THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is probably Edith Wharton's most savage satire on the manners of late nineteenth-century America. It is the story of the exquisitely beautiful but brutally ambitious Undine Spragg who marries her way into the high aristocracy of Europe, abandoning several husbands along the way. This novel, which has scences of comedy & even farce, is a commentary on both certain aspects of feminisim & certain aspects of capitalism in Edith Wharton's time. The novel makes a fitting companion to THE AGE OF INNOCENCE & THE HOUSE OF MIRTH & shows Wharton to be one of the greatest American novelists.