Beautiful Women And The Indecency Of Powerful Men

Using the lens of Edith Wharton's 1913 Gilded Age novel "Custom Of The Country" to look at life in 2024

Last Saturday I was at a cocktail party in the Hamptons, a gathering without the extravagance and 2024 Gilded Age showmanship people may associate with the phrase “Hamptons cocktail party.” Dress was casual. No celebrities in sight. There was, however, a violinist and flautist who at my request played a perfect rendition of the theme from Game of Thrones.

The backyard setting was beautiful in its simplicity of tall green hedges on either side connecting the house’s back porch to a back wall of subtly colorful wildflowers. A human-sized, square-shaped outdoor room. 

When we got home from the party, my wife Debbie told me that a married man of long acquaintance had complimented her a number of times on how “good” she looked. It was flirtation.

My wife was alone when this happened. I doubt the man would have taken those liberties if either I or the man’s wife had been nearby.

I thought it was harmless as did Debbie. Both of us were amused and flattered. I take a compliment to Debbie as a compliment to myself and vice versa. That said, I can’t imagine complimenting any woman in that way other than Debbie.

Such flirtation in Edith Wharton’s world would have been viewed as promiscuous behavior.  Scandalous and unthinkable to old money and inappropriate to new money since it could give rise to rumors unwelcome to both married couples involved.

My Immersion in Wharton’s World

It happens to me with some books, the sense that I’m living inside two worlds at the same time. The world of the book I’m reading affects my mood, my language, my perceptions.

This happened to me with The Custom Of The Country, Wharton’s brilliant creation of a world set in an earlier Gilded Age circa 1910. It’s a world of dwindling old money society superseded and nearly effaced by the triumph of new and gaudy money. ¹

New fortunes are made, lost, and made again on Wall Street while old money, disdainful of anything that reeks of commerce, fights a losing battle to impose its code of restrained and morally disciplined behavior. The society of old money is bypassed, its code reminiscent of “signposts warning of trespassers who have long since ceased to intrude.”

If there still exists a world of old money with its exacting standards of behavior and disdain for commerce, I’m either not aware of it or have been excluded from its precincts. Good and bad taste, good and bad manners can be found all over.

In fact, it seems that vast wealth and power are contrary to taste and good behavior. Divorce and affairs among the wealthiest of billionaires seem endemic. Just as they upgrade their gigantic playthings–––yachts with heliports, private islands and vast estates that a James Bond villain would be proud of–––they upgrade their wives for younger, more attractive versions.

The spectacularly beautiful Undine Spragg

Zoey Deutch as a stand-in for Undine

Young Undine² is the heroine of Wharton’s Custom of the Country. She is poor by New York society standards but uses her superior physical beauty to capture men who can deliver what she craves. She wields her beauty as a weapon.

She wants to be the center of attention in front of the right people in the right places, wearing the best dresses and the most precious jewels. All of it with the goal of displaying her beauty to painful effect so that men adore, admire, and dream of her and women envy her. She has no concept of money except as necessary to pay for the travel, accommodations, clothes, and jewelry in service of the display to which she feels entitled.

Men want Undine for her beauty, and the novel is the story of Undine using men and men trying to use her. Sex is implicit (remember, Wharton published Custom in 1913), but Undine is not motivated by sex.

Instead, sex for her is a complement to her beauty, to be used only when she deems it appropriate. No man forces himself on Undine. She remains in control.

Yet during the course of the novel Undine’s reputation fluctuates like the mysterious fluctuations of Wall Street fortunes. The ebb and flow of both her reputation and her admirers’ Wall Street machinations dictate how prominently and how brightly her beauty can be displayed.

I find myself rooting for Undine because she’s consistent and honest about what she wants. Plus she’s tough.

I have pity for her when she learns that her ambitions cannot be fully satisfied. Her experiences with old money New York and aristocratic Paris teach her “shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude” about which the new Wall Street money is ignorant.

