65 pages • 2 hours read
Edith WhartonSummer
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1917A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Mountain
Located fifteen miles from the outskirts of North Dormer, the Mountain symbolizes poverty, indolence, and debauchery. The mind-set attributed to its residents is completely antithetical to that of the prototypical industrious New Englander. The area fascinates Lucius Harney. Local residents tell him that the first colonists of the Mountain were railway workers who “[…] took to drink, or got into trouble with the police” (33). The area has no school, church, or law enforcement presence; they merely send for the local minister when one of their number has died. Charity, who was born on the Mountain, adopted by Royall, and raised in North Dormer, has a love/hate relationship with the locale. On one hand, she is appalled by any association with the dissolute lifestyles the residents are rumored to lead and aims to behave in a manner appropriate to a young, middle-class girl who was raised in town. Conversely, she is instinctively drawn back to the area and attempts to find her mother in order to ask for assistance after realizing that she is pregnant.
The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library
Honorius Hatchard, for whom the library where Charity works is named, enjoyed brief celebrity as an author in the early 1800s. His great-niece, Miss Hatchard, resides in North Dormer and considers herself to be the library’s custodian. She agrees to hire Charity to work two afternoons a week, although local residents never visit the building or study any of the book collection. The library is the site where Lucius Harney and Charity first meet. When he asks about the location of the card-catalogue, her reply makes it clear that she has never heard of such an item. With regard to the book collection, she tells him, “‘The worms are getting at them’” (7). Harney, an architect by training, notes that the moldy conditions in the building might be alleviated by the installation of a ventilation system and arranges to have this done. The sense of decrepitude in the library, a place associated with learning and intellect, seems to mirror the societal attitudes of North Dormer. The spirt of the town has stagnated and, like the library, needs a breath of fresh air.
The Blue Brooch
Charity enjoys a glorious day with Harney in the nearby city of Nettleton prior to meeting up with an inebriated Lawyer Royall. As the couple explores the area, they visit a jewelry store in order to have Harney’s watch repaired. He observes Charity looking at a case of brooches. When he asks her favorite, she points to a modest lily of the valley pin; however, he suggests a lovely blue brooch “[…] with little sparks of light all around it” (69). After they depart, he excuses himself and returns to the shop and purchases the blue brooch as a gift for Charity. The brooch fills her with joy at the time. Subsequent to Harney’s departure, Charity realizes that she is pregnant. She visits Dr. Merkle in order to consider an abortion but changes her mind and tries to leave. The unscrupulous woman demands a payment of five dollars. When Charity cannot produce the fee, Merkle takes the brooch as collateral while awaiting payment. After Charity marries Royall, she returns to retrieve the jewelry; however, the doctor demands ten dollars in payment prior to relinquishing the piece. The young woman pays the ransom in order to keep a tangible, physical reminder of the joyful aspects of her love affair with Lucius Harney.
The White Satin Shoes
Charity spends all her money on a white satin dress to wear to the Old Home dance in order to impress Harney. She observes the dress spread out on her bed with a white veil, which all the young women wear for the celebration exercises, and she is reminded of the wedding dress and veil worn by another young woman in town. Ally Hawes, the young seamstress who made the dress, gives Charity a pair of white satin shoes from an old trunk. Inspecting them carefully, Charity realizes that the slippers are familiar. They were once worn by her nemesis, and her competitor for Harney’s affections, Annabelle Balch. A member of Harney’s social class, Annabelle is the young woman he will marry. The shoes are secondhand and cast off by a member of a higher social class; this reflects the way Charity will perceive herself upon being deserted by her lover.
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By Edith Wharton
