Old New York, New Women: Edith Wharton’s Revolution in Ethnography in The Custom of the Country
Pin-hsiang Natalie Wu
Department of Applied Foreign Languages,
Chien-kuo Technology University, Taiwan
Stephen Ohlander
Department of English
National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan
Abstract:
From the 1850s to the early 1900s, thousands of immigrants from East Europe and Asiarushed to New York City to seek better working opportunities. It was this rapid growth of immigration that stirred Americans in old New Yorkinto a melting pot, altering the structure of old New York’s population. American writer Edith Wharton nevertheless saw the revolution in ethnography not in terms of the rising “ethnically diverse” industrial working class, but rather of high society. To her, high society witnessed a process in which the emergence of a new species replaced in a rapid and drastic way the old one, among whom those who enjoyed a large inheritance and had the most decided advantage. But Wharton sees the threat to genteel society coming more from the female upstarts than their male counterparts. Thus The Custom of the Countrydiscards the potential of a detailed portrayal of the struggles of its male protagonist, Elmer Moffatt, in his rise to great fortune and begins with the readers’ encounter with the recent arrival of the Spragg family, who has resolved to establish their only daughter, Undine, at any cost, among the New York upper class. It ends with Undine’s breathtaking triumph in her amoral, even heartless, attainment of wealth and an established, even enviable position in society. Even though Wharton expresses the idea that the old aristocracy was fading away in a Darwinism sense, since Undine Spragg and other new women are outside the genteel circle and the results of their machinations can be swift and deadly, old New York high society underwent a revolution rather than an evolution.
Keywords: old New York, old aristocracy, new women, ethnography
Old New York, New Women: Edith Wharton’s Revolution in Ethnography in The Custom of the Country
For Wharton, the problem of ‘American’ identity is more directly concerned with the effects of publicity and the culture of consumption than with mass immigration from Central and Southern Europe or with Melting Pot ideologies” (Gair, 1997: 353).
I. Edith Wharton and Old New York
At the turn of the 20th century, New York, just like many big cities, had been characterized as one that was undergoing drastic changes. These years, New York City saw the peak of European immigration[1] and the flux of African Americans migration from the South. The work-seeking opportunists from Ireland, Germany, East Europe and many other parts of the world, together with the substantial growth in population of African-Americans, were the chief reasons for cause the revolution in ethnography[2] in Old New York at the beginning of the 20th century. It is this rapid growth of immigration that stirred Americans in old New Yorkinto a melting pot, mixing and blending people of all cultures. American writer Edith Wharton, who wrote from her living andtraveling experiences[3]nevertheless saw therevolution in ethnography in old New Yorknot in terms of the rising “ethnically diverse” industrial working class, but rather in high society. To her, high society witnesseda process in which the emergence of a new species replaced the old one, originally with a decided advantagefor those who enjoyed a large inheritance, in a rapid and drastic way. What Edith Wharton describes is best known as the Gilded Age in American history. From the beginning of the 20th century America has been characterized as a nation of rapid economic growth related to industrial development, and New York’s developmentwas particularly connected to the five boroughs, which, beginning in 1989, paved the way to a modernized city. There was conspicuous growth in business power and a decline in aristocratic pretensions. The newly-rising leisure class emulated these social elites so as to become acceptable to the upper classes. These materially rich are called “the new aristocrats” by Joseph J. Korom (2008) in order to distinguish them from those belonging to the old European aristocratic circle. Since the new species was devoid of an eminent background and prominent heritage, it gained its entrance-ticket to the elite class by way of conspicuous consumption. Within a rather short span, as described by Wharton, the whole genteel class became extinct, financially speaking, in a Darwinian sense. The new generation attracted the attention of the whole of New York with its stunning but shallow materialism, which was then broadcast and magnified through sensational news stories and mass media.
Most of the glamourous, money-chasing characters described in Wharton’s The Custom of the Country(1913) gain their wealth fromcoal mining, transportation,orother heavy industry. Along with the second industrialization came the stupendous successin the business investments, which quicklymade fortunes through the timely investments either on Wall Market, or in the new transportation and building industries that gradually moved their center of operationstoward the New York high society. Wharton prophesied in one of her books that “this little low-studded rectangular New York … would fifty years later be as much a vanished city as … the lowest layer of Schliemann’s Troy” (qtd. in Gibson,1962: 57), a prophecy that makes more poignant her own and the male protagonist’s Ralph Marvell’s shared crisis concerning the old aristocrats as an endangered species. But Wharton sees the threat to genteel society coming more from female upstarts than their male counterparts. In using the same tools—extravagant displays of wealth—to overwhelm the whole society, female upstarts’display of excess before New York’s upper-class is largely exposed in the novel. The Custom of the Countrydiscards the potential of a detailed portrayal of the struggles of its male protagonist, Elmer Moffatt, in his rise to great fortune and begins with the readers’ encounter with the recent arrival of the Spragg family, who has resolved to establish their only daughter, Undine, at any cost, among the New York upper class. It ends with Undine’s breathtaking triumph in the attainment of wealth and an established, even enviable position in society.
