Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction: A Clash of the Comparable
- Chapter I The Creation of the American in Paris: The American
- Chapter II The Splendor and Misery of the American Scientist: L'Ève future
- Chapter III The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
- Chapter IV The Expatriate Idyll: The Sun Also Rises
- Chapter V Truths and Delusions: The Cold War in Les Mandarins
- Chapter VI Embracing American Culture: Cherokee
- Chapter VII An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
- Chapter VIII Rerouting: Ça n'existe pas l'Amérique
- Chapter IX L'Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce
- Conclusion: Stasis and Movement
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Chapter III - The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction: A Clash of the Comparable
- Chapter I The Creation of the American in Paris: The American
- Chapter II The Splendor and Misery of the American Scientist: L'Ève future
- Chapter III The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
- Chapter IV The Expatriate Idyll: The Sun Also Rises
- Chapter V Truths and Delusions: The Cold War in Les Mandarins
- Chapter VI Embracing American Culture: Cherokee
- Chapter VII An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
- Chapter VIII Rerouting: Ça n'existe pas l'Amérique
- Chapter IX L'Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce
- Conclusion: Stasis and Movement
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
L'Américaine est l'avenir (déjà présent) de l'Américain.
(Charles Crosnier de Varigny, cited in Philippe Roger, L'ennemi américain)“Undine Spragg – how can you?” are the opening words of The Custom of the Country. They reflect Mrs. Spragg's exasperated sense of wonder and confusion concerning her daughter's comportment. These sentiments are often shared by the reader as well. Who is this undereducated, small-town girl who claws her way to the top of the American expatriate world and becomes a leading figure in Parisian society? Why does she act the way she does? What complicates the response to these questions is that the story initially appears to supply a very straightforward answer, but which, upon examination, proves to be dissatisfying.
This novel, published in 1913, might easily be read as the story of a woman deeply frustrated by her economic marginalization in a man's world. A character in The Custom of the Country, Charles Bowen, gives a certain credence to this approach when he describes the infantilization of society women in the Gilded Age. According to Bowen, these women are loved and admired by husbands who nevertheless do not take them seriously:
The fact is the average American looks down on his wife. … It's normal for a man to work hard for a woman – what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it [his job] … Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work. Simply because we don't take enough interest in them. (757; emphasis original)
Bowen's point is that the American socialite is frustrated because she is permitted to play no role other than a decorative one in her husband's accumulation and enhancement of wealth. She is kept away from his financial affairs and confined, as it were, to a gilded pedestal. This is, Bowen argues, a source of resentment and frustration among women and helps account in part for the burgeoning divorce rate. As a description of the social position of the well-off woman at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, this portrait may well have merit, although it has been contested. Yet it is hardly applicable to Undine, who both embraces and exploits the limits of her social position.
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- Information
- Frères EnnemisThe French in American Literature, Americans in French Literature, pp. 68 - 97Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018