Some of the most pathetic scenes in literature: Custom of the Country

Noted yesterday that despite all the strengths of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country it's hard to deeply engage with the book because the central character, Undine Spragg Marvell, is so dislikable and so vapid - there is no conflict of forces within her, she's just a social climber and a narcissist who's headed for doom - but it's worth noticing also that, at about half-way through this (600-page) novel, the focus is slowly, gradually shifting toward her husband, Ralph Marvell - as Undine heads off for the West for some reason, files for a divorce, and abandons their young child. So now we see Ralph trying to raise the young boy, Paul?, in NYC - and these are really some of the most pathetic scenes in literature. Ralph is so clearly a man who has missed his mark in life - he would have been just fine had he been born a generation earlier and had he married into his "set," as he mother had wished - he could have worked a little bit at a gentleman's law practice, gone to his clubs and his country house, played around in the arts and maybe joined a few boards - and so on - but no he had the misfortune of being born into the age of the dawn of rapacious capitalism, and he's totally unprepared for the world of money - yet he foolishly marries a woman who's obsessed with money; she soon learns that he is a failure, by her measure, and his life is empty - he's working hard at a job that he doesn't like and is pathetically bad at anyway, in terror of losing this job, and his life is devoid of friends and of love. At the same time, Undine's family has fallen on increasingly more difficult times as well, and they have gone on a downward migration to worse and worse hotels and now are living in a dingy place - which Wharton describes very well, down to the watery stews that businessmen eat in the basement dining room. The scenes in which Ralph takes his child to this place on Saturdays to be with his grandparents are astonishing - so sad, so claustrophobic, as they sit in the crowded lobby (they have no sitting room in their tiny apartment, evidently) and try to act like a family - in semi-public - the child seeking sweets that the hide in their pockets, the only way they can imagine to relate to him and entertain him. I of course understand that there are millions far worse off than Ralph - the "coloured help" in the basement kitchen, e.g. - but could anyone be more unhappy and more hopeless?