Recommendations
Books Like The Custom of the Country
Best books to read after The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton's most satirically fierce New York novel (1913) follows Undine Spragg, the beautiful, amoral daughter of a midwestern businessman, who rises through society by marrying and discarding a succession of distinguished husbands. These recommendations extend the experience through Wharton's other New York novels, through other fiction about social climbing and the Gilded Age, and through novels that anatomize the economics of marriage and status.
- 1Buy
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
Wharton's first great New York novel (1905) and the essential companion: where Undine Spragg wins at the social game through her willingness to play it ruthlessly, Lily Bart loses because she is too refined to be ruthless. Reading The House of Mirth alongside The Custom of the Country gives you Wharton's complete portrait of the same social world from the perspectives of its winner and its victim.
- 2Buy
The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1920) and the third panel of her New York triptych: set a generation earlier, it shows the old aristocracy of taste and manners (the world Undine destroys) at its most beautiful and most suffocating. Newland Archer's sacrifice of passion for convention is the inverse of Undine's sacrifice of convention for passion.
- 3Buy
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
The great predecessor: Becky Sharp's rise through English society by selling her charms and intelligence to the highest bidders is the Victorian ancestor of Undine Spragg. Both characters are brilliant social performers who use marriage as a tool of advancement, treated by their authors with a combination of sardonic admiration and moral censure.
- 4Buy
The Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
The James novel that most illuminates The Custom of the Country: Isabel Archer and Undine Spragg are both American women who encounter the European social world, but where Isabel is destroyed by her idealism, Undine destroys everything she touches through her lack of it. James's portrait of the marriage market provides the philosophical framework Wharton satirizes.
- 5Buy
Sister Carrie
by Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser's first novel is the naturalist counterpart to Wharton's satirical portrait of social climbing: Carrie Meeber rises through Chicago and New York by the same combination of beauty, ambition, and opportunism that propels Undine Spragg, but Dreiser treats her ascent with pathos rather than satire. Together the two novels give you the full picture of American female social ambition at the turn of the century.
- 6Buy
The Buccaneers
by Edith Wharton
Wharton's last, unfinished novel (1938) returns to the subject of American women conquering European society — five American heiresses of the Gilded Age invade the English aristocracy, echoing the social landscape of The Custom of the Country but treating the conquest with more warmth. A direct companion to The Custom of the Country and a moving testament to Wharton's enduring themes.
- 7Buy
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
The American novel that most directly parallels The Custom of the Country's feminist critique: Edna Pontellier's rejection of the roles available to women in 1890s New Orleans is the tragic version of Undine Spragg's rejection of the same limitations. Where Undine escapes through social mobility, Edna escapes through death — both novels are about what it costs a woman to want more than the social world allows.
- 8Buy
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
The twentieth-century novel that most resembles The Custom of the Country in its portrait of a brilliant, manipulative woman who controls everyone around her and is finally brought down by her own overreach. Miss Brodie and Undine Spragg are both great performances of female power within a constrained social world — Spark's Edinburgh and Wharton's New York are different settings for the same study of will and consequence.
More The Custom of the Country Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.