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

Finished reading; RTC.

Meanwhile the sense of reviving popularity, and the charm of Chelles' devotion, had almost effaced the ugly memories of failure, and refurbished that image of herself in other minds which was her only notion of self-seeing.

it pained her that her boy should be so near, yet inaccessible, and for the first time she was visited by unwonted questionings as to her share in the misfortunes that had befallen her.

During some years perpetual exercise of his perceptions he had never come across anything that gave them the special titillation produced by the sight of the dinner-hour at the Nouveau Luxe: the same sense of putting his hand on human nature's passion for the factitious, its incorrigible habit of imitating the imitation. . . evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence. the [original] a product of continuity and choice.

At last the bandage was off and he could see the uselessness of driving his wife to subterfuges that were no longer necessary. Was Van Degen her lover? Probably not. . . She would not take more risks than she could help, and it was admiration, not love, that she wanted. She wanted to enjoy herself, and her conception of enjoyment was publicity . . . the crowd . . . the sense of walking among them in cool security.

'Sorry--you're sorry? You're sorry? Why, what earthly difference will it make to you?' She drew back a few steps and lifted her slender arms from her sides. 'Look at me--see how I look--how I'm going to look! You won't hate yourself more and more every morning when you get up and see yourself in the glass! Your life's going on just as usual! But what's mine going to be for months and months?

But his marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without it but merely the blind confidence that it will somehow be provided.

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.