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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book for all seasons, September 8, 2004
Edith Wharton did the impossible with "Summer" and wrote a love story I actually cared about. Not because her protagonists are likeable, but because their character flaws render them believable and intriguing and fill the reader with sensational expectations; they are not just mannequins waiting to be posed within the frame of a formulaic plot. A novel published in 1917 that depicts an abortionist withholding a piece of jewelry from a woman until she pays her fee is obviously not something that was shaped by the cookie cutter.
Wharton sets the story in an isolated village called North Dormer, evidently in the Berkshires of western Massachussetts. The heroine, a young woman named Charity Royall, is bored with her life there as the sole librarian of the village's shoddy, neglected library when one day she meets Lucius Harney, an urbane young architect who has come to North Dormer to visit a relative and to sketch colonial houses. Their initial friendship blossoms into a romance which is threatened by two factors: Charity's guardian, the local lawyer Mr. Royall, a stingy, miserable man who drinks too much, desires to marry her; and Charity, an orphan raised by Mr. Royall and his deceased wife, is embarrassed by her heritage as a child born among the shunned, destitute farmers who live up on the "Mountain," as it is called.
Wharton, the model of what good American prose looked like in the early twentieth century, is more importantly a thematic innovator who seeks to reflect female identity, in this case personified by a rustic girl who attempts to break the constraints of her native element by pursuing an improbable romance with a man whose sophistication allows him to take advantage of her simplicity, only to turn to another man whose position allows him to take advantage of the situation in which the first man placed her. One detects an echo of Wharton's own unhappy marriage in the story, and indeed the decision Charity makes at the end seems to spring from desperate resignation, the defeated sense of being trapped, rather than from true love. For Wharton, the way out was through the power and elegance of the written word, but Charity, oblivious to the wonder of the books she has so long tended but ignored, has no such option.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"[The mountain] is where I was born...where I belong.", December 3, 2006
Written in 1917, Summer is Wharton's most explicitly sexual novel, tracing the awakening of Charity Royall to the sweetness of love and its power. Charity was born on "the mountain," a place of poverty and degradation, and given over to Lawyer Royall and his wife, residents of the town of North Dormer, to be brought up. When his wife dies, Lawyer Royall is hard pressed to deal with this child, choosing to ignore her most of the time, and bringing her up with little feeling of warmth of affection.
Anxious to have some independence so that she can escape, at some point, from the closed society of the village, Charity becomes the town librarian, a part-time job which gives her a small amount of her own money. There she encounters Lucius Harney, the nephew of one of the town's leading citizens, an architect studying some of the old houses in the area. His interest in Charity soon develops into affection and then passion, and the two become lovers, a relationship which quickly develops complications. Charity, with few options in life, is starved for affection and yearns to escape the village, while Harney, educated but personally weak, can already come and go as he pleases.
Wharton uses the seasons symbolically to illustrate the development of the relationship between Charity Royall and Lucius Harney from the earliest stirrings of their interest when they meet in early June to the full passion of their love in mid-August. Fall brings reality to Charity, and winter freezes her soul. Throughout the novel references are made to the mountain where Charity was born and to the ignorant people who live there without hope of improving their lives. Charity's own return to visit her family shows her the desperation of their lives, and her need to grasp whatever escape route is available to her.
Wharton's bold depiction of sexual themes makes this novel unusual for its period. She depicts a young woman who has a fierce desire for independence but who has few opportunities to escape her environment, a young woman who latches onto a relationship which broadens her world. She minces no words in showing scenes in which sexual abuse rears its ugly head, and she is realistic in the options she gives for "fallen" women like Charity to deal with the complications of their lives in the "fall" of the relationship. Though the beginning of the novel may seem sentimental or melodramatic, Wharton has a clear vision of the limited possibilities open to young women of the day, and her conclusion emphasizes this. n Mary Whipple
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Tale of First Love Won and Lost, August 27, 2001
Written when Wharton's own marriage was failing, this tale of first love won and lost is a bittersweet, moving novel which melds Wharton's two worlds beautifully - high society, and rural New England. Her personal favorite of all the novels she wrote, Edith Wharton captures the very essence of love and longing in this beautiful, sensual story of Charity Royall and Lucius Harney. Born to a poor mother, Mr. Royall rescues Charity and raises her as his own daughter, but when his wife dies of consumption, and Charity begins to ripen into a lovely woman, Mr. Royal realizes that his feelings for her are deeper than he imagined. Repulsed by his offer of marriage, Charity instead turns her attentions to the handsome young architect from Boston, Mr. Lucius Harney, who is visiting North Dormer for the summer. As summer unfurls in North Dormer like the Red Rambler rose in Charity's garden, Charity and Lucius' love blossoms, burns hot, and spills over into sexual union. Wharton's language of love is extraordinary - beautiful, sensual, and filled with all the fire of first love. I won't ruin the ending for you by revealing it, but it is poignant, achingly human, and ultimately fitting that Charity ends up where she does. Bittersweet and gorgeously written, this is a magical book not to be missed.
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