The Law of Sex and Death: Religious Language and Practice in Edith Wharton's Summer

Abstract

Edith Wharton's novella Summer is many things: a coming-of-age story, a story about social class, a story of young love and abandonment, and finally, a story about sex. Its young heroine, Charity Royall, was, as a child, rescued by her guardian from the desperately poor mountain community into which she was born. She repels the sexual advances of her foster father, but falls in love with a young man of higher social class who abandons her because he is already engaged to someone else. Finally, in order to provide a home for her unborn child, she must marry her foster father who again rescues her, this time through a marriage that borders on the incestuous. Issues of social class and gender have been richly explored in previous studies of the text. Yet the role of religion in Summer has been little explored, surprisingly perhaps, because religious language subtly permeates the entire text, and religious rituals play an important role in the development of both plot and theme. Of course, there is much language that could be described as spiritual rather than religious. Carol J. Singley effectively analyzes this aspect of the novella when she discusses Summer in terms of Walt Whitman's transcendentalism, observing how that transcendentalism connects spirituality and sexuality. Rhonda Skillern, on the other hand, specifically examines the role of Christian rituals in the text, arguing that they deny the body, and thus, subordinate women. Both readings highlight important elements of the text. In Summer, Wharton does treat nature and sexuality as keys to a transcendent spiritual experience, thus highlighting the sacred potentials within the physical world, and she does depict Christian rituals suppressing women and the poor. But Wharton's transcendentalism does not preclude an interest in Christianity, nor do her references to Christianity simply assert its destructiveness. As this article will argue, Wharton's treatment of spirituality in Summer is complex, and her references to Christianity are ironic and double-edged. In this novella, Wharton portrays a Christian community whose practices effectively exclude the body, causing the townspeople to engage in the self-righteous scapegoating of young women and poor people, whose bodies insistently call attention to themselves, through their capacity for unplanned pregnancy or through their physical suffering and deprivation. But this critique is balanced by the highlighting of religious language and rituals that contain the potential for a more compassionate response to the body with its pressing needs and desires. Wharton's novella judges the narrow religious practice of the people of North Dormer, Massachusetts, by setting it over against a religious language which is broader--more compassionate and more sensitive to the value of the material world. While a close reading of the text's religious references provides the strongest evidence for this argument, it is important to recognize that such a reading is compatible with what we know about Wharton's own lifelong spiritual quest and her ambivalent relationship with Christianity. In her autobiography A Backward Glance, Wharton expresses her reverence for an ordered ritual such as that of the Episcopal Church in which she grew up, and her appreciation for that church's Book of Common Prayer (783). She also discusses her delight in the Old Testament writings, particularly the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, and the book of Esther. Indeed, she knew both Testaments well, and, as a teenager, immersed herself in the American preaching tradition, sermons being among her favorite reading materials. Wharton also admires people whose religious faith includes a sense of concern for others. The funeral scene in Summer derives from the experience of a clerical friend who performed a funeral service in just such a setting in rural Massachusetts. Wharton clearly esteems this friend, who saw the trip up the mountain as his duty and who allowed himself to be hurt by what he saw, more than the fashionable cleric who prudently refused to go to this impoverished community (Backward 1002-03). …