women for instance, these two concepts embody destructive forces.

Eventually, we will study the meaning of these two words at the diegetic level and outside the diegesis.

From the beginning of the novel, the concepts of wealth & fame seem to represent the ideals of the "nouveaux riches". The principles & standards of "Aboriginal NY" are totally opposite. Ralph for example is expected to live "like a gentleman- that is, with a tranquil disdain for mere money-getting." Old NY & the French aristocracy favour discretion & subdued hues while Undine & the newly rich love the show & the glitter.

This unbridgeable distance between the two dominant aesthetic conceptions of the novel is embodied in the character of Clare V Degen. Indeed, Clare belongs to the traditional world of the Dagonet & to the modern set of Peter V Degen as well. This duality is underlined by the description of her drawing-rooms. Each element in her drawing-room could be opposed to the objects found in Peter's drawing-room which is also "partly hers": the "luminous shadow", "the pale flowers", "the soberer background" represent a deep contrast with Peter's "heavily decorated", "polyphonic", "gilded" apartment. Everything in his drawing-room is meant to reveal his wealth, not only to his visitors but to the readers too. Peter is a man who possesses a large amount of money & valuable objects & he wants everyone to be aware of this fact as underlined by Ralph in Paris:

"Peter lounging & luxuriating among the seductions of the Boulevard with the disgusting ease of a man whose wants are all measured by money, & who always has enough to gratify them."

Like him, all the members of the modern set are wealthy which means they all lead the same life. For instance, they all live in "lofty hotels" or in " more romantically styled apartment-houses" "within the sacred precincts of fashion".
Moreover, they go to the same balls & art galleries.

The ladies attend the same debating clubs where they speak about "subjects of such imperishable interest as 'What is Charm?' or 'The Pb-Novel.'" It must be noticed that the adjective "imperishable" stresses the irony of E. Wharton & consequently, her disdain for such activities.

Furthermore, they all go to the opera where they stage their own wealth for "the mere public" who look down at them from the balcony or up at them from the stalls. Indeed, the show which takes place in the different boxes seems to be as important as the performance itself:

"[Undine] was part of the sacred semicircle whose privilege it is, between the acts, to make the mere public forget that the curtain has fallen."
In addition, the newly rich want to possess the same objects. For instance, they all long for a work by Claud W Popple. During the dinner offered by Laura F, Clare V Degen insists that the portrait painter "[is] doing everybody this year"; the word "everybody" refers to the circle of the newly rich & later, Undine's sentence echoes Clare's:

"He's painted [...] all the smart women."

However, the members of "Aboriginal NY" clearly depict him as the painter of appearances. One of Laura's friends explains that his portraits are " not pictures of Mrs or Miss So-&-So, but the impression Popple thinks he's made on them."
Moreover, the narrator's constant irony towards Popple shows what E. Wharton thought of his art. For instance in chapter XIV, the painter is first compared to "all great men" but his reputation is then explained by the fact he is the only man who can "do pearls"- which stresses how ridiculous the opinions of wealthy patrons may be.

Eventually, all the members of the rich set enjoy travelling to Europe, especially to Paris where their activities ( going to theatres, eating at Nouveau Luxe ) should be opposed to the inclinations of "the Aborigenes": during their honeymoon in Paris, Ralph decides to flee "for solace to museums & galleries."

All these rites performed by the rich ( the ball, the opera, the trip to Europe ) are reported & commented upon by the press, for example the Town Talk & Boudoir Chat, these American newspapers which report on social events involving wealthy American protagonists whether locally or in Europe. The V Degens, the Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings become the subject of articles because they are wealthy thus fame may be considered as the consequence of wealth. For Undine & all the women who read them, these publications paly an essential role since they provide them with standards in all fields from interior decoration to the colour of their notepaper. At the same time, these ladies yearn to become leading figures in this kind of press therefore we may say that wealth & fame feed each other & mirror each other's vacuity.

However, it must be noticed that some women ( Mrs Marvell, Mrs Fairford or Clare ) do not read such a press but as they belong to "Aboriginal NY", they cannot be considered as representative characters. On the contrary, Mrs Heeny, Mrs Spragg & Undine take these articles as gospel truths while men are more interested in specialized publications. These stereotypes must be seen as an element of realism in The Custom.... 

