I have been a huge fan of Edith Wharton since reading her well-known novel, House of Mirth, last year. This summer I read two of her shorter novellas dealing with the same sentiments through two different lenses. I read Ethan Frome with r/bookclub back in July and finished reading Summer this August with a few friends. I would like to discuss these two works with you!
Unlike the setting of House of Mirth, the novellas open in two rural New England communities and explore two different scenarios of tragic, and perhaps hopeless, love. To get a sense of timing, House of Mirth was written in 1905. Ethan Frome, considered by many to be one of her shorter masterpieces, in 1911, and Summer in 1917. In a few short years later, she would write The Age of Innocence, which would win her the 1920 Pulitzer Prize.
What these two stories have in common is a sense of place, a building up of descriptions of nature and weather, to create two different settings and perhaps also two seasons of love. Both have a stifling social atmosphere, where the local community is suspicious, judgmental and omnipresent, if only in the point of view of our two main characters. Ethan Frome, in the same titled book, feels hemmed in by both the farm he inherits, and the economic environment that makes any changes almost impossible. The local community is held at a distance but always in the background of his disappointment.
Charity Royall, in Summer, is equally challenged by the sense of a place that has nothing to offer her in her awakening as a young woman and a guardian that sits an uncomfortable intersection between support and overreach, especially as she has grown up. Her job at the moldering library cannot keep her interest while the green and sweet places bloom outside her window.
Summer unfolds in both of these places and brings, like a soft breeze with a hint of flowers blooming, a new character into the story that slowly turns the hearts of both Ethan and Charity for a brief moment of happiness and encourages dreams of a different ending that, as sure as the season will not stay warm, will not come to pass.
Even in summer, the elm and the mountain sit symbolically in the background. And soon enough, the wind turns and both Ethan and Charity are faced with a cold truth that cannot be wished away. The brisk winter wind turns its fury into outcomes both have to endure. Change is almost impossible and so distant to be seen only in dreams. And after finishing both of these books, I have sat with their fates and wondered if that brief season of sweetness was worthy recompense for what follows.
Is it better to have felt love for a moment than never experienced it, even if the experience took more from you than what it gave?
If you want a short but searingly memorable read, I recommend Ethan Frome this winter and Summer in 2026 by the Edith Wharton calendar of drama.
Have you read these novellas? What did you think?
by lazylittlelady