Edith Wharton’s Summer: Charity Royall’s Initiation and Dynamics of Spaces
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This essay aims to explore how the spaces in Edith Wharton’s Summer are symbolically related to Charity Royall’s searching for her identity and thereby examines the process of Charity’s initiation and dynamics of spaces. Charity begins her journey from North Dormer and the Mountain, goes through the nightmarish Nettleton, a dreamlike deserted house, and returns to North Dormer. Wharton positions Charity’s growth in relation to her journey into different spaces, which demonstrates the author’s conceptualization of geographical importance in the heroine’s initiation. It could be said that North Dormer represents order and peace as well as constraint, while the Mountain symbolizes the natural power and emotion. Nonetheless, Wharton deconstructs the dichotomy between them in her portrayal of two spaces. In Nettleton and the little abandoned house, she understands human passion and nature, witnessing Harney and Mr. Royall’s hidden aspects. Especially to have the full knowledge about human nature and to find her identity, Charity experiences “a conventional situation of seduction”: “seduced and abandoned, but married to another man.” This vicissitudes of spaces illuminates how Wharton manipulates the geographical changes to depict her heroine’s emotion and initiation. In this sense, Charity’s marriage with Mr. Royall after her search for identity seems to be positive. As North Dormer accepts the presence of its multiple aspects, Charity understands and accepts the multiple layers in human nature and social and cultural order. As a result, she returns to North Dormer for good, accepting herself as she is.
Abstract
This essay aims to explore how the spaces in Edith Wharton’s Summer are symbolically related to Charity Royall’s searching for her identity and thereby examines the process of Charity’s initiation and dynamics of spaces. Charity begins her journey from North Dormer and the Mountain, goes through the nightmarish Nettleton, a dreamlike deserted house, and returns to North Dormer. Wharton positions Charity’s growth in relation to her journey into different spaces, which demonstrates the author’s conceptualization of geographical importance in the heroine’s initiation. It could be said that North Dormer represents order and peace as well as constraint, while the Mountain symbolizes the natural power and emotion. Nonetheless, Wharton deconstructs the dichotomy between them in her portrayal of two spaces. In Nettleton and the little abandoned house, she understands human passion and nature, witnessing Harney and Mr. Royall’s hidden aspects. Especially to have the full knowledge about human nature and to find her identity, Charity experiences “a conventional situation of seduction”: “seduced and abandoned, but married to another man.” This vicissitudes of spaces illuminates how Wharton manipulates the geographical changes to depict her heroine’s emotion and initiation. In this sense, Charity’s marriage with Mr. Royall after her search for identity seems to be positive. As North Dormer accepts the presence of its multiple aspects, Charity understands and accepts the multiple layers in human nature and social and cultural order. As a result, she returns to North Dormer for good, accepting herself as she is.
참고문헌 (12)
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