The Custom of the Country recap

Undine Spragg arrives in New York determined to convert her father's money and her beauty into social rank. She marries Ralph Marvell, but his old-family position lacks the wealth she expects. Their marriage collapses as she spends freely and pursues the richer Peter Van Degen. After divorcing Ralph, she finds that Peter will not marry her. Ralph, trying to recover their son Paul, discovers that Undine concealed an earlier marriage to Elmer Moffatt and dies by suicide. In France, Undine marries the aristocratic Raymond de Chelles, but she again rebels when status comes without unrestricted money. She sells his family's tapestries to finance another divorce and marries Moffatt, now a millionaire. Moffatt supplies the luxury she wants and brings Paul back, yet Undine immediately finds a fresh source of dissatisfaction: because she is divorced, she can never occupy the diplomatic role she now covets.

The Spraggs have left Apex City for a New York hotel, where their daughter Undine studies the fashionable people she wants to join. Her father has money but neither the family connections nor the instinctive knowledge she considers necessary. Mrs. Heeny supplies gossip and practical guidance. Undine pushes for invitations and is delighted when she begins meeting members of established society. An encounter with Elmer Moffatt, a confident man from Apex whom she clearly knows, unsettles both her and her father. Their evasiveness suggests that the past Undine is trying to discard may complicate the identity she is creating in New York.

Undine enters the circle of Ralph Marvell, a sensitive young man from an old New York family. He mistakes her limited experience and directness for an unspoiled nature, while she mistakes his name and social ease for wealth. They marry despite the doubts of people who understand how little they know about each other. Ralph hopes for companionship and a settled family life; Undine expects travel, clothes, entertainment, and immediate access to the richest people around them. The mismatch becomes apparent as bills mount. She is increasingly interested in Peter Van Degen, whose fortune allows the conspicuous pleasures Ralph cannot provide, and she resents every appeal to economy as a personal deprivation.

Ralph struggles to support Undine's spending while trying to preserve his literary hopes. Their son Paul does not hold Undine's attention for long, and care of the child falls mainly to the Marvell family. Undine travels and places herself in Peter Van Degen's company, treating his interest as a possible escape from her disappointing marriage. Ralph at first tries to trust her, but her absences and contempt make the marriage untenable. Undine seeks a divorce in a jurisdiction willing to grant one and expects Peter to marry her afterward. Instead, once she is free and the pursuit has lost its excitement, Peter withdraws, leaving her socially exposed and without the richer marriage she had assumed would follow.

Living abroad after the failure of her plan with Peter, Undine looks for another route upward. She attracts Raymond de Chelles, whose title and ancient family offer a kind of prestige unavailable in New York. Religious and legal barriers to their marriage require her personal history to be examined. Meanwhile Ralph tries to secure the return of Paul. He learns that Undine had once married Elmer Moffatt in Apex and had kept that marriage hidden. The revelation destroys Ralph's remaining hope and compounds his financial and emotional exhaustion. He dies by suicide, leaving Paul subject to arrangements made by Undine and the surviving family. Undine is then able to move toward marriage with Raymond.

As the Marquise de Chelles, Undine possesses a title and a place in an old French family, but daily life at the family estate frustrates her. Raymond treats inherited land, customs, and possessions as trusts to be preserved. Undine sees restrictions, inadequate spending money, and exclusion from the more mobile international society she prefers. Their conflict concentrates on valuable family tapestries that she wants converted into cash and Raymond refuses to sell. Elmer Moffatt reappears transformed into a powerful financier and collector. His success makes him attractive to Undine in a way he was not when she was trying to erase Apex, and he has both the money and the flexible values her present marriage lacks.

Undine decides to leave Raymond for Moffatt. She secretly turns the ancestral tapestries into the money needed to overcome the obstacles to divorce, despite having assured Raymond that she would preserve them for the boy. She marries Moffatt, whose immense wealth finally gives her unrestricted luxury and public display, and Paul joins their household. The boy enters their lavish home and recognizes the Chelles tapestries, exposing how completely family attachments have been turned into negotiable property. Even at the height of her material success, Undine is not content. Learning that her marital history prevents her from becoming an ambassador's wife, she begins longing for precisely that unavailable honor, and her cycle of desire continues.

Undine obtains Raymond's consent to divorce after turning the Chelles family's valuable tapestries into money, although he believed she was preserving them for their son. She then marries Elmer Moffatt, now immensely rich, and gains the limitless spending, travel, and display she has long pursued. Paul joins their household, returning to a mother he barely knows, and discovers that the treasured Chelles tapestries have become ornaments in Moffatt's new home. Undine remains dissatisfied despite her wealth. Her latest wish is to be the wife of an ambassador, but her marital history makes that particular social distinction unavailable to her. The novel closes with her imagination fastening on this new exclusion, showing that no acquisition can end her desire for whatever lies beyond reach.