4: 'Ask him when he's going to marry you.'
When Mr Royall confronts Charity and Harney in their secret hideaway, the thorny question of marriage is finally raised. The next in Wharton's 1917 tale of forbidden love.
Edith Wharton's 1917 tale of forbidden passion and sexual awakening, read by Lydia Wilson.
Charity Royall is desperate to escape the dull, rural New England backwater where she works as a librarian - as well as her hard-drinking adoptive father. When a young city architect walks into the town, he seems to offer her hope for a new life. But will her past overshadow their relationship? And can their illicit affair ever bring her the freedom she craves?
Considered by some to be Wharton's finest work, Summer was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening, and darker themes of incest, and created a sensation on publication.
Today: when Mr Royall confronts Charity and Harney in their secret hideaway, the thorny question of marriage is finally raised...
Reader: Lydia Wilson
Writer: Edith Wharton was famous for her novels including The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1921.
Abridger: Julian Wilkinson
Producer: Justine Willett
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- Thu 3 Jul 2025 22:45蜜芽传媒 Radio 4