He Loves Me. He Loves Me Not.

            After reading Edith Wharton’s novel Summer, I couldn’t help but think about the thing I used to do as a kid where you would take a flower and pick of the petals saying “he loves me” or “he loves me not” with each petal that was taken off. Whichever you ended on would be the determining factor in your relationship with whomever you were thinking about while you picked the petals off the flower.  I can picture Charity doing this exact thing while thinking about her relationship with Lucius Harney. The highs and lows she goes through with Harney is like picking off a petal of the flower; every time he does something great, Charity says “he loves me” and every time he does something wrong, “he loves me not.” Charity and Harney meet each other for their secret rendezvous in old, abandoned homes. At first this seems romantic, a “he loves me moment,” but as time goes on it is curious why Harney doesn’t take Charity in public so now “he loves me not.” When Harney takes Charity to Nettleton he buys Charity a broach and they have their first kiss, the ideal “he loves me moments” in Charity and Harney’s relationship. When Charity sees Harney and Annabel together at the Old Homes Week in North Dormer, suspicions arise and yet another “he loves me not” moment occurs. Harney promises to marry Charity, yet then has to leave town for a while; “he loves me, he loves me not.” When Charity finds out she is pregnant, she never gets the opportunity to pluck the final petal from the flower, for she relieves Harney of his responsibility and just decides for herself, “he loves me not.” This story was tragically depressing. Charity emotions go through highs and lows as the story points to Harney’s deception throughout. While “he loves me, he loves me not” was just a game for me in elementary school, for Charity it was her entire, very real relationship with Lucius Harney which ended not by plucking the last petal, but my simply giving up.