On this official last day of winter, with balmier seasons ahead, I thought it appropriate to revisit Wharton’s oft-neglected novella to postulate something that may or may not have had an effect on her characters, plot, and ending: what would Summer have been like had Wharton set the story in winter, like her Ethan Frome??

The novella begins as thus:

“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 the 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. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall’s house and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery.”

It is easy to observe the contrast here. Wharton would have you believe that the setting is nothing but warm, pleasant, and bucolic, this put in stark relief against her Ethan Frome, which is an icy tale full of woe and misery. The reader is led towards a positive outlook, perhaps to think that all that is to follow will have a satisfying outcome, a stereotypical “happy ending.” After all, who doesn’t like the weather in June?? And how could any of Wharton’s characters be unhappy in such a dreamy place??

Put under a microscope, however, we are led to something quite different. As readers of Summer, we know that the ending is not ideal, and that her characters, at least her main character, Charity, do not end up particularly happy or satisfied. Charity, like Ethan, is looking for an escape, a chance to break free from her confines, because, to her, this summer landscape is stifling and restrictive. Our minds thereby travel to what the extreme of summer looks, and feels, like at its harshest. The heat and humidity is indeed stifling, and most people do not venture outdoors. The same is true for the winter, in which the drifts of snow and icy temperatures keep most people home bound. So, we can deduce that the extremes of each season leads certain characters, whether in fiction or in real life, to a sort of “cabin fever” effect, where the effects of atmosphere, temperature, and precipitation are prone to driving people to their limits.

And it is this propulsion to the limit that we see affect both Charity and Ethan. It does not matter the season. The extremes of each is what hurtles each character to their individual, but identical fates. Would Charity have indeed escaped North Dormer had Wharton set the story in the winter?? Would Charity have been more resourceful, or more inspired to break free had the winter had its grip on North Dormer?? And inversely, would Ethan have had better luck escaping Starkfield had Wharton set his story in the summer?? It behooves the reader to conclude that, no, it does not matter for Charity or Ethan whether it is summer or winter. We see the glimpses into their identical fates, which ultimately lead to their spiritual destruction. It is evident and foreshadowed in the passage quoted above, where the road ends, just as Charity and Ethan’s stories end, in a place of death, the cemetery.

Readers ultimately mourn for and empathize with Charity and Ethan. But it is at Wharton’s hand that we see their fates played out in the harshest ways. Wharton, in her time, had to bring her characters to such extremes to light attention to the plight of rural men and women of her era. For such people, there were few opportunities for escape or improvement. What we normally observe as the change of seasons in the most delightful of ways were mechanisms of torture for her characters. And perhaps once that warm summer sun pokes over the horizon, or the first snow of winter blows our direction, we’ll remember them more profoundly.

***Stay tuned for more posts!! This June, I will be attending the Edith Wharton Summit 2026 in Lenox, Massachusetts!! So, I look forward to having a plethora of material for future content. Enjoy, and Happy Spring!!