Degradation and forbidden love in Edith Wharton's 'Summer.'

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1995 by Kathy Grafton

Freud claims that the most prevalent way in which the male then copes with his divided feelings is to create two love objects - one to love, the other to desire. He then degrades the desired love object in some way in order that his desire for her become acceptable to himself:

The principal means of protection used by men against this complaint consists in lowering the sexual object in their own estimation, while reserving for the incestuous object and for those who represent it the overestimation normally felt for the sexual object. As soon as the sexual object fulfills the condition of being degraded, sensual feeling can have free play, considerable sexual capacity and a high degree of pleasure can be developed. (208)

Although Harney does not himself degrade Charity, she suffers degradation in his eyes due to Mr. Royall's outburst. Harney also does not understand why this outburst makes her suddenly seem more sexually accessible to him in comparison to Annabel Balch, his well-brought-up fiancee. Freud also addresses this problem:

The man almost always feels his sexual activity hampered by his respect for the woman and only develops full sexual potency when he finds himself in the presence of a lower type of sexual object; and this again is partly conditioned by the circumstance that his sexual aims include those of perverse sexual components which with his well-brought-up wife, for instance, he does not venture to do. (210)

In light of this assertion, we need to examine the backgrounds of both Charity and Annabel as they are described in the novel, in order more fully to comprehend Harney's view of each.

The contrast between the backgrounds of the two young women is brought to our attention very early in the novel, even before we learn anything of significance about Harney. Charity, we discover, is from "the Mountain." She has no real family to speak of, aside from her guardian Mr. Royall, and she is keenly aware that her origins are ambiguous, her place in society mean, especially in comparison to the position of someone like the formidable Miss Balch. Charity knows that the Mountain is "a bad place, and a shame to have come from" and she feels "ashamed of her old sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer, and jealously aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield, opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on glories greater than the glories of Nettleton" (6-7). Annabel, then, has undoubtedly been more privileged during her lifetime than Charity can even imagine.

For Harney, who comes from the same world of privilege as Annabel, the difference between the backgrounds and present social positions of the two women is more prevalent in his consciousness and more directive of his actions than he realizes. In applying Freud's ideas to this love triangle, we can see the way in which Harney's subconscious reasoning affects his decision to pursue a sexual relationship with Charity rather than with Annabel. For instance, I would posit that in choosing Charity, Harney, like Freud's exemplary male, exhibits his "need for a less exalted sexual object, a woman ethically inferior, to whom he need ascribe no aesthetic misgivings, and who does not know the rest of his life and cannot criticize him" (Freud 210). Indeed, Freud goes on to claim, "It is to such a woman that he prefers to devote his sexual potency, even when all the tenderness in him belongs to one of a higher type" (210). Though Harney is quite tender to Charity and finds her aesthetically pleasing and valuable, he does, in fact, unquestionably consider Annabel to be of a "higher type" than Charity.