This paper argues that Wharton reveals her views about the transition of old New York in a way that makes the reader believe that the Big Apple has witnessed a revolution in ethnography powered especially by its female intruders. The pattern for Wharton’s design is her purposeful arrangement of Undine’s four marriagesas the main foci of her depiction, and simultaneously juxtapositionof the success of other women’s marriages so as to highlight how these newlyrising women use marriage and divorce to gain membershipin the social elites.
Wharton’s portrayal of Undine would unmistakenly arouse an aversion in most readers’ eyes. Undine is selfish, superficial, snobbish, money-oriented, and nonchalantabout other’s people’s kindnesses. Her brutal and heedless behavior leads to Ralph’s suicide, her son’s unhappy childhood, and the downfall of two aristocratic families related to her through marriages. Readers with a strict moral sense must especially detest Undine’s notion of “getting married.” Marriage is a precision tool that is used to climb high, while divorce is another splendid method to gain access to the highest peak.
There is a high possibility that readers expect Undine’s amoral behavior to lead to her chastisement or downfall at the end of the novel, as required by the dictates of poetic justice. Nevertheless, Whartonhas Undine’s successfully climb the social ladder to the highest rung, purposely muting the amoral, not to mention immoral behavior, of her heroine as well as other new female aspirants in the game of marriage. Theauthor finally ends the novel, not at a time when her heroine is undergoing defeat but at a moment when the heroine, with other ambitious females, seems to be enjoying stupendous success, thereby hinting at the inevitable downfall of the old New York aristocracy in the upcoming era. In contrast, Wharton deliberately blurs her description of the male upstart Moffatt, who, compared with Undine, is clearly cast as a cool figure in the business market,so as to reduce the reader’s aversion to his amoral methods in reaching financial success. It is this aesthetic discourse that we wish to bring to light in The Custom of the Country in order to elucidate Wharton’s belief in the unavoidable revolution in ethnography in old New York. Through this artistic arrangement, the reader accepts the fictional truth according to which the priority and advantages previously enjoyed by these social elites are being taken over by the newly-rising upstarts.
II. Successful Marriages as the Main Foci of Description
Undine’s first marriage is temporarily classified as a secret even after the reader is told about her early engagement to Millard Binch. The reason why she is drawn to Moffatt is never disclosed until the last part of the story, after her second marriage to him. The two Spragg-Moffatt marriages, surprisingly, obtain the least space in Wharton’s narration, which leaves the reader in the darkas to Moffatt’s reason forremarrying Undine, especially since it requires him to spend a lot of money to get Raymond to divorce Undine, and as to whether the two parties to the marriagereally love each other at the time of their reunion. Curiously enough, with the last passages relating to the Spragg-Moffatt remarriage, the reader is led to conclude that the heroine will some day get bored withbeing the wife of a tycoon, desert him, particularly if he fails on Wall Street, and go seeking a more promising husband, one especially one with great political prestige.
[Elmer] “I brought it in to show you something. Jim Driscoll’s been appointed Ambassador to England.”
[Undine] “Jim Driscoll------!” . . . Jim Driscoll—that pitiful nonentity, with his stout mistrustful commonplace wife! It seemed extraordinary that the government should have hunted up such insignificant people. And immediately she had a great vague vision of the splendours they were going to—all the banquets and ceremonies and precedences . . .
She dropped the paper and turned to her husband. “If you had a spark of ambition, that’s the kind of thing you’d try for. You could have got it just as easily as not!” (CC 371-372)
This is the suggestive power of the invisible authorial speech in The Custom of the Country,whose structure and ending remark make the reader believe the heroine will still make good exploitative use of hermarriage-marketsavvy in the future. In manynovels, the characters will reveal who they are (and also what they want) by way of their own discourses instead of having their thoughts told through the author’s “purposeful narration.” However, in differentsituations and for different characters, a novelist can hardly avoid “purposeful narration”in that it is a handy device for making the life of the major charactersfeed into the general thrust of the novel, if there is one at all. She has to choose, among numerous potential episodes in the life of her heroine,how to make these incidents contribute to the theme and overall effect of the novel. Wharton’s purposeful narration thus is justified as her writing focuses on what she believes is significant for a truthful presentation of the revolution of ethnography in socially transitional New York.
