# Summer — Character guide

> Key figures in Summer by Edith Wharton.

- [Charity Royall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/charity_royall.md): Charity Royall was brought down from the Mountain as a feverish child and christened to keep alive her sense of dependence; she has spent her life measuring the cold house, the harsh guardian, the small town that calls h
- [Lucius Harney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/lucius_harney.md): Miss Hatchard's young cousin arrives to document old houses and ends up stage-managing the town's Home Week festivities, throwing sketches and enthusiasm at a place starved for both. He is easy, educated, and everywhere 
- [Lawyer Royall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/lawyer_royall.md): He brought Charity down from the Mountain, gave her his name without adopting her, and shut himself up in his office when the boarding school fell through, because losing her was worse than any temptation. Harsh, violent
- [Ally Hawes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/ally_hawes.md): Ally Hawes sews the garlands and sleeves for other girls' triumphs and watches Charity with open, unresentful admiration. She is the tenderhearted constant in a town of small cruelties, the friend who notices and asks an
- [Old Miss Hatchard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/old_miss_hatchard.md): Miss Hatchard presides over the village's Associations, its daguerreotypes, its Home Week, and the library she lends her key to without asking the librarian. Frail, well-meaning, and quietly proprietary, she is the town'
- [Mr. Miles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/mr_miles.md): Mr. Miles belongs to the village's official conscience, the church-and-community order that defines respectability in North Dormer and quietly measures who is inside it. His world is the one whose judgment Charity dreads
- [Liff Hyatt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/liff_hyatt.md): