Summer

By Edith Wharton

Published in 1917, Summer is a story of love, romance and sensuality. It follows the life of a young American female from New England named Charity Royall who was born in poverty. Charity is loved by her guardian Lawyer Royall who expresses his wish to marry her. He first finds her a decent job as the town’s librarian despite her lack of qualifications. However, Charity falls in love with another young man named Lucius Harney that she meets one day in the library. With Lucius, eighteen-year-old Charity gradually discovers sensual love for the first time in her life. Other developments happen in the story as Charity falls pregnant and yet discovers that her lover is secretly engaged to another young woman from a higher social rank. Her depression and desperation push her to decide to become a prostitute like her mother when she is rescued from this tragic destiny by Lawyer Royall who marries her and protects her. Edith Wharton’s Summer is today considered as one of the earliest novels that deal with innocent young girls discovering the sweet, albeit thorny, world of love and sensual romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Word To The Wise
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780006512

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

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Bibliography

CHAPTER I

A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall’s house and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery.

The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.

As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall’s doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such mishaps.

Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came over her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back into the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had already put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection, wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy face, and turned out again into the sunshine.

How I hate everything! she murmured.

The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o’clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household drudgery.

The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world? She herself had lived there since the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of some importance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other Sunday, when the roads were not ploughed up by hauling, to hold a service in the North Dormer church, had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the young people down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated lecture on the Holy Land; and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of North Dormer had been piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills to Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.

In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, for the first and only time, experienced railway-travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts, tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take North Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading.

The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and North Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, from lawyer Royall’s faded red house at one end to the white church at the other, she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in modern communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no business block; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the state of the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had been bought for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she ought to consider it a privilege that her lot had been cast in North Dormer. She knew that, compared to the place she had come from, North Dormer represented all the blessings of the most refined civilization. Everyone in the village had told her so ever since she had been brought there as a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasion in her life: My child, you must never cease to remember that it was Mr. Royall who brought you down from the Mountain.

She had been brought down from the Mountain; from the scarred cliff that lifted its sullen wall above the lesser slopes of Eagle Range, making a perpetual background of gloom to the lonely valley. The Mountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly from the lower hills that it seemed almost to cast its shadow over North Dormer. And it was like a great magnet drawing the clouds and scattering them in storm across the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky, there trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it drifted to the Mountain as a ship drifts to a whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up and multiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain and darkness.

Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she knew it was a bad place, and a shame to have come from, and that, whatever befell her in North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, to remember that she had been brought down from there, and hold her tongue and be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, thinking of these things, and tried as usual to be thankful. But the sight of the young man turning in at Miss Hatchard’s gate had brought back the vision of the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt ashamed of her old sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer, and jealously aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield, opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on glories greater than the glories of Nettleton.

How I hate everything! she said again.

Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing through it, she walked down a brick path to a queer little brick temple with white wooden columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed in tarnished gold letters: The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library, 1832.

Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard’s great-uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked literary gifts, written a series of papers called The Recluse of Eagle Range, enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a link piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where Charity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in his grave than she did in his library.

Entering her prison-house with a listless step she took off her hat, hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva, opened the shutters, leaned out to see if there were any eggs in the swallow’s nest above one of the windows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, drew out a roll of cotton lace and a steel crochet hook. She was not an expert workwoman, and it had taken her many weeks to make the half-yard of narrow lace which she kept wound about the buckram back of a disintegrated copy of The Lamplighter. But there was no other way of getting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the poorest girl in the village, had shown herself in church with enviable transparencies about the shoulders, Charity’s hook had travelled faster. She unrolled the lace, dug the hook into a loop, and bent to the task with furrowed brows.

Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.

Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his short-sighted eyes peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the desk and stood before her.

Have you a card-catalogue? he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.

A WHAT?

Why, you know— He broke off, and she became conscious that he was looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance, included her in his general short-sighted survey as part of the furniture of the library.

The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled also.

No, I don’t suppose you do know, he corrected himself. In fact, it would be almost a pity—

She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked sharply: Why?