As we have shown, wealth & fame are closely linked. For most characters, thet embody the definition of success, of an ideal life & these ideals are mirrored in the Sunday papers. The whole story of Undine could be represented as her fight to acquire wealth & fame, in other words as her struggle to become a member of an exclusive society: that of the wealty & famous people. The nouns used to to refer to the world of the newly rich reinforce the idea of mystery, distance & domination over the common people. Undine reads about "the dazzling auriferous world of the V Degens, the Driscolls & their peers"; she first thinks "the Driscoll & V Degen clans & their allies held undisputed suzerainty over NY society" & she is delighted when she becomes "part of the semicircle" at the opera. The words "peers", "clans", "allies" & "sacred semicircle" clearly demonstrate that wealth & fame remain out of reach for the majority of individuals.

However, it would be wrong to state that wealth & fame embody the ideals of all the characters. As we have underlined, the members of traditional NY refuse the glitter & turn away from the bright lights that characterize the public places but they are depicted as the representatives of a class doomed to disappear.

For example, Ralph M is described as a man unable to acquire money - which means unable to acquire wealth - & unable to write thus to achieve literary fame. According to C. Wolff, he is the symbol of the apathy of his class as highlighted by his physical positions. Indeed, he is often seen lying & dreaming. Furthermore, his reaction when he reads his name in the newspapers reveals his incapacity to confront reality. The truth cannot be, like the letter from Undine's lawyers, locked in a drawer & the headlines only represent the confirmation of real facts. But for him, this sudden fame is synonymous with physical violation:

"For the first time in his life the coarse fingering of public curiosity had touched the secret places of his soul [...]"

In chapter XXIII, the notion of silence - the silence of the mountains & of his meditation - is interrupted by the din of the press campaign & Ralph associates the filth & violence of the scandal with dirt & brutality. he is deeply hurt because by appropriating his name, newspapers rob him of his identity & turn his story into a stereotype for women's advice columns. Since he does not manage to make money, not even to protect his son, or to become a writer, Ralph is destined, as foreseen by C. Bowen, " to go down in any conflict with the rising forces."

Thus for him, wealth & fame stand for destructive energies.
Like Ralph, Raymond de C may be looked upon as a victim of "the rising forces". Many parallels could be drawn between "the Aborigines" of Old NY & the inhabitants of Faubourg St G & Raymond is the French version of Ralph as emphasized by Little Paul who calls him "my French father." One might say that by refusing to make U pregnant, Raymond commits a symbolic suicide which echoes the literal suicide of Ralph. Both men are doomed to die, either literally or symbolically, because they do not succeed in coping with the violence of the new world in which "the invaders" worship ideals -such as wealth & fame- their own sets have always despised.

Therefore, The Custom..... could be read as the criticism of the emerging class of the newly rich at the end of the 20th century in America. The life of Winnaretta Singer & her successive marriages might have represented a model for the story of Undine. It was a period of ruthless capitalism which gave birth to the myth of the self-made man & American literature depicted the phenomenom as shown by the works of Horatio Alger who, between 1866 & 1896, wrote about a hundred novels about men rising from rags to riches. Furthermore, social novels denounced the numerous political & financial scandals of the age as for example Democracy, A Political Novel, written by H. Adams in 1880.

In such a merciless world, Undine's thirst for wealth & fame only echoes the greed of men in Wall Street & she is in fact the victim of this ruthless capitalist system. Thus, her story is " a biting 'portrait of a lady' whose success serves to reveal to the reader a portrait of a corrupt social & economic system", as explained by C. Joslin in the biography she published in 1991, E.W.

Many critics, E. Ammons, C. Waid or C. Wolff, consider U as the victim of sexual discrimination too. wall Street is a man's world & women, these "poor deluded dears" as C. Bowen puts it, can only acquire wealth & a certain independence by marriage.

This thesis was developed in 1898 by the sociologist C. P. Gilman. In Women & Economics: A Study of the Economic relation between Men & Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, she stated:
"[...] wealth, power, social distinction, fame -not only these, but home & happiness, [.....]-all must come to her through a small gold ring."

