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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Social Orders:
In Chapter 4, Ralph Marvell visits the Spragg residence in the Stentorian without calling beforehand, asking to see Mrs. Spragg. This is rather unusual according to the social conventions of Gilded Age society. Undine reacts hyperbolically to the event:
The social order seemed to be falling in ruins at Undine's feet. A visitor who asked for a girl's mother!––she stared at Mrs. Spragg with a cold incredulity.
Undine doesn't fully understand the situation here. Ralph came to the apartment, and when Mrs. Spragg told Ralph that Undine was out, he still came up and made conversation, though Mrs. Spragg "couldn't make out what he was after." Ralph even leaves a letter for Undine, but she hardly reads it and interprets it negatively, thinking that "he did not wish to continue their acquaintance." And on top of this rebuff from Ralph, Undine feels that the entire "social order" is at risk because of Ralph's transgressions.
Undine's reaction is quite hyperbolic. Ralph's conversation with Mrs. Spragg is hardly destructive to the social order. But Undine is extremely interested in both Ralph's affections and the social structures of high society. Undine's hyperbolic reaction shows how important both are to her. This hyperbole also speaks to what Undine understands the social order to be: a system in which people come to ask her, specifically, to dinners and functions, and men show interest directly to her, with no one getting in the way. She sees the social order as a tool to support her desires and affections. When she cannot have Ralph, it seems like the social order, hyperbolically, collapses.
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