Because it’s so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke about by one’s self—with the help of the librarian.

He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and rejoined with a sigh: I’m afraid I can’t help you much.

Why? he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren’t many books anyhow, and that she’d hardly read any of them. The worms are getting at them, she added gloomily.

Are they? That’s a pity, for I see there are some good ones. He seemed to have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again, apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she picked up her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently he did not need it, for he spent a long time with his back to her, lifting down, one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a distant shelf.

Oh, I say! he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn out his handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in his hand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of the books, and she said irritably: It’s not my fault if they’re dirty.

He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. Ah—then you’re not the librarian?

Of course I am; but I can’t dust all these books. Besides, nobody ever looks at them, now Miss Hatchard’s too lame to come round.

No, I suppose not. He laid down the book he had been wiping, and stood considering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the suspicion increased her resentment. I saw you going into her house just now, didn’t I? she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her books.

Miss Hatchard’s house? Yes—she’s my cousin and I’m staying there, the young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: My name is Harney—Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.

No, she hasn’t, said Charity, wishing she could have said: Yes, she has.

Oh, well— said Miss Hatchard’s cousin with a laugh; and after another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer had not been encouraging, he remarked: You don’t seem strong on architecture.

Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded her of the gentleman who had explained the pictures at Nettleton, and the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.

I mean, I can’t see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn’t been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin’s house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once. He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. I’m an architect, you see, and I’m hunting up old houses in these parts.

She stared. Old houses? Everything’s old in North Dormer, isn’t it? The folks are, anyhow.

He laughed, and wandered away again.

Haven’t you any kind of a history of the place? I think there was one written about 1840: a book or pamphlet about its first settlement, he presently said from the farther end of the room.

She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was such a work, she knew: North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County. She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes. She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:

Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, where there used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by the stream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were their titles to fame.

She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But she had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that it was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It was not one of her lucky days.

I guess it’s somewhere, she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke without conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none.

Oh, well— he said again. She knew he was going, and wished more than ever to find the book.

It will be for next time, he added; and picking up the volume he had laid on the desk he handed it to her. By the way, a little air and sun would do this good; it’s rather valuable.

He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.

CHAPTER II

The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from three to five; and Charity Royall’s sense of duty usually kept her at her desk until nearly half-past four.

But she had never perceived that any practical advantage thereby accrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruple in decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hour earlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney’s departure she formed this decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the key in the door of the temple of knowledge.

The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing up and down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of entering she passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on the hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along the crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll where a clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the wind. There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in the grass.

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.

She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for the mere pleasure of feeling the wind and of rubbing her cheeks in the grass. Generally at such times she did not think of anything, but lay immersed in an inarticulate well-being. Today the sense of well-being was intensified by her joy at escaping from the library. She liked well

Reviews for Summer

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is my 3rd Wharton and it is in the middle with Ethan Frome being at the top and The Age of Innocence being at the bottom. This is classic Wharton, high society versus lower social classes; high society courts low society, leaves her in a lurch to marry his own kind. 144 pages

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was the only person in my sophomore English class that enjoyed reading Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome" so it's no surprise to me that I really enjoyed her novel "Summer" as well all these years later. I find Wharton's characters to be unlikable people that you really want to root for anyway, (and that is a difficult balance to achieve in my experience.)This novel is the story of Charity Royall, who was "brought down the mountain" and raised by a lawyer and his wife. Mrs. Royall dies and her benefactor sets his sights on marrying her. Charity also experiences a sexual awakening when she bumps into Mr. Harney at the local library.While this work was controversial in Wharton's time, it is pretty tame today. I liked the story overall and Charity's growing knowledge of her circumstances was portrayed very well. I wouldn't put this up there with Wharton's best work, but it definitely was a worthwhile read.

