ABSTRACT
Six years after the publication of The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton wrote in her First World War propagandist tract French Ways and Their Meaning: ‘The French woman is distinctly more grown up than her American sister; and she is so because she plays a much larger and more interesting part in men’s lives’. Wharton argues from the principle of gender balance to explain French creativity in ‘the art of living’, wherein curiosity, sustained application in education and paradoxically ‘absence of financial ambition’ all play a part. Yet such social and personal interchanges seem to be heavily weighted against Undine, especially when considering the ways that Wharton grants men the means to gain ‘something beyond’. John Clubbe’s observation about women in Wharton’s fiction having the ability to adapt to their surroundings stands in contrast with men’s ability to shape their own environments.
