Prior Claims and Sovereign Rights: the Sexual Contract in Edith Wharton's

PRIOR CLAIMS AND SOVEREIGN RIGHTS: THE SEXUAL CONTRACT IN EDITH WHARTON’S SUMMER ALICIA RENFROE This essay explores Edith Wharton’s critique of a right-based model of justice in her novella, Summer. Wharton employs legal discourse, particularly the language of contractual obligation and rights, to depict relationships among characters, to examine the ways in which characters define themselves, and to challenge contemporary accounts of justice. “People ain’t been fair to me—from the first they ain’t been fair to me” (Lawyer Royall in Edith Wharton’s Summer) At first glance, Edith Wharton’s work seems an unlikely space within which to explore the intersection of law and literature. Though many critics highlight Wharton’s work as a compelling source of social critique, few address Wharton’s attention to the law. Writing about The House of Mirth, Richard Moddelmogg contends that “the law serves as one of the discourses structuring Wharton’s novel.” 1 He focuses specifically on the ways in which contemporary legal debates about the right of privacy can inform our understanding of The House of Mirth as well as Wharton’s representation of female subjectivity; however, a close analysis of Summer reveals that Wharton’s understanding of the law is not limited to privacy issues. Indeed, Wharton often employs legal discourse, particularly the language of contractual obligation and rights, to depict relationships among characters, to examine the ways in which characters define themselves, and to challenge contemporary accounts of justice. Wharton critiques a rights-based model of justice in one of her most contro- versial novels, Summer (1917), in which Wharton describes the quasi-incestuous 1 Richard Moddelmogg. “Discovering Personality: Privacy and Subjectivity in The House of Mirth,” American Literature 70 (1998): 340. 194 Alicia Renfroe relationship between lawyer Royall (his occupation often acts as his first name), a leading citizen of the small town of North Dormer, and Charity Royall, who comes to live with lawyer Royall and his wife after he successfully prosecutes a criminal case in which the defendant is Charity’s father. Her father asks Royall to go to the mountain, a “colony of outlaws” (65), to get his child so that she could be “reared like a Christian” (73).2 Though Charity uses lawyer Royall’s last name, he never legally adopts her, and a few years after his wife’s death, Royall attempts to initiate a sexual relationship. When he returns to North Dormer after winning a case in a nearby town, he enters Charity’s bedroom, and, when she asks what he wants, he explains that he is “a lonesome man” (29). Charity refuses to let him in her room, and, though Royall subsequently proposes marriage, Charity uses the incident to bargain for a job as the town librarian and to convince Royall to allow a woman, the deaf Verena Marsh, to stay in the house with them. Later, Charity falls in love with an architect, Lucius Harney, who is visiting North Dormer, and eventually becomes pregnant with his child. Though she contemplates an abortion, Charity finally decides to marry lawyer Royall, at least partially because she learns of Harney’s engage- ment to another woman, Annabel Balch.3 Though Charity initially believes that “compared to her sovereign right Annabel Balch’s claim seemed no more than a girl’s sentimental fancy” (228), Charity changes her position after she receives 2 Edith Wharton, Summer (New York: Harper, 1979). All parenthetical references are to this text. 3 Wharton’s ending provoked substantial commentary from contemporary review- ers, and current literary critics continue to debate possible interpretations of Charity’s affair with Harney and marriage to Royall. Surprisingly, some critics view the marriage in a positive light. For instance, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, who connects the novel’s themes to Wharton’s problems with the men in her life, suggests that Summer “offers a sugges- tion for attainable happiness.” More specifically, Royall “does offer a finite but attainable form of fulfillment.” See Wolff’s A Feast of Words (New York: Oxford, 1977), 232, 243. Other critics, however, question the nature of whatever fulfillment the marriage may provide. John W. Crowley argues against contemporary reviews of Summer that viewed the novel’s plot as “‘a conventional romance of seduction and betrayal’” and extends his critique to literary critics who read Charity’s marriage in a positive light. Crowley suggests instead that Summer is a “radically feminist novel” and agrees with Lawrence Gilman’s assertion that Wharton “uses the hackneyed conventions of the romance of seduction and betrayal for her own ironic purposes.” For Crowley, positive readings of Charity’s marriage overlook “the enforced nature of Charity’s ‘participation’: her ‘salva- tion’by marriage incarcerates her in North Dormer, a society built on the sexual and eco- nomic hegemony of men over women” (87). See Crowley’s “The Unmastered Streak: Feminist Themes in Wharton’s Summer,” American Literary Realism 15.1 (1982): 86–7. Similarly, in Edith Wharton’s Argument with America, Elizabeth Ammons provides a scathing indictment of the marriage, arguing that “the final union between Charity and Royall is not merely depressing; it is sick.” See Ammons 133..

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