Summer

“It wasn’t the temptations of Starkfield that had been Mr. Royall’s undoing; it was the thought of losing her.”

Lawyer Royall’s wife dies when Charity is still a girl, and Miss Hatchard recommends that the child be sent away to Starkfield, a boarding school. Mr. Royall returns from his visit to the school in terrible humor and advises Charity that she will not be enrolled in the school. She intuits that her unofficial adoptive father is not willing to experience the emotional isolation that would be caused by her departure from his house. The young woman is ambivalent in her reaction. On one hand, she is desperate to escape from the incestuous boundaries of North Dormer; conversely, she seems to pity Lawyer Royall’s emotional dependence upon her. 

“She knew that she had been christened Charity (in the white church at the other end of the village) to commemorate Mrs. Royall’s disinterestedness in ‘bringing her down’ and to keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence […].”

While the young protagonist is the theoretical beneficiary of the Royalls’ largesse, Charity’s recollection of the deceased Mrs. Royall is not a pleasant one. From the outset, Charity appears to have sensed that the idea of her “adoption” had been foisted upon the older woman, who was apparently unable to prevent the idea from coming to fruition. The choice of her name is ironic, given that the adoptive child does not appear to have experienced a sense of nurturance within the home. It seems that this very public act of benevolence may have been superficial in nature, and Charity has always functioned as an extremely independent emotional entity. 

“Nothing now would ever shake her rule in the red house.” 

Lawyer Royall is filled with regret and self-loathing after having made a pathetic sexual overture toward Charity, to which she responded with contempt. Subsequently, he acquiesces to each of her demands: He exerts considerable influence in order to secure the part-time library custodian job for Charity, and he engages a local widow to live in the house and perform domestic chores. While Royall’s rejection is never discussed again, its occurrence provides Charity with a tacit sense of power and control over the man and his household. 

“All I wanted was to put aside money enough to get away from here sometime.” 

Charity’s lifelong desire to escape from life in North Dormer is alluded to frequently throughout the book. Torn between reluctant appreciation toward the Royalls for having brought her away from impoverished circumstances on “The Mountain” to be raised in their home and her own desire to escape her insular New England town, Charity is obsessed with financing her escape from her present circumstances. Her only motivation for keeping her job at the library is the desire to save enough money to leave her home. 

“‘You’re from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that’s why you’re so different […].’” 

Lucius Harney is physically attracted to Charity. He is also smitten with the fact that she is unlike young women from wealthy families with whom he has usually socialized. While her relative lack of education and superficial affect are initially attractive to him, Harney is unable to overcome societal constraints when he ultimately chooses a wife.

“‘Mr. Harney, Mr. Harney? Ain’t Mr. Harney learned how to drive a horse yet?’” 

Charity is increasingly delighted by the opportunity to drive the handsome young architect, Lucius Harney, on a tour of old houses in Royall’s horse and buggy. While Royall is initially pleased to have the young man’s well-educated company, he is disconcerted when his young ward is so obviously attracted to him. Charity recognizes a tone of derision in Royall’s comment regarding Harney and is apprehensive that he will find a way to thwart the budding relationship. 

“She saw that he had suddenly begun to hate Lucius Harney, and guessed herself to be the cause of this change of feeling.”

Although Lawyer Royall has only attempted to approach Charity in a sexual fashion on one occasion when he was inebriated, she is well aware of his attraction to her. This has served as a double-edged sword for the young woman. On the one hand, she has attained a degree of power and control over the running of the household; for example, when she insists upon the presence of another woman in the home, Royall hires a live-in housekeeper. Conversely, she must now contend with the fact that the older man is jealous of the attentions showered upon her by Lucius Harney. She worries that Royall will find a way to stymie her budding relationship with the young man. 

“I don’t say that you won’t be sorry afterward—but, by God, I’ll give you the chance to be, if you say so.”

While Lawyer Royall is initially depicted a blowhard, it becomes increasingly clear that he truly loves Charity and is desirous of the best possible outcome for her life. When he learns that her reputation has been compromised in the town because of the length of time that she had spent spying on Harney the preceding evening, he immediately offers to marry her in order to save her social standing. Despite the girl’s cruel refusal, he then suggests that he can pressure Harney into marrying Charity if that is her true desire; nonetheless, he characterizes the young man as “soft” and doubts whether the union would be a happy one. 

