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Product Description
From Library Journal
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.
Book Description
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Affair with Life,
By A Customer
This review is from: Summer (Mass Market Paperback)
Concise, well-developed, and almost painfully beautifully written, "Summer" chronicles a country girl's affair with a cultured city sophisticate. At first closed off and silently rebellious against her lot, Wharton eloquently follows Charity's emotional, intellectual, and sexual awakening in a time and place when such personal and intimate exploration was unknown.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A butterfly on the wheel,
By
This review is from: Summer (Mass Market Paperback)
Like _House of Mirth, Edith Wharton's 1917 short novel _Summer _ shows a relatively aware young woman being ground up by social convention. Wharton is so linked with Henry James that no one seems to have noticed the extent to which she was a late naturalist, chronicled inexorable destruction. An argument could be made that Charity is rescued from her hereditary fate up in the mountains (the Berkshires) and that the prime upholder of convention takes pity on her plight, but _Summer_ is close to _Ethan Frome_ in more than a New England location. More pragmatic than some of those confronted with destruction in other Wharton works, Charity makes the best of her very limited options, but happiness is more fleeting than a New England summer is.The lack of female solidarity in _Summer_ is especially striking. Lily Bart had one devoted female friend. Charity has none, and the professional woman she turns to is far and away the most vicious character in the book. Most of the book is about the blooming of a love crossing social boundaries that I find tedious. Others, including, I think Wharton herself, enjoyed chronicling Charity's first experience of love with an out-of-towner whose life and commitments are elsewhere, but for me it is the portrait of small-town busybodies and the eventual narrow corner into which Charity paints herself (with the help of social hypocrisy and her lack of education or any marketable skills ) that are interesting. Susan Minot's introduction is helpful in placing the book within the course of Edith Wharton's life. A particularly important continuity across Wharton's work Minot observes is that "Wharton's heroines are not hapless victims; they understand their helplessness." I am not convinced that this enables them to keep their dignity, but the awareness of their plight and the unreasonability of social judgments heightens the tragedies (in contrast to Stephen Crane's _Maggie_ to take one example).
5.0 out of 5 stars
Summer stands alone,
By
This review is from: Summer (Paperback)
Summer and Ethan Frome are often referred to as companion novels. The only thing these two novels have in common is location and doomed romance. While doomed romance seems to be a major theme in much of Wharton's work, this book pushes the envelope by dealing not only with sex (The House of Mirth also implies some sexuality), but also abortion. I found this novel more engaging than Ethan Frome, perhaps because the central character is a young woman, flawed and realistic, who is able to deal with the consequences of her failed romance (however horrid they may be) rather than a brooding man who seems to think if he can't be in the relationship he wants, leaving his shrewish wife for a sweet young woman, he would rather not live. By the end, I was hoping for a happy ending for Charity.
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