[pamici_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm adding Edith Wharton to the list of historical people I wish I could meet.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Trolling the threads of LT recently I saw a review referencing the "devastating" ending of Edith Wharton's Summer. This compelled me to pull the book from my shelf. I thought I had read it before, but as I read it I had no memory of the characters or events it describes. And devastating, indeed, the ending is.This is the story of Charity Royall, a young woman living in a small country town. When Lucius Harney, an architect from the city, comes to town, she falls in love. This book has been described as Wharton's most sexually explicit novel, and it created a huge scandal when it was published in 1917. We can experience with Charity the joy of her first experiences, but know that at that time and place an educated, sophisticated, wealthy man from the city is not going to marry an uneducated, poor, unsophisticated country girl, no matter how beautiful. And we know, as Wharton shows us time and again, that at that time the options for women were extremely limited--especially for a "tainted" woman.In the Reading Globally Nobel Prize Writers thread, there was a long discussion about the dearth of female literature nobelists (only 13 of 111 literature laureates have been women). Wharton certainly must be counted among the writers the Nobel committee overlooked.Highly recommended.4 1/2 stars

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When she was a young child, Charity Royall was rescued from “the Mountain” by Lawyer Royall, who is now her guardian. Now she’s eighteen, feeling bored in the small town of North Dormer, and itching to spread her wings. When she meets Lucius Harney, an architect from the city who is visiting his cousin, her eyes are opened to possibilities she hasn’t dared dream about. Their mutual attraction garners some unwanted attention and results in gossip that Charity ignores until it is too late. Wharton wrote this circa 1917 when she was living in France. When published, it shocked readers; they were not used to reading about a young woman’s awakening sexuality. I wonder if they would have been so shocked if Wharton had set the novel in France, rather than in the Berkshires. Charity is head-strong and passionate, but also naïve. As frequently happens in Wharton’s novels, the principal characters never come out and say what they mean. They are frequently acting based on assumptions, rather than on a true understanding of the facts. Wharton knew the social makeup of turn-of-the century America, and used her novels to explore the nuances of the “rules” – spoken and unspoken – by which people, especially women, had to live. In this, as in other novels, the social fabric of the community is as much a character as any of the people in it. It’s a slim novel, and a great introduction to Wharton’s writing. I still prefer House of Mirth, but this was an enjoyable read.

[terris-7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A sweet, sad story of a young girl in a small town who gets herself into a bad position and then just has to live with it. Nothing unexpected or surprising, really. Just Wharton's beautiful writing to take you through it. I liked it. But I'm not sure that I'd recommend it, unless you're just a big Wharton fan and want to read all that she's written.

[alcracka · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was told this book was dirty, and ...well, to be fair, I was told it was dirty "for Wharton," which I suppose is true as far as it goes, but still: oblique references to illicit trysts aren't exactly begging for the fap when you fade out after they hold hands. Remind me this though: next time I'm sitting next to a leathery woman from Lowell on the bus and she's all "Hey, what are YOU reading?" and I say "Edith Wharton" and she mishears me and thinks I said "It's for work," and gives me a lecture about reading for work on buses, which apparently is bullshit, not that I disagree, the right response is not "No, Edith Wharton, and it's gonna be cool because I heard it was dirty." You won't really get a disapproving look - I mean, wtf, she's from Lowell, that's probably the nicest thing she's ever heard on a bus - but she will decide that you're now buddies and you might want to see a picture of a cat her friend died red, white and blue for the Superbowl. Because, y'know, the cat is a Pats fan. I'm not kidding about any of this. You know I don't kid. And I guess it's working; we're up 17 - 9 in the third quarter. Dear Boston, the only reason I looked up the score is so I could reference it in this Edith Wharton review I'm writing during the Superbowl; after this I'm gonna go back to reading Nathaniel Hawthorne. I ain't gotta defend my masculinity to the likes of you. Wharton and Hawthorne were both here before the Patriots were so don't go yelling at me about loyalty, yahdood.

