Summer by Edith Wharton

Summer by Edith Wharton

Publisher: Seahorse Publishing (2013)

153 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $0.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

Unhappy with her lot in life, Charity quickly becomes enchanted by the young stranger from the big city that is staying in her small village, her dreams of escape escalating to new heights, while she turns a blind eye to the realities of life.

My Thoughts:

Edith Wharton wrote this as a companion novel to Ethan Frome. The stories are similar, but this story is of a woman’s ruin, instead of a man’s. Charity Royall is not a very likable heroine, but she is realistically depicted. She is a spoiled, selfish, naive young woman with a huge chip on her shoulder, a sharp tongue, a contempt for anything or anyone that highlights her own vast ignorance, and an incorrect belief that none of the ills of the world can touch her. Her dislike for and inability to see the value of many types of knowledge, scholarly and otherwise, was a very unattractive trait. I don’t understand people who revel and delight in their own ignorance. Her relationship with Lucius Harney started out innocently enough but escalated into something close to an addiction, as if she were desperately clinging to her dreams of escape from her small village through her association with him. Though their sexual relationship is not described, it is implied, the result of which leads her “up the mountain” to face the sad reality of her past, and only then does she begin to feel some sort of appreciation for Mr. Royall’s role in her life. I really felt for Mr. Royall in this story. Charity is so mean to him, for so much of it, but despite his deficiencies, his stability and determination were like a beacon of comfort and I wish Charity could have seen it sooner. This story is definitely about a young person who believes herself invincible, having to learn the hard way.

Edition Notes:

This Seahorse edition is supposedly annotated according to its description, but it is not. It does contain a detailed author’s biography at the end, but other than that it is just the main text. That said, if you don’t mind missing out on the annotations, this is a very good ebook edition, very well organized for maneuverability within the text and pleasingly organized. A very decent reading copy for the price.

Quotes:

“The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larch woods surrounding it.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“—listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from understanding them.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“—sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in his grave than she did in his library.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became—the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“Today the sense of well-being was intensified by her joy at escaping from the library. She liked well enough to have a friend drop in and talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated to be bothered about books.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—unexpected demands came so rarely that they exasperated her like an injustice . . .” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had happened to him, and that he was trying to talk down the recollection.“ -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded him.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—his humbled pride was her surest protection.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 3

“Her heart was ravaged by life’s cruelest discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 3

“—in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the experience of cities probably gave.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 4

“But everybody knew that ‘going with a city fellow’ was a different and less straightforward affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous venture.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 5

“‘It’s queer, you know,’ he continued, ‘that just over there, on top of that hill, there should be a handful of people who don’t give a damn for anybody.’ The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and defiances—” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 5 

“They just herd together like the heathen.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 6

“Education and opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers could bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest, some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her back across the gulf.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 6

“—always full of scruples about her scruples.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 7

“But there’s one thing as old as the hills and as plain as daylight: if he’d wanted you the right way he’d have said so.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 8

“For all your sneers and your mockery you’ve always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 8

“It seemed to be enough for him to breathe her nearness like a flower’s—.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 9

“The Lake at last—a sheet of shining metal brooded over by drooping trees.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 10

“It was as if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiled to her.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 10

“—so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 11

“—in his absence a thousand doubts tormented her, but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 12

“—the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her own powerlessness to contend with them.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“She understood now the case of girls like herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but their all was not enough: it could not buy more than a few moments . . .” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“—the memories of her former journey, instead of flying before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in her blood like sleeping grain.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 15

“—wild gleams of sunlight were blowing across the fields.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 16

“—but his silent presence gave her, for the first time, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was there would be warmth, rest, silence—“-Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 18

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Publisher: Seahorse Publishing (2013)

98 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $0.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

A young engineer new to town, finds himself drawn to Ethan Frome and the sad story of his life that surrounds him, and by piecing bits together here and there he begins to flesh out the story that everyone seems reticent to speak of.

My Thoughts:

Ethan’s story is one of dashed hopes, squandered dreams and the heavy burden of duty and responsibility. Ethan was a strapping young man of promise, pulled from his passion for his studies to care for parents and take over the farm, which led to a marriage entered out of a sense of being beholden to the woman that nursed his mother, which kept him apart from the woman he loved and led them to drastic measures that ended badly for all involved. This is such a sad, depressing story, but I like the mysteriously quiet character at the center of it all and the way the narrator goes about finding out about him. Many of us, at one time or other have seen someone and wondered how they came to be what they are, but few of us have had the time or inclination to find out. I’m usually not one for infidelity, but I think this story questions where that line is drawn, and what forms of happiness can be granted between two people restricted by society and duty.

Edition Notes:

This Seahorse edition is supposedly annotated according to its description, but I could find no evidence of it. It does contain an author’s biography at the end, but other than that it is just the main text. That said, if you don’t mind missing out on the annotations, this is a very good ebook edition, very well organized for maneuverability within the text and pleasingly organized. A decent reading copy for the price.

Quotes:

“Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Most of the smart ones get away—Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father—then his mother—then his wife.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface—I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He was not the kind of man to be turned from his business by any commotion of the elements—“ -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—a flash of watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 2

“It was formed of Zeena’s obstinate silence, of Mattie’s sudden look of warning, of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would be rain.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 3

“It seemed to him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 4 

“But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had not even touched her hand.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“She had taken everything else from him; and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for all the others.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 7

“—and gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body . . .” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 7

“Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 8

“—it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 9

Movie Adaptations:

Ethan Frome (1993)

Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen

Movie Rating: PG

My Rating: 4 Stars

Adaption: Verbatim-Tweaked-Veiled

Eye Candy: Plain-Pretty-Sultry

This adaption follows the book fairly closely, with a few exceptions; it replaces the engineer narrator with a minister and takes Ethan and Mattie’s relationship beyond the kissing that it had been limited to in the book. I think overall, it still does a good job at maintaining the spirit of the book, but I was a bit disappointed that it took the mostly innocent relationship between Ethan and Mattie and made it somewhat torrid. There were a few invented scenes and dialogue, but it was mainly in keeping with what had been in the book.