Undine Spragg
Undine Spragg is considered one of the most revolutionary and transformative characters in America literature. With the exception of the controversial title character of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, no real analogue exists that so defiantly decimates the existing conventional expectation that the female protagonist of a novel should be delicate, sentimental and—above all else—passive supporting figures in the far more emotionally unpredictable trajectory of the most important male in her life. Early on, Wharton uses metaphor to foreshadow the unexpected rebellion against conformity to come:
“Undine lay silent, her hands clasped behind her head. She was plunged in one of the moods of bitter retrospection when all her past seemed like a long struggle for something she could not have, from a trip to Europe to an opera-box; and when she felt sure that, as the past had been, so the future would be.”
Ralph Marvell
In contrast to the portrait of Undine as a rebellious non-conformist, her second husband Ralph becomes the very model of a man whose congenital inability to resist conformity is ultimately what drives him to a tragic end. Within that lack of a rebellious spirit lies a subtle critique capitalism’s corrosive corruption of the soul in a way that engenders an overarching propensity toward submission:
“He had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life”
Sleeping with the Enemy
Ralph’s tragic propensity to submit when pressed by the greater weight of a stronger will is also foreshadowed during a brief moment, but revelatory moment when the business of capitalism intrudes into the business of romantic expectations:
“His heart contracted as he looked at her. What sinister change came over her when her will was crossed? She seemed to grow inaccessible, implacable--her eyes were like the eyes of an enemy.”
Money, According to Undine
However, economics, unfortunately for Ralph, is not just an intrusion into his marriage, it is the driving force behind everything Undine. Ultimately, money itself becomes a metaphor for that everything “she could not have” which is the metaphor for the struggle of her unhappy past. In trying to make up for that past defined by the lack of it, Undine has fetishized money itself:
“The only menace ahead was the usual one of the want of money.”
“money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet.”
“Some of his enjoyments were beyond her range, but even these appealed to her because of the money that was required to gratify them.” “
"She had learned to bargain, pare down prices, evade fees, brow-beat the small tradespeople and wheedle concessions from the great”
Undine According to Ralph
It is not as if Ralph remains blissfully unaware of his wife’s failings. In fact, the tragedy of his life is that he is more than sensitive enough to see clearly where his marital problems lie, but his will is simply not equal to his sensitivity. In a moment of contemplation, he is brutally honest about Undine, admitting that
“Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it.”
