Edith Wharton

Name: The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV
Author: Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

Summary

“The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV”, published in 1913, is a work by Edith Wharton. It explores elements such as Undine, Van Degen and Mabel.

Quotes from The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (Edith Wharton)

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ She had never before known a world as colourless and negative as that of the large white hotel where everybody went to bed at nine, and donkey-rides over stony hills were the only alternative to slow drives along dusty roads. Many of the dwellers in this temple of repose found even these exercises too stimulating, and preferred to sit for hours under the palms in the garden, playing Patience, embroidering, or reading odd volumes of Tauchnitz. Undine, driven by despair to an inspection of the hotel book-shelves, discovered that scarcely any work they contained was complete ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ When she had parted from Van Degen she had felt sure he meant to marry her, and the fact that Mrs. Lipscomb was fortified by no similar hope made her easier to bear with. Undine was almost ashamed that the unwooed Mabel should be the witness of her own felicity, and planned to send her off on a trip to Denver when Peter should announce his arrival; but the weeks passed, and Peter did not come. Mabel, on the whole, behaved well in this contingency. Undine, in her first exultation, had confided all her hopes and plans to her friend, but Mabel took no undue advantage of the confidence. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ But Van Degen was not there. He made no sign, he sent no excuse; he simply continued to absent himself; and it was Undine who, in due course, had to make way for Mrs. Lipscomb's caller, and sit upstairs with a novel while the drawing-room below was given up to the enacting of an actual love-story.
Even then, even to the end, Undine had to admit that Mabel had behaved "beautifully." But it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when one is getting what one wants, and when some one else, who has not always been altogether kind, is not. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ She had gone away with Peter because, after the decisive scene in which she had put her power to the test, to yield to him seemed the surest means of victory. Even to her practical intelligence it was clear that an immediate dash to Dakota might look too calculated; and she had preserved her self-respect by telling herself that she was really his wife, and in no way to blame if the law delayed to ratify the bond. She was still persuaded of the justness of her reasoning; but she now saw that it had left certain risks out of account. Her life with Van Degen had taught her many things. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ It was not the heterogeneous mediocrity of the American summer hotel where the lack of any standard is the nearest approach to a tie, but an organized codified dulness, in conscious possession of its rights, and strong in the voluntary ignorance of any others. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ The more pressing attentions of one or two men she had formerly known filled her with a glow of outraged pride, and for the first time in her life she felt that even solitude might be preferable to certain kinds of society. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ In the "powerful" novels which Popple was fond of lending her she had met with increasing frequency the type of heroine who scorns to love clandestinely, and proclaims the sanctity of passion and the moral duty of obeying its call. Undine had been struck by these arguments as justifying and even ennobling her course, and had let Peter understand that she had been actuated by the highest motives in openly associating her life with his ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country — Chapter XXV (1913)

“ She had expected him to take her to all the showy places where couples like themselves are relieved from a too sustained contemplation of nature by the distractions of the restaurant and the gaming-table ”

Edith Wharton

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