[bookwoman247 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story of a New England waif at about the dawn of the Twentieth Century who finds herself under the spell of a charming young man who is engaged to someone else, and who eventually finds herself "in trouble" could be cliché. In fact, Wharton's writing lifts it far above other stories of that ilk.I love her portrayals of the characters. The heroine is no helpless victim. The man she is involved with is not particularly exploiting her. Even her guardian who enters her bedroom once, unbidden, is not especially evil. I'm sure, especially with the extremely thinly veiled reference to abortion, and the underlying sexual themes throughout the book that this was a particularly shocking book in its time. Even more so in light of the fact that the heroine was able to find a kind of redemption after having gone astray.This book confirmed, again, my love for Edith Wharton.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

When she was 5-years-old Charity Royall was rescued from a life of poverty with her prostitute mother when a wealthy man became her guardian. Instead of growing up in the mountain community with her mother she is raised in a life of privilege by Lawyer Royall and grows up to be a librarian. When we meet her she is a grown woman just beginning to stretch her wings. After turning down her guardians’ marriage proposal (eww) she is restless and discontent in her life. She soon finds momentary fulfillment in a clandestine relationship. The material is a bit racy for its time period (which makes it tame by today’s standards.) It gives readers a tragic look at an ambitious girl who flouts the societal restraints imposed on her. It felt like a weak precursor to The House of Mirth, though it was published more than a decade later. BOTTOM LINE: For me, the ending was deeply dissatisfying and disappointing. It felt more like a morality lesson for settling down as quickly as possible. I was frustrated that Charity was left with so few options, though I understand that’s a realistic view of the time period.  

[lkrier_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I finished this book, I slammed the book shut and turned to the boy in a huff: “This ending sucks!” I’m not one of those types who always wants a happy ending, but this heroine seemed to deserve so much better. Wharton created a truly unique character, one who so perfectly reflects the imperfections of human beings, it’s hard to let go and allow her such an imperfect ending. You want, just once, for someone so realistically flawed to get the white horse and the prince and to ride off into the sunset. Especially since you’re so relieved the author didn’t just kill her off or something, as so many literary heroines in Charity Royall’s predicament were punished in the early twentieth century.Marilyn French’s Introduction in this edition helped me get over my initial disappointment. The Introduction is one of those that most certainly should be read after the novel itself, but it’s well worth going back to. French’s reading of Charity Royall’s character, and the place of a character like this in fiction of the time, is insightful, and brought me a greater appreciation of Charity and her author.Wharton has always been one of my favorite writers because she does capture women so wonderfully. She had a nuanced way of exploring the restrictions of womanhood, and the emotional life that was all women were allowed. Her novels also shine a light for the contemporary reader onto the places where those same restrictions still apply. Summer, which was quite scandalous for its time, felt out what it was like for a woman who wanted to embody her own sexuality without giving up her dignity and self-worth. And while Charity’s ending belongs in no romance novel, she does, at least, survive. In fact, I didn’t realize how ingrained the literary custom of killing off wayward heroines is until I started realizing that I expected it, even from Wharton.So while I might have slammed the book shut in disappointment on reading that last word, I quickly came to the realization that Summer truly is one of Wharton’s best novels, and one that shows her courage and willingness to realistically explore the things very few people want to, even now: people who aren’t perfect.

[bexaplex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everyone reads Ethan Frome in high school, and nobody reads Summer. I think it's because everyone likes to imagine New England as a cold, wintry place.Charity Royall is the heroine, adopted by a prominent family in a tiny town in the Berkshires from the lawless Mountain. She longs to widen her small world of North Dormer, and gets her wish when a young New York architect shows up and takes an interest in the area's older buildings, and Charity.The way Harney is written is very interesting - he's most attractive to Charity when he's very vulnerable. Wharton has a sneaky way of transposing gender roles, and exploring a space in which women are both powerful, and incredibly powerless.Harney isn't compelling as a romantic lead, unless through Charity's eyes. Although, there is that one scene at Miss Hatchard's. Yeah, you know which one I mean.Marilyn French's Introduction is a capable biography of Wharton and description of her contribution to American letters. If you've only read Ethan Frome, get on the Summer in New England bandwagon!

