REVIEW: Summer by Edith Wharton
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If I recall correctly, I’ve read just two Edith Wharton books: Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth. I recently reread synopses of the plots of these books to refresh my memory, and confirmed that they were both as depressing as I had recalled. Well written and compelling, but very sad. I gave The House of Mirth an A and Ethan Frome a B. Summer is set in New England, like Ethan Frome (apparently the only two of Wharton’s books with that setting and also rare in that neither depict New York’s Gilded Age aristocracy as most of Wharton’s work does).
Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, a place that appears to offer little to hold the interest of a young person, particularly one as restless as Charity. She works at North Dormer’s small and neglected library, a job she took solely to save money in the hopes of leaving town someday. She’s not exactly devoted to her job; in fact she often comes late and leaves early when she can get away with it.
Charity was born “up the mountain” from North Dormer, among the impoverished and lawless (and it’s hinted at, rather inbred – everyone seems to have the last name Hyatt) people who live there. For reasons that were never quite clear to me, Charity was adopted as a newborn by North Dormer’s leading citizen, Lawyer Royall, and his wife. Mrs. Royall appears to have been a nonentity who died sometime when Charity was a child.
In spite of being raised by Lawyer Royall, Charity doesn’t ever seem to have a close relationship to him, though she does at one point give up the chance to go to boarding school because she feels too guilty leaving him all alone. Their relationship is irrevocably damaged when he makes a pass at her one night. His behavior is, of course, disgusting, but he comes off as more of a pathetic, lonely old man than a lech (at least to me). Still, Charity feels understandably unsafe with him and insists he hire a live-in woman to cook and clean. There’s also a sense on both of their parts after the incident that she has something she can hold over him to get what she wants.
Charity’s life changes when a young man named Lucius Harney stops by the library. He’s an architect studying some of the notable local buildings, and he and Charity are immediately attracted to one another. Lucius comes from a world that Charity can only imagine but longs to be a part of. Even though Lawyer Royall is a notable and learned citizen of North Dormer, he’s mostly a big fish in a little pond (and he appears to like it that way). The world of Lucius Harney – or of Annabel Balch, a wealthy young woman who sometimes stays with relatives in North Dormer – is one of refinement and education. Charity’s understanding of and longing for such a life is an inchoate thing – she doesn’t seem to have a thirst for learning or even a very developed sense of what she is missing out on. What she has is a sort of mulish, resentful certainty that the world has something better to offer than she can get in North Dormer.
As weeks go by, Charity’s relationship with Harney waxes and wanes – first they have a friendship in which she drives him around to local spots of interest in a hired buggy, and he begins boarding at Lawyer Royall’s house. But Royall becomes jealous and runs Harney off, and Charity thinks she’s lost her chance with him. The two end up making a furtive Fourth of July trip to a nearby larger town to watch fireworks. A chance encounter with her guardian humiliates Charity – she finds him in the company of prostitutes and drunk, and he lashes out at her in self-defense. After that, Charity and Harney’s relationship becomes entirely secret. They begin meeting in an abandoned cabin and consummate the relationship.
Charity is a sympathetic character but not a likable one – she’s sullen and distasteful of the people around her. Her relationship with Lawyer Royall was hard for me to understand. Maybe it was a New England thing, but the distance between them, considering that she had been with him since childhood, didn’t quite track. I understood her disgust of his actions, and even before that, a child disdaining a parent (or parent-figure) may not be admirable, but it’s not rare. It was more that Charity didn’t seem to feel *anything* about Lawyer Royall, one way or another. She is curiously detached from him. Late in the book she reflects:
She had always thought of him–when she thought of him at all–as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when she chose to make the effort.
Her indifference is in keeping with her personality in general. Viewed through a modern lens, it feels like Charity suffers from a constant low-grade depression. Again, I had sympathy for her, but she didn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities for most of the book.
I’ll spoiler-mark the ending just in case:
Spoiler: Show
The ending was surprising to me in that if I had read ¾ of the book and then been given the bare details of the ending, I would have considered it extremely downbeat, a defeat of sorts for Charity. But as it’s written, it’s strangely hopeful, or at least peaceful. I’m not sure how I feel about that, and I’m curious as to whether I took it in the way Wharton intended it to be taken, or not. Either way, this is a beautifully written book, and on that alone I’m giving it an A-.
Best,
Jennie
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I clicked on the spoiler and wow – that’s hopeful?? I just can’t imagine how the townfolk are going to view this and what kind of life will Charity have that’s anywhere close to what she sullenly dreamed she wanted.
@Jayne: I know, right? I almost wonder if my take on it was wrong. But she seemed happier than I expected her to be.
@Jennie: Perhaps she’s going to reset her aspirations down to being Mrs. Big Fish.
I think that we forget that by the standards of her day, the heroine’s life turns out remarkably well for a woman who “lost her virtue” and would have had a baby out of wedlock. In Wharton’s THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, the heroine’s life is essentially ruined just because of the appearance of impropriety. I’m never sorry about not living in “the good old days.”
I may have mentioned it here before but I love Edith Wharton. I know sometimes her plots are not exactly light going. BUT! She wrote a novel called “Glimpses of the Moon,” that I absolutely adore, it’s a Roaring 20s romance and I highly recommend it. Definitely
a big lighter than this one – which I do still love.
I’d also recommend Wharton’s THE BUCCANEERS, about a group of young American women who arrive in England trying to land titled (but impoverished) English husbands, who would condescend to marry an American girl with a large dowry to keep the wolves at bay. It’s based on actual events (particularly involving Jennie Churchill and Consuelo Vanderbilt).
@DiscoDollyDeb: Oh, of course. I mean, Charity briefly entertains the idea of becoming a prostitute, like another girl from North Dormer did after becoming pregnant. Her contentment at the end just did not seem in keeping with her personality, to me. That was why I found it odd. Maybe with another, more moralistic author, I would have seen it as a case of Charity rightfully accepting her fate. But that doesn’t seem to be Wharton’s style.
I would be interested to read some analysis of “Summer” but I haven’t really found much online. I did read that Wharton considered it one of her favorites of her own stories.
@Tanya: You did mention it! I have to remember to pick that one up. Thanks for the suggestion. I love her writing, but I can only take so much grimness.
@DiscoDollyDeb: This is another one I want to read – I saw the PBS production years ago and really liked it. Though I understand there is some controversy regarding the relatively happy ending in the miniseries versus what Wharton scholars think she intended with her unfinished book.