As to Undine’s second marriage, the one that lifts her among the New Yorksocial elites, Wharton devotes numerous pages delineating the differencesin thought and mind, the many unbridgeable contraststhat will soon make irreconcilablebetween the married couple. The author unequivocally introduces Ralph’s upbringing, habits, romantic horizon, and temperament. His concerns about social manners and decent behavior, and his dream of safely guiding his wife are so well directed that she will hardly misfire, he reckons, in her socializing among their friends. All this wins the applause of readers whereas Undine’s relentless self-centeredness and profit-making activities surely culminate in a sense of disgust among Wharton’s readers. After Undine embarks upon a path to reach her shallow, solipsistic pursuits, though in a furtive way (by accepting money from Peter), she becomes unusually frustrated until she reaches her goal. Undine totally succumbs to materialism as when she carefully calculates the profits her admirers can bring to her—through the wedding with Ralph she acquires admission to an elite group; and by way of their sexual connection she extracts enough money from Peter to sustain the lavish lifestyle of a flamboyant exhibitionist. In her union with Raymond she adopts a marital status that ensures her entrance into the French aristocracy. It is traditionally held that without theimprimatur of a married name, a woman is doomed to be excluded from social life “like the coin of a debased currency testifying to her diminished trading capacity”.[4] Undine clearly has been warned of such a potential result at the second dinner party with the Marvells, yet she naively challenges that social norm and ultimately breaks the taboos simply because Ralph cannot provide her what seems to the reader a life of extravagance.
Undine is amoral, as shown in her “absurd”reason for dumping Ralph and her boy; audacious, as shown in her shameless fighting over the custody of Paul to win the approval of the de Chelles family; relentless, as shown in her willingness to sell off the heirlooms of the Marvells’; and extraordinarily money-oriented, as shown in her ceaseless pursuit of potential well-off “sugar-daddies”. Readers must feel unsympathetic toward her and even generally satisfied when they read Wharton’s description of Undine’s apparent downfall after she has been discarded by PeterDegen. Nevertheless, it is Wharton’s belief that old New York’s environment will be gradually threatened and in the end terminated by such restless and heedless female opportunists. And thus Undine quickly develops a relationship with the French princess, through which she not only begins a new life but, astoundingly,gets the Pope to annul her marriage to Ralph. In this way Wharton quickly ends the temporary setback of her profit-seeking heroine, surely detestable in the eyes of most readers, to highlight the ultimate theme of her novel. This ruthless ambition, careless and even heedless of the consequences, which empowersnew species in Wharton’s heroine to moveever upwards,is behind the most potentially ambitious new species in Wharton’s revolutionin ethnography. It is obvious that Wharton contrives to make Ralph the representative of the old New York aristocracy, which is destined to become the victim in competition with thisnewlyrising element for social preeminence.
Undine’s third husband Raymondde Chelles, the French aristocrat, cannot impress the reader as much as Ralph does owing to the author’s focus of narration. Elizabeth Ammons observes that “it is not surprising that Wharton devotes little space to Raymond; it takes little space to show that the ‘charming’ Raymond is but a nightmarish exaggeration of Undine’s previous husband” (1974: 335). Indeed, Undine’s four marriages and one-time adultery have been narrated in an extremely unbalanced way and even with deliberate opacity. In the Spragg-de Chelles marriage Wharton does not emphasize so much Raymond’s independent thoughts or ideals as she does Ralph’s. To be more specific, Wharton lets us know that Raymond, who like Ralph was born an aristocrat, must adhere to traditional values. Moreover, Paris has been described as a much more conservative city than New York, with fewer nouveaux riches devastating the social hierarchy at a time when America’s promising upstartswere already blooming like toads. Thus the alert reader, despite the lack ofextensive authorial discourse, will understand that Raymond acts more strictlyin upholding the conventionsthan Ralph does. The author therefore decidedlyomitsmuch direct narration of Raymond’s viewpoint toward his American wife (she describes his increasingly lukewarm indifference in their marriage from the wife’s side rather than the husband’s) and concentrates only on the conflict between the couple that fuels the nonstop arguments and ultimately triggers Undine’s idea of divorcing Raymond. While Raymond’s thoughts about Undine may be seen as embodied within the public views of the French elite that have been transmitted to the heroine through one of her rivals, Madame de Trézac, the reader may wonder why they are narrated in such a roundabout way. The reader, given such indirect authorial narration, guesses Raymond’s inner attitude toward the marriage and finally is forced to accept Undine’s biasedideas of “how things are” since the reader witnesses directly only the narration about her altering mind. Wharton’s narration about Undine’s second and third marriages is asymmetrical and inconsistent as she particularly focuses on certain characters, scenes, and views and simultaneously withholds the narration of others.