[zumbanista · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this short novel by Edith Wharton. The writing is beautiful and evokes the small town, countryside and behaviors of the unsophisticated townsfolk and the renegade Mountain folk living on the fringes of Society. None of the characters are sympathetic, but written so fully you feel you know them well. The protagonist, Charity Royall is by turns ungrateful, petty, naive, impulsive and impressionable. All in all, a very satisfying tale by one of America's best writers.

[deliriumslibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Slow days in a dusty library - and the release of first love. A book about books and what you can't learn from them. Disturbing, will never be made into a lush film.

[stephlaymon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I adore Edith Whartons writing and was pleased to finally be reading Summer as I have heard that it is her most controversial, shocking... Unfortunately the biggest disappointment comes from the build, but if I set that aside as I should, and allow the book to stand on it's own merit, it is a good read with interesting conflict, but in no way her best work.

[corinneblackmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charity Royall is a beautiful, limited, petulant, and yearning young woman trapped in the New England town of North Dormer, Massachusetts, and literally expiring from boredom. She is the orphaned ward of an elderly lawyer in town who manages to squash plans for her to receive a formal education. That lack of education, coupled with boredom, sets the stage for the sexual tragedy that occurs one summer when she meets the visiting young architect, Lucius Harney. Charity falls in love and gets pregnant simultaneously, and in the backdrop is a gorgeous, sun-drenched, opulent summer in which she plots meetings with Harney. When she gets pregnant, Chiarity's sense that she has no part in Lucius' real life, and her fear of displacement and alienation, throw her into the waiting arms of the lawyer, who has long wished to marry her. As Charity herself is the product of a single mother from the disreputable mountain country surrounding North Dormer, history repeats itself--without benefit of intervening culture or education to refine the powerful urges of sexual desire.

[ken1952 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the first Edith Wharton book that I've read. It won't be my last. Written in 1917, it's set in the very small town of North Dormer in New England and looks at the rather dismal life of Charity Royall, a country girl who longs to get out of the country. Into her life walks the handsome and worldly (of course he is) Lucius Harney who she immediately is infatuated with. Wharton doesn't pull any punches in this rather harsh tale of lonely people trying to escape their loneliness. Could make a very good reading group selection.

[smiler69 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although I kept in mind that this novel was considered to be quite salacious when it was first published in 1917, I kept asking myself "so where's the beef?" I noticed there was one maybe not-so-chaste kiss, but all the rest was innuendo that went right over my head. The heroine, Charity Royal was taken in as a child, away from her alcoholic, dirt-poor mother by Mr. Royal, a lawyer who's wife has died and left him at the mercy of this beautiful young girl, whom he desperately wants to marry; but she despises him for having made clumsy advances at her on a drunken night. Instead, she falls in love with a young architect and spends all her time with him, when she's not working at her job as a librarian, even though she's uneducated and hates books. Probably with good reason, she holds against Mr. Royal the fact that he's prevented her from continuing her studies so he could keep her close to him. I was unhappy with the narrator Grace Conlin; her fast-paced reading fairly ruined Wharton's beautiful writing, though I did pick up on a beautiful quote:“The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over, the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks. The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard’s lawn, and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigo against the incandescence of the forest”

[countrylife_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love character-driven stories. Edith Wharton did not disappoint me in this regard. Her characters were entirely, sometimes even uncomfortably, real. This was a story that you could really see happening, not just some far-fetched plot to drive a book. This corner of Massachusetts was descriptively rendered, from the melancholy small town where Charity lives to the poor mountain dwellings to the gorgeous countryside.She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.In the end, Charity received what her nature had in store for her. It all happened as it ought. The reading was not easy, but the story was perfectly rendered.

