Before midnight on November 18, please publish a comment of two, well-developed paragraphs about the reasons for what happens to Ralph Marvell in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country. in Chapters XXXIV-XXXVI. What are the social and biological causes of what happens to him?
After you publish your comment, please reply to one of the other students' comments.
Thank you
Dr. Kornasky
Students:
As you begin your journey (and hopefully a love affair) with Edith Wharton and the Naturalist novel that many Wharton scholars consider her greatest, please read this 2022 Time magazine article that is a testament to Wharton's enduring interest not just to serious literary folks like us but to American popular culture in general:
https://time.com/6141634/the-gilded-age-edith-wharton-books-to-read/
And then read this recent New Yorker article specifically about the staying power of the story of the superficial success of the protagonist readers love to hate, Undine Spragg, in The Custom of the Country (1913):
After you read these secondary sources, then read (or reread if you have already started the novel) Chapter 1 and 2 of The Custom of the Country. (For convenience, here is the link, the same one you can also find in the syllabus, to a free pdf of the novel's full text: Pdf of The Custom of the Country
In your comment, due on Friday, November 11, at midnight (or submitted later if you need extra time), please publish a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs about the ideas from the two articles linked here about the power of celebrity status and what you have read about in Chapters 1 and 2, in which we meet Undine.
After you publish your comment, please reply to at least one of the other students' comments.
Enjoy the novel,
Dr. Kornasky
English 3318 students: Before midnight on November 18, please publish a comment of two, well-developed ...