So marriages & divorces are the only instruments of women's ambition.

ndine succeeds in acquiring wealth & fame through her successive marriages as clearly shown by the newspapers' headlines: thanks to Elmer, she is called "the child bride"; then, she becomes "the fascinating Mrs Marvell"; later, raymond enables her to be referred to as the "American Marquise". Conversely, as a divorcee she no longer figures in the headlines that is why "she tried to avoid the daily papers."

It must be noticed that her trajectory is not a steadily ascending one. Her path is in fact a succession of progressions & regressions: when Peter abandons her, she is in a worse position than while married to Ralph & her second marriage to Elmer takes her back to her Apex youth without bringing the story to a conclusion. The jewels given by her husband, "a necklace & tiara of pigeon-blood rubies belonging to Queen M Antoinette", might allude to the fact that she is now a tame pigeon in the hands of a new master who could become cruel as stressed by the noun "blood". The question which opens the novel "US-how can you?" remains unanswered, the problem of what she really wants unsolved because she cannot acquire wealth & faame by herself. As Elmer's wife, she does have privileges but as a woman, she has none. Her beauty is her only assett, her only capital when she views her story as a series of business deals since she knows she is deprived of intelligence, wit, culture or any other quality requested in love or friendship:

"Her entrances were always triumphs; but they had no sequel. As soon as people began to talk they ceased to see her."

The whole novel suggests that the future belongs to the new race of conquerors that is to say to the men who are able to tame the wild world of American materialism. The only character whose life & career follows an upward movement is Elmer. Unlike U who is a consumer, Elmer is a collector so his logic is one of accumulation of wealth. Because he possesses "the raw energy of the vulgar" as underlined by A. Brookner, he manages to appropriate the best of Apex (Undine), of faubourg St G (the Boucher tapestries) & of Washington Sq (Little Paul).

Nevertheless, what makes him different from the other greedy capitalists is his genuine love for the objects he covets. Ralph & U are not mistaken on this subject:

"Ralph noticed that his eyes caressed [the oriental toy]"

Throughout the novel, Elmer is linked to the notion of wealth thus he becomes the symbol of it & embodies the concept of power, including the mechanical power that sets the plot in motion & keeps it going forward. Indeed, he plays an essential role in U's four marriages & in other characters' destinies therefore his power is akin to that of the creator of the novel. He is even called "Olympian" by Laura & Clare. Moreover, the word "novelist" appears in close association wiht his name when Ralph wonders about the two arts: business insight & fiction writing.

The story of Elmer may thus be seen as the progression towards wealth but contrary to U, he is not interested in fame. He holds the Sunday papers in contempt & scoffs at "magazine stuff." So the author suggests that for the "rising forces", wealth & not fame stands for the key word.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to determine the opinion of E. Wharton on the subject since the novel offers a polyphony of voices & leaves the readers with many unanswered questions. No social circle, no character emerges unscathed.

The critic C. Wolff argues that The Custom... belongs to the tradition of the "Götterdämmerung" literature since it deals with the story of the confrontation between Old NY & a newer group. For her, the novel does not resolve the conflict between the two worlds but explores this moment of transition.
E. Wharton herself may be considered as the symbol of this duality. Indeed, she was a lady born in NY's upper class in 1862 so like Clare, she possessed wealth (purchasing power & social distinction) by birth. Then, her life became as adventurous as that of her heroine. She lived abroad, wrote a book a year, divorced in 1913 & got involved in WW1, a fight for which the French government awarded her the Légion d'Honneur?

Like Ralph, she resented the invasion of the press in her private life after her divorce but contrary to him, she achieved literary fame. Indeed, she enjoyed an outstanding success with The House of Mirth published in 1905. She insisted on being considered as a writer,not only as the disciple of her friend H. James & she expressed this idea in a letter written in 1904:

" the continued cry that I am an echo of Mr James [.....] makes me feel rather hopeless."

Unlike any of her character, E.Wharton did achieve wealth & fame.


E. Wharton offers her readers an ironic painting of the confrontation between Old NY & the newly rich & writes about "the tragedy of the NY soul caught between the millstones of these two eras", as stressed by E. Wilson in 1924.

She explores the violence of the period & depicts a ruthless world in which human relationships seem to be only a surface matter while business -or the acquisition & accumulation of wealth- the underlying force as demonstrated by Elmer's exceptional social ascent.

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