[janeajones · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As Labor Day approaches, it thought it appropriate to finish the season with a reread of Summer. Years ago, I thought it was a really atypical Wharton, chiefly because of the setting in rural New England and the protagonist who doesn't belong to wildly privileged class that Wharton emerged from. Those observations remain (though Ethan Frome falls into a similar category), but what struck me this time through were a couple of things -- the nature descriptions and a very typical Wharton-theme of the protagonist getting stuck in a dead-end situation from which there is no real escape. Charity Royall is a much more sympathetic protagonist than many of Wharton's characters; she doesn't lust after material possessions -- just wider experience and love. Born on "The Mountain," she is brought down to the small town of North Dormer to be fostered, but not adopted, by lawyer Royall and his wife at the behest of a prisoner that Royall had sent to jail. She is a child of nature* at the end of her adolescence -- her first words in the novel are "I hate everything." When she encounters Lucius Harney, a young visiting architect, in the library where she works, her boredom and lassitude dissolve.Summer must have been a startling novel in 1918. It's steeped in sensuality, much as Kate Chopin's The Awakening is, but this is an adolescent female rite of passage. The consequences of Charity's sexual awakening are predictable, but the conclusion of the novel is intriguingly ambiguous. * "She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it."

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Started reading this after visiting Wharton's house in the Berkshires, where this particular story takes place. The plot and descriptions are as simple as the town in which it is set, but Wharton achieves quite a bit of psychological complexity as the novel moves along. Short (for a novel), but satisfying.

[jmaloney17 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why are women so stupid in this type of book? Erghhh... And it was even written by a woman. I did like the book, but the main character was still an idiot.The scenery is similar to Ethan Frome. It take place in a small town in the northeastern U.S. This time the main character is a woman, Charity Royall. She is miserable in the small town. She does not feel like she belongs. She meets a man that has come to town to sketch old homes in the area. She shows him about the area, and they fall for each other. But, he is out of her league intellectually. Bad things happen, etc.If you like Wharton's other books, you will like this one too. I have read four books by her. She wrote consistently good stories. Everything was well written. She had a good sense of atmosphere.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tame by today's standards, "Summer," Edith Wharton's most sexually explicit novel, probably shocked more than a few readers when it was first published almost 100 years ago. That it is also one of only two novels Wharton placed in a rural setting makes "Summer" even more unique among her novels. Charity Royall is bored with her little North Dormer community and only works as the town librarian so she can save enough money to escape the life she endures there. She cares little for books and is perfectly willing to allow them to self-destruct on the shelves while she daydreams about a more exciting existence. But, as it turns out, her fate will be forever linked to the little library. Lucius Harney, a young architect, has come to North Dormer to visit his aunt and to study and sketch some of the old homes in the area. When he wanders into the library one day in search of a book about the old houses, Charity is smitten with him and unknowingly sets the course that will alter the rest of her life. It is the start of a relationship that, even though it begins innocently, is best kept from the prying eyes of the town gossips. Charity knows that her guardian, Lawyer Royall, the man who did a better job of raising her before his wife died than after, would never approve the match - and that there are those in town who would relish the opportunity to tell him about it. Secrecy, though, requires privacy, and privacy often leads to a degree of intimacy that results in tragic consequences for the unwed. Only after Harney returns to his life in New York, does Charity realize that she is pregnant - and on her own. As Wharton makes clear, a woman of this period facing Charity's dilemma had few options: illegal abortion, being sent away to have the baby in secrecy, running away in shame, or perhaps the unlikely luck of finding a sympathetic man willing to marry her. Charity moves from desperation to despair when she realizes how limited her choices have become and that the life she was already unhappy with has been forever changed, and that change being for the worse. As she moves from one poor decision to the next, at times risking her very life, one is reminded of how greatly American mores and values have changed in the last five decades. "Summer," even though it was governed by the stricter limits of its time on language and theme, is a memorable portrayal of what it was like for a woman to be "in trouble" during the first half of the 20th century. That it still can have a strong impact on the reader today leaves one wondering why it was not more of a sensation when first published. Edith Wharton fans should not overlook this fine novel. Rated at: 4.0

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Audiobook............I should start by saying that I am a diehard Edith Wharton fan. I was not at all disappointed with this novella. As is common with Wharton, the main character, a young woman, is faced with some of the harsh realities of life. Charity experiences first love and disillusionment, followed by....now here is the question....followed by a good or not so good outcome....you judge for yourself!

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is romance gone wrong in the most realistic of ways. I couldn't help feeling, at the end, that though Charity ended up with someone who really loved her - still she lost something undefinable because she gave herself away to the first rush of strong emotion. Like many classic works, this one leaves a feeling of unsettledness.

