Discussion Topic
Narrative techniques and distinctive language features in "The Custom of the Country."
Summary:
In The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton employs a third-person omniscient narrative technique, providing insights into multiple characters’ thoughts and motivations. Distinctive language features include satirical commentary, detailed social observations, and a critical tone towards the American upper class. Wharton’s use of irony and vivid descriptions enhances the portrayal of societal norms and individual aspirations.
What narrative techniques and distinctive language features are used in "The Custom of the Country"?
Edith Wharton uses a variety of narrative techniques and conventions from multiple genres. The sudden shifts in language and style reflect an unstable society where the rules for polite behavior are constantly shifting.
The plot bears resemblance to a picaresque novel. In this literary tradition, a roguish male character has a series of adventures in which he must use his bravery and wit to overcome challenges. The characters he encounters are typically morally flawed and illustrate the seedier side of society.
The author adapts the picaresque narrative for a female character who is faced with challenges inherent to her gender and class. Because women could not earn money through a profession as men did, they had to marry well to avoid poverty, with little regard for love and happiness. Undine Spragg’s picaresque adventures, therefore, are a series of marriages and divorces. She uses her beauty to attract men who might...
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give her the lavish lifestyle she desires. However, all of her husbands are flawed in some way, and none of them leave her fully satisfied.
The story also contains elements of a novel of manners, a genre that explores the customs and values of different social classes. Undine hopes to leave behind her humble prairie upbringing and gain access to the upper echelons of society. To do so, however, she must take extraordinary measures to hide her background and mimic the behavior of the upper classes even when her activities are not financially sustainable. The narrative is a series of illusions and revelations, as Undine’s husbands and lovers fall for her, then discover her true intentions.
Wharton’s language is largely satirical, ranging from melodramatic descriptions of personal tragedy to farcical accounts of Undine’s rapid-fire divorces and remarriages. Her outlandish behavior draws attention to subtler forms of social climbing.
What distinctive language features are present in The Custom of the Country?
A distinctive feature of the language used in the novel The Custom of the Country is its informative quality.
Doubtless aware that most of her readers do not move in the same rarefied social circles as the characters in the book, Edith Wharton provides us with a lot of information about what for many is a strange cultural milieu complete with all manner of unfamiliar codes and rituals.
Wharton's penchant for informative language also serves her satirical purposes. As part of her project of laying bare the manners and mores of upper-class New York, she gives us precise details of what people look like, what they wear, how they behave, and so on.
As well as satirizing the social elite, these details serve to highlight the fact that it is with such trivialities that the exceptionally ambitious Undine Spragg is obsessed. She desperately wants to be a part of the upper echelons of society, to mix with the high and mighty, to talk like them, act them, and, most importantly of all, spend money like them.