“Through all the heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.”

Lucius Harney provides Charity with a gloriously happy day when they visit the nearest city, Nettleton, and travel by train. The pair attend a movie, at Charity’s request, and then eat at an outdoor French restaurant. They see a fireworks display and go rowing on a nearby lake; the young man purchases a brooch that Charity admires in a jewelry store window. Wharton uses the device of foreshadowing as the description of the day comes to an end. As the pair journey toward the lake, Charity observes a shingle outside a house that advertises the services of a “Dr. Merkle; Private Consultations at all hours” (72). She realizes that this is the abortionist visited by the social outcast, Julia Hawes, accompanied by her sister, Ally. Julia almost died as a result of this procedure.  

“She divined that Ally was coming to hear about her day: no one else was in the secret of the trip to Nettleton, and it had flattered Ally profoundly to be allowed to know it.”

Ally is the sister of Julia Hawes, the disgraced young woman who made loud, unkind comments regarding Charity and Royall when they happened upon one another on the wharf in Nettleton. Ally, who suffers from a limp, has always been kind to Charity; however, she comes to symbolize the potential gossip that will circulate the neighborhood when the story of Royall’s drunken tirade against Charity becomes known. Ally was proud that she was the only individual in whom Charity had confided the details of her day trip; nonetheless, Charity’s sense of potential victimization returns when she imagines the conversations that will occur about the event. 

“‘Now, Charity, you’re coming back with me.’”

When he becomes aware that Charity has absconded from the Royall household after her humiliation on the Fourth of July, Lucius Harney sets off by bicycle to find her. She is heading to an abandoned house about halfway to the top of the Mountain to spend the night prior to returning to the area of her birth. Harney instructs her, in a paternal fashion, that she is to forego all fantasies of living on the Mountain. As part of her response, Charity advises Harney that Royall once made sexual advances toward her; Harney is horrified by this admission. 

“Of this she had declared herself sure; though she had failed to add, in his exoneration, that he had twice offered to make her his wife.”

While Charity lacks extensive formal education, she is skilled in the art of manipulation. When Harney retrieves her as she attempts to return to the Mountain, she tearfully advises him of the advances that Royall made toward her one evening when he had been drinking. Although she refrains from fabricating any further wrongdoings on Royall’s part, she refrains from advising Harney that Royall proposed marriage to her on two occasions. The omission of this fact allows the young man’s ire to be raised toward Royall. It is implied that the older man would be too frightened of any intimation of improper behavior on his part to ever approach Charity again. 

“She wondered if some day she would sit in that same place and watch in vain for her lover […].”

Charity experiences episodes of melancholia, particularly at twilight. Late one afternoon, as she awaits Harney’s arrival at the deserted house for their liaison, she imagines what it would be like if he were never to appear. Through this foreshadowing, readers become aware that the likelihood of a successful relationship between Harney and Charity is exceedingly remote. On some level, it appears that Charity is aware of this as well; nonetheless, she continues to meet the young man for their romantic afternoons. 

“She had forgotten even that peril, so enclosed did he and she seem in their secret world.”

When Harney is delayed meeting Charity at the abandoned house, she fantasizes that he will not come to meet her at all. Delighted at his arrival, she is chagrined when he teases her by asking if she wants him to promise not to dance with any other young women at the Old Home Week celebration. Entirely swept up in their love affair, and her infatuation with him, she is horrified by the realization that perhaps their relationship is less all-enveloping to him. 

“Today his inflections were richer and graver than she had ever known them: he spoke slowly, with pauses that seemed to invite his hearers to silent participation in his thought; and Charity perceived a light of response in their faces.”

Royall, trained as an attorney and a skilled orator, delivers a poignant address at the start of Old Home Week. He evokes an emotional response and enthusiastic round of applause from his audience. Charity, who has viewed him with increasing contempt since the evening of his drunken tirade against her in Nettleton, has the first glimmer of realization that he possess talents that have not been apparent to her in the past. His speech is sensitive and addresses the desire of young people to depart from small old towns; however, he cautions them to view their fate with philosophical optimism should they return and to do their best to improve upon their birthplace. 

