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books, Edith Wharton, Fiction, libraries, literature, reading, summer, summer afternoon, The Mount
“A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.” This is the first line of Edith Wharton’s 1917 novel Summer, a line that suggests something new and interesting is about to happen to that girl who’s about to venture out into the world. She sees a young man, a stranger, whose straw hat is lifted by the wind and blown into the duck-pond, and it’s easy to guess her encounter with this young man will change her life.
She goes out into the world, but only as far as the town library where she works, and where she’ll meet the handsome stranger when he enters to look for books on the history of houses in the area. This library is not the gateway to knowledge about architecture or anything else, however, but a “prison-house,” a “vault-like room” with “rows of rusty bindings” and “tall cobwebby bindings” – and no card catalogue.
The library in North Dormer is in disrepair, but even so, it reminds me of the grand library in Undine Spragg’s hôtel in Paris at the end of The Custom of the Country, in which the bookcases are all locked because “the books were too valuable to be taken down.” I wrote a blog post about that passage a couple of years ago because I was fascinated by Wharton’s vision of hell as a library in which no one is able to read or write.
When the girl in Summer, Charity Royall, thinks about the founder of the “queer little brick temple” called “The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library,” she wonders “if he felt any deader in his grave than she felt in his library.” Twice in the first few pages of the novel, Charity says to herself, “How I hate everything!” Yet she can’t help being interested in the stranger – and “The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, did not escape her attention.”
Summer and Ethan Frome, the two short novels Wharton set in western Massachusetts, were both more controversial than any of her other books (according to Candace Waid in Edith Wharton’s Letters from the Underworld). Known as “the hot Ethan,” Summer is the story of a passionate love affair and its consequences. Wharton, says Marilyn French in her introduction to the Scribner edition, “has written a novel that is a clamorous and ecstatic affirmation of the joy of sexual love no matter what it costs.” And, she adds, “It does cost.”
The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, MA, is hosting a marathon reading of Summer tomorrow, August 12th, and I wish I could be there. “Summer afternoon – summer afternoon.” As Wharton’s good friend Henry James said, “those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language” (quoted in Chapter 10 of Wharton’s autobiography A Backward Glance). Wouldn’t it be lovely to spend a summer afternoon reading Summer in the Berkshires?
Edith Wharton died on this date, August 11th, in 1937.
While “Summer” was far too grim for my (limited) taste, Wharton’s description of a summer breeze making it’s way thru town is one of the finest things I have ever read. Your comment about a library as a vision of hell reminds me of Margaret Hale’s letter comment in North and South 2004. I believe goes “I’ve seen hell and it’s white”.
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I think I could have guessed that you wouldn’t like Summer all that much! I’m glad you liked The Glimpses of the Moon, at least.
That’s a powerful line from the North and South adaptation. I looked it up just now and found this intriguing analysis of the image of the factory as hell — Olivia Rosane suggests the sentence added to the miniseries has “no place in the story Gaskell was actually telling. Because what fascinates Gaskell is the new emerging power of work—destructive, yes, but transformative also. The factory may be purgatory, but it isn’t Hell” (http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/editors-picks-north-and-south.php). It’s been a while since I read North and South, and when I reread it I’ll think more about what Rosane says here. Thanks for reminding me of the quotation.
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Ah, interesting about the comment only being in North and South 2004(lol, I’ve seen the 1975 adaptation and it’s ok. No dramatic images. Closer to the book perhaps but not nearly as enjoyment). Lol, when I reread North and South I found it far too grim for me. The 2004 Quote was on a photo posted on a period drama site over the weekend. I love the scenes between Higgins and Thornton in the 2004 adaptation. I prefer reading Wives and Daughters to North and South as I feel it is close to Austen and less “troubling”. Too sad that Gaskell passed before she finished it….and she was living(part of the time) very close to Chawton I believe.
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Lovely post, Sarah. Summer is a small gem. It is interesting to read it not only with Ethan Frome but also with Lewis’s Main Street.
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Thanks, Marsha. I’m delighted to hear that you enjoyed the post. Great idea to compare Summer and Main Street, too — thanks for the suggestion.
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Sarah, another compare/contrast candidate is Chopin’s The Awakening. EW provides a pragmatic, New England resolution for the consequences of her heroine’s summer of love, while Chopin adopts a French, Mme Bovary vision. For me, Summer is life-affirming, even though the heroine must “settle.”
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Very nice post. I found Summer a lovely read … but brutal. I think it hit me harder than other EWs b/c it was a bit of a bait-and-switch: Summer as title and lyrical writing. I can totally see why it is called the “hot Ethan,” as I’ve always thought of it as the seasonal inverse of Ethan Frome … also a toughie but with that dismal (almost gothic) setting … I was expecting the worst! 😉
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That’s a good way of describing it, Sarah — lovely and brutal at the same time. Thanks. Whoever chose the cover for the Scribner edition of Summer obviously decided to emphasize the “lovely” part. (I suppose I made that choice, too, in suggesting it would be lovely to spend a summer afternoon reading Summer.)
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What a great time that would be — reading Summer — at The Mount!
Charity Royall is one of my favorite heroines.
Yes, the end of The Custom of the Country (not being able to read the books on the shelves) did remind me of Charity’s library.
It also made me think of Lily Bart.
Remember when she’s in Selden’s apartment looking over all his books? But she’s only interested in seeing whether he has a book about Americana art (since she’s set her sights on that chubby wealthy guy…I forget his name)?
She ignores all the other books in his bookcase.
Anyway, thanks for posting this.
Charity Royall doesn’t get half the attention she deserves 🙂
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Great comparison with The House of Mirth, Mary — thanks. I hadn’t thought of that connection. The Gryce Americana. How awful: “It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read!”
Maybe Charity Royall will get her share of attention in 2017, when Summer is 100. I make no promises about hosting a year-long party for her, but it would be lovely if someone else did….
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Reading Ethan Frome was quite intense for me…will proceed with due caution with Summer. :o) This was a fascinating post though, with an interesting follow up in the comments, as well. The library of The Custom of the Country (all locked up, hands off and impenetrable), reminds me of something entirely different, however…I am a book collector, and once received as a gift something that this delightful person apparently thought I would enjoy: a ‘repurposed’ book, an old book that had had the pages glued together, then it was spray painted a sort of dusky lavender, and tied up with ribbon and a pink silk flower arrangement on top. I think it was meant to go on a shelf–like a bookshelf. :o) Eventually (after waiting a respectable amount of time because I love this person) I had to tear it apart and unglue the pages. I couldn’t stand having a book around that I couldn’t open, or couldn’t read. It was a very powerful emotion, compulsion even, and the strength of it actually surprised me. Books are meant to be opened. Even if considered obsolete. An old bank ledger from 1911 (which is what it turned out to be) could contain something riveting!
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So awful! I once received a “book” like that as a gift, too. Same silk flowers and ribbon, but the spray paint was burgundy. I didn’t try to open the pages, and I didn’t keep it long. But I know what you mean about wanting to see what was on the pages.
Good idea to proceed with caution when reading Summer, as it is similarly intense.
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