6 h 33 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What can a young woman choose when love opens her world, but poverty keeps its doors shut?
In Edith Wharton’s Summer, eighteen-year-old Charity Royall works in the library of North Dormer, a poor village in the hills of western New England. Proud, bored and hungry for life, she longs to escape. Then Lucius Harney, a young architect from the city, arrives to sketch the district’s old houses.
Drives with Harney become the brightest part of Charity’s days. They meet in fields, on hillsides and in empty houses, while Lawyer Royall, the guardian she distrusts, watches. As love grows, so does a harder question: how can Charity direct her own life with almost no money, no family and no training?
What you’ll discover
- A restless young woman Stay close to Charity’s thoughts as pride and longing sharpen her hunger for a wider life.
- Love beyond the village Follow secret meetings in fields and empty houses, where Harney offers the promise of something beyond North Dormer.
- A complicated guardian Meet Lawyer Royall, whose hard manner and tangled feelings resist the easy shape of a villain.
- Freedom with narrow limits Explore how poverty, class and village pressure constrain a young woman’s power to choose.
- Heat, hills and longing Enter a landscape of long warm days, rendered in Wharton’s spare, concrete language.
Is it for you?
This book suits readers who like short, closely observed novels about love, class and the pressure of small places. It is also a good way into Wharton. Readers who want a cheerful romance or a fast plot may find it too stern.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Charity is restless in a dying village
- A young architect brings the wider world
- Love grows in the long warm days
- Mr. Royall stands in the way
- The story asks what a girl may choose
- Wharton tells it through seasons and land
Who’s who
- Charity RoyallA proud, restless young woman who works in the village library and longs to escape North Dormer and her uncertain past.
- Lucius HarneyA charming young architect from the city who comes to sketch old houses and wins Charity's heart over one summer.
- Lawyer RoyallCharity's guardian, a lawyer and widower with a hard manner, a drinking habit and feelings he cannot handle well.
- Miss HatchardAn elderly, proper lady of the village, an influential local figure and patron of the library, who keeps a close eye on its young librarian.
- Ally HawesCharity's gentle and sensible friend, who is plain, kind and shows a quieter way of living in the village.
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Language: English
“No article on Mrs. Wharton would be complete unless mention was made of her passion for gardening and her art in developing beautiful gardens, both at her home in Hyères and at St. Brice, near Paris.”
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
Charity is restless in a dying village
The story opens on a June day in North Dormer. Charity Royall steps out of the house of Lawyer Royall, the man who raised her, and looks over a village that seems to have stopped. The houses are shabby, the young people have left, and nothing happens. Charity works part time in the library, which belongs to the old Hatchard family and is rarely visited.
She is bright, but she has little schooling and few ways to use her mind. Her bitterness has a source. As a small child she was brought down from the Mountain, a rough settlement above the village where poor and lawless people live. Lawyer Royall and his late wife took her in and gave her a home and a name. Charity feels this as a debt she never agreed to, and she is ashamed of where she came from.
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The author
Edith Wharton
1862–1937 · American novelist
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American writer and designer born in New York City. She later lived in France, where she died. Her books include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920). She co-wrote The Decoration of Houses with Ogden Codman Jr. in 1897.
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What is Summer by Edith Wharton about?
It tells of Charity Royall, a young woman in a poor New England village, and her love affair with a visiting architect over one summer. It looks at desire, class, shame and the limits placed on women.
Why did Edith Wharton call Summer the hot Ethan Frome?
She saw it as a companion to Ethan Frome. Both are set in the bleak hill country of New England, but Summer is warm and sensual where Ethan Frome is cold and snowbound.
Who is Lawyer Royall in Summer?
He is Charity's guardian, a lawyer and widower in North Dormer who brought her down from the Mountain as a child. He is stern, troubled and more complicated than he first looks.
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