Lisa’s Reviews > The Custom of the Country > Status Update

society was really just like the houses it lived in: a muddle of misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Ave; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, . . . unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society

All was blurred and puzzling to the girl in this world of half-lights, half-tones, eliminations and abbreviations; and she felt a violent longing to brush away the cobwebs and assert herself as the dominant figure of the scene.