So as she observes the behavior of her current Wall Street man, who can buy her everything she wants, she finds herself “jarred” and “irritated” by

“…his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends…”

Imagining Undine In 2024

Where would Undine Spragg be in 2024? Perhaps a model, an influencer, an actress. Married to a wealthy man? Not necessarily if she earned enough on her own to satisfy her material ambitions. That possibility is progress. ³

But there’s another scenario that troubles me.

A young teenage beauty such as Undine might fall prey to the worst of the wealthy and powerful, those who lack a code, who lack scruples, and who too often lack consequences for behavior that in Wharton’s (idealized) world would have condemned a man to exile from decent society.

It now seems that in order to socially exile indecent and powerful men, they must be jailed. Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was widely known, but only when he was arrested and convicted did he lose his perch of power.

The same can be said for Jeffrey Epstein who after his first conviction for trafficking young girls continued the very same sex crimes. And all the while, the rich and the powerful carried on their friendships and associations with Epstein unabated.

I think about the men who consorted with Epstein after his first conviction. Bill Gates was one such associate. His moral code was missing in action. But Gates, another divorced billionaire who’d had an affair, is far too wealthy to be shunned. ⁴

At least Prince Andrew, another Epstein associate and an alleged participant in Epstein’s illicit orgies, has been punished by the British royal family.

The Case Of Bill Clinton

Finally, I think of Bill Clinton who as president was a sexual predator, having shtupped ⁵ young intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office and then lied about it both under oath and to the country. Clinton has never apologized. ⁶

Apparently, if you possess enough political juice and are a charming enough scoundrel, you get a free pass. You’re invited everywhere; you’re lauded everywhere. That’s not right.

Clinton spoke at this week’s Democratic Convention. One of the Convention’s themes was to defend the reproductive rights of women; its main theme was to defeat the outrageous misogynist and abuser of women Donald Trump.

I thought Clinton’s appearance was off-brand and tone deaf. It’s long past time for the Democratic party to cut him loose.

What is disgraceful

Maybe I’m living in a dream world. Maybe my indignation is a form of self-righteousness.

But I have a wife, a daughter and daughter-in-law, five nieces, sisters-in-law, many female cousins, and soon I hope, a granddaughter. Through them, my protective instinct for all women is always top of mind. So it makes me furious to think that men still abuse women and get away with it.

Of course any male abuser is a disgrace. But I’ll go further. Anyone who gives social sanction or pays homage to a known male abuser is complicit in that disgrace.

Finally, I hope it’s clear that whether behavior is or is not legally punished should not be the arbiter of what is disgraceful.

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Question for the comments: How effective has the #MeToo movement been in making progress against abuses of women? ⁷

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1. Thanks to

a. natasha joukovsky

for citing Custom OF The Country as her favorite Wharton, which led me to read it and adopt it as my favorite as well.

2. Here’s how Wharton describes Undine near the beginning of the book.

“Undine Spragg…swept round…with one of the quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. She was always doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless feet.”

3. To be clear, in 2024 women continue to be plagued by offensive behavior ranging from domestic abuse to groping to countless demeaning comments and gestures. Such behavior is pervasive across socio-economic classes.

4. This NYT article describes Gates’ relationship with Epstein. Epstein’s first conviction was in 2008. Here’s a 2011 picture from the article.

5. Shtupped is Yiddish for having sex with. Not a word you’re likely to encounter in an Edith Wharton novel.

6. Clinton’s sexual abuse was not confined to Monica Lewinsky. (And there is no question that it was abusive for a 49 year-old president of the United States to take advantage of a 22 year-old intern.)

See this 2017 article in the Atlantic that takes a fresh look at how Clinton’s pattern of behavior was rationalized by Gloria Steinem, among others, because it was politically expedient to do so.

Concluding quote from the article:

“If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C. K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.”

7. Here is a Pew poll on attitudes about #MeToo