Summer

Summer is a romantic novel written by Edith Wharton in 1917.

This Wharton novel introduces us to Charity Royall, a naive 19-year-old girl who meets the ambitious and refined Lucius Harney during the summer and they live a romance.

However, this is a story of conflict. Charity feels inferior to Lucius because of her humble background and origins and her less educated surroundings. She is not a heroine, but just the opposite. She even turns against all those who have helped her for many years as she feels they have imprisoned her in that small town.

Charity's hopes of leaving her environment, coupled with her newfound sexuality, will cause her to rebel against her past and learn some life lessons.

The novel was groundbreaking and ahead of its time in depicting a young girl with sexual desires, which at the time was something that was not often talked about openly.

"It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England villages."