“‘It’s because you hadn’t need to; nor any other man either.’”

Royall reveals a previously unknown detail of his own personal history during his harangue of Lucius Harney. He notes that Harney has refrained from proposing marriage to Charity because it is unnecessary, despite the fact that the two have had a sexual relationship. Further, Royall notes that, unlike himself, “no one will ever repeat his mistake” (108), an apparent allusion to having married out of duty rather than love. His speech to Harney constitutes an embittered reflection upon his own past as much as it does a recrimination of the young man. 

“They all know her mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, that followed one of those Mountain fellows up to his place and lived there with him like a heathen.”

Royall’s tirade against Harney in the abandoned house where the young lovers have been meeting reveals a wealth of information. Although Harney has behaved as though he is devoted to Charity, he behaves quite evasively when Royall mentions the possibility of marriage. Similarly, the information about Charity’s mother having been raised in Nettleton is new to the young woman. The comparison between her own situation with Harney and that of her biological mother is strong. 

“‘Oh, well—it’s too late to boil the water now.’”

The physical and emotional atmosphere of the abandoned house is irrevocably altered after Royall’s appearance and in the wake of the questions that rise in Charity’s mind as a result. The air feels chilled; the Mountain is without its usual halo of light. The picnic meal that Charity and Harney share is marred when Harney asks Charity why she hasn’t made the tea. When she explains that she forgot to do so, his usual string of affectionate endearments is traded for a weary-sounding domestic complaint. 

“I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to.”

After overcoming the shock of Ally Hawes’s announcement that Harney is engaged to Annabelle Balch, Charity decides to relieve Harney of any obligation to fulfill his promise to marry her. The primitive grammatical construction of her message further highlights the gap between the respective social classes of the former lovers. It is only after this letter has been posted that Charity visits the unscrupulous Dr. Merkle in order to investigate the termination of her pregnancy. Charity has a strong sense of self-preservation prior to her infatuation with Harney and is determined not to allow herself to become a woman degraded in the eyes of the community due to engaging in premarital sex. After falling in love with Harney, she becomes less cautious; nonetheless, on some level, she is always aware of the barriers to a successful marriage that would have existed with Harney.

“She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of no other way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state; and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia […].”

Dr. Merkle confirms Charity’s pregnancy and implies that the young woman will be less upset should she have an unplanned pregnancy in the future. All of Charity’s illusions regarding her romance with Harney have been shattered. She senses his emotional distance and the social distress that he would endure by marrying her. Physically and psychologically removed from the bucolic rural setting in which their love affair took place, she finds herself in a sordid environment with a woman she finds repugnant. Finally, Charity realizes that she will be perceived as having been flagrantly promiscuous rather than having fallen madly in love with one young man.

“Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, and she was glad it was so: she did not want to make things hard for him.”

Despite her intense dislike of Harney’s fiancée, Annabelle Balch, Charity arrives at a mature acceptance of her situation and writes Harney, essentially providing him with a graceful escape from his promise to return to North Dormer to marry her. The letter he writes in return, clearly the product of years of an elite education, is superficially gracious but conveys the impression of relief on his part. Charity does not hate Harney, despite his obvious disingenuousness regarding his relationship with Annabelle. She continues to cherish the memories of their time together, even as she watches the destruction of her own future. 

“‘I just want to go to her,’ she repeated.”

Charity, realizing that her continued stay in North Dormer as an unwed mother will result in her ostracization, resolves to return to the Mountain. Her reasoning is that her own current circumstances mirror those of her mother’s pregnancy and that no feeling woman could turn her own daughter away. Ironically, Liff Hyatt is brining Reverend Miles up to the Mountain in order to pray for Charity’s mother, Mary, who is dying. 

“‘You want to be took home and took care of.’” 

Upon learning that Charity has returned to the Mountain, Royall drives through a freezing cold night to find her and bring her back to North Dormer for the second time in her life. It is clear that he is aware of her pregnancy; however, he carries himself with the same poise and dignity that he exhibited when speaking to the audience at the Old Home Week celebration. Royall’s behavior in this situation is characterized by integrity and decency. He never forces Charity to feel that she should be grateful for his kindness but expresses gratitude that he is in a position to give her a sense of security.