In “The Muse’s Tragedy” and The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton questions the literary production in which male poets/artists seek inspiration from their female muses, believing that their fount of creativity would not run dry as long as the fantasy about the muses lasts. In “The Muse’s Tragedy,” Vincent Rendle’s poetry is inspired by Mary Anerton and their relationship is likely to be repeated between her and Lewis Danyers. However, when she becomes aware that she was deprived of her own identity by Rendle, she refuses to be Danyers’s muse and chooses to be the author of the third part of this short story. By adding asterisks to Rendle’s letters, she also demonstrates that she is the origin of meaning. In The Custom of the Country, Ralph Marvell wishes to write poems inspired by Undine Spragg. However, Undine is not a passive muse that can be transformed by a poet to fill his dream. In the literary production in which a female muse is the source of inspiration for a male artist, she is a signifier for his creativity and an object rather than the subject of her desire. Wharton argues that the idea of a Romantic muse along with its production of classical literature is anachronistic because it neither satisfies the aspirations of the New Woman nor meets the needs of the modern-day patrons of art and literature.