With her routine in the quiet village of North Dormer, Charity Royall is becoming bored. Lucius Harney, a visiting architect, makes an unwanted approach to her. Mr. Royall decides not to marry Charity and kicks Lucius out of his home. After leaving the city, Lucius moves to a nearby village. A Nettleton abandoned home is where Charity and Lucius, two lovers, first meet. Charity experiences panic after spotting Lucius at a social gathering with Annabel Balch, a member of the local society. Charity suffers verbal abuse from Mr. Royall, which makes her feel extremely ashamed and drives her to fall into Lucius' arms. Despite committing to marry Charity, Lucius takes a leave of absence to relocate.
Charity notices the poverty that has affected the locals as she and her family are vacationing at the Mountain. She promises that she will take all necessary steps to prevent her child from growing up in poverty. She goes back home intending to support her kid by becoming a prostitute. She runs across Mr. Royall again along the road, and they decide to get married.
Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, at 14 West 23rd St. into a prosperous New York family. The only daughter and third child of George Frederic and Lucretia Rhinelander Jones, Edith spent a large portion of her early years in Europe, primarily in France, Germany, and Italy, where she honed her language skills and deepened her appreciation for the beauty of literature, art, and architecture. Although Wharton had a collection of her own poems privately printed when she was 16, she did not start writing seriously until after several years of marriage. The Valley of Decision, Wharton's debut book, was released in 1902. A novel of manners published in 1905, The House of Mirth, examined the stratified society in which the author was raised and its response to societal upheaval. She received a lot of positive reviews and attention for the book. She also became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. At age 75, she died at Pavillon Colombe on August 11, 1937. In Versailles' Cimetière des Gonards, she is buried next to her close friend Walter Berry.
