Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's "Summer" created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening. "Summer" is the story of proud and independent Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated young man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of woman's romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly ...
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Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's "Summer" created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening. "Summer" is the story of proud and independent Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated young man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of woman's romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly contemporary woman--in touch with her feelings and sexuality, yet kept from love and the larger world she craves by the overwhelming pressures of environment and heredity. Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," "Summer" was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written.
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I read this book for my bookclub and we had a great discussion about it. It really provoked a lot of different opinions about women's roles in society, both past and present. My one criticism is that the foreword of the volume I had laid out the entire plot, including the ending!! I was very disappointed when I realized it had spoiled the ending...but it did give me an interesting perspective as I read the book!
pamela1717
Apr 12, 2009
No more Wharton for me!
So every now and then I get this bug that I should improve myself, bag the comtemporary lit, and try some classics. And usually it goes like this: pick up the book, try to read it 2-3 times, and then abandon it to the giveaway/trade pile. Well, it's happened again. As I said before, I tried to read this three times and couldn't get past Chapter 2. I will say however, the writing is not flowery or verbose (which I appreciate) but it just wasn't for me. But if you're a classics person, there is no reason why you shouldn't give this one a try.