[runaway84_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The most memorable characters in fiction are not perfect. It's the imperfections that get imprinted in your mind.Charity Royall is full of imperfections. In fact, she's a walking imperfection.All in all, it's a story of a young girl and a first love. It's nothing a million girls haven't or would not do.Another thing that gets imprinted in your mind is a story that ends with uncertainty. We're left without knowing how Charity truly felt. Everything happened so fast for her, that I don't know if she had come to grips with it yet, and before I knew it, the book had come to an end.This story is truly something to ponder.

[miyurose_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first thing that struck me when I finished this book was how times have changed. This was considered extremely provocative when it was published, yet Charity and Harney are only described kissing a few times, and are never described doing anything else. Charity strikes me as a very unhappy young woman, and even ungrateful. She lives with her much older (and yes, imperfect) guardian, and treats him with nothing but scorn throughout the entire story, even though he took her in and cared for her for almost her whole life without any obligation. He gets her the job she desires, and she treats it with scorn also, often abandoning it to lay in the fields for the afternoon. I can see that she is lost, but I found little reason to want her to have a happy ending. How Harney treats her is unfortunate, but she also looked at him with closed eyes. Harney fails to get his due, which I suppose is mostly a sign of the times — the man always gets away with it, and the woman is left to clean up the mess. The ending — Charity basically giving up on her dreams — may seem sad to most, but the way I see it, she had other choices and her own blindness and stubbornness led her to that ending.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't sure what to expect when I read this book - certainly not a romance type novel (kind of). I was expecting more like the "Age of Innocents", with New York Society People, instead, we get a book set in a very poor town in the state of New York. We have Charity Royall - a young woman who yearns for a better life, but due to her circumstances of being uneducated and poor - can't leave. She is the ward of the town lawyer, who Charity is either indifferent to, or outwardly hates. When a young man comes to town, an educated architect, he changes Charity's world. My biggest problem was the characters. There were not likable characters in this book. Charity is annoying - she works at a library, but doesn't try to learn, even thought she doesn't understand the world and knows she is ignorant. The architect is exactly what you would expect - kind, gentle, but will take advantage when given the opportunity. The lawyer, isn't really a good man (although he redeems himself at the end). The story is interesting and well written - but I couldn't get past the annoying characters.I suspect this is one of those books you either love, or hate.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The plot of Summer is a story that we are very familiar with. A young lower class girl in a small town falls in love with a visiting wealthy young man, and starts a sexual relationship with him under the assumption that he wants to marry her. But, when she gets pregnant, she realizes that he never intended to marry her. But Wharton tells this story with such unique characters (and a slight plot twist) that it makes this novella an enjoyable read as well as giving you something to ponder about human nature.

[elizabeth.b.bevins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not my favorite Edith Wharton but still...it's Edith Wharton! Can't go wrong.

[charrlygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charity Royall. I loved her, hated her, sympathized with her, and cried for her.

She's a young woman at age 19, bored with her life in a small New England town. Adopted by Lawyer Royall at a young age, she was saved from a life of poverty on the "mountain". One would think she would have been grateful, but not Charity. She hates Mr. Royall for what she sees as her imprisonment in small town drudgery, and also for his proposal of marriage.

Enter Lucius Harney, sophisticated man about town; a young architect visiting nearby. Suddenly, Charity's hopes of escaping North Dormer and her new found sexuality awaken.

Charity learns some ugly life lessons, some sooner rather than later. This novel must have been shocking in 1917 when it was released. A young woman with sexual needs and desires was not something openly discussed in those days, certainly not in small New England towns.

I have a fondness for Edith Wharton's work. She lived not too far from me, in a home she designed and had built herself. To me, she has always represented a fighter against the rules of society and their effect on women of the day. Unfortunately, the women in her stories often lose their fights. In this case, I choose to view the ending as a victory for Charity. She certainly made out better than poor Lily Bart.

Recommended for fans of classics and readers that enjoy social commentary disguised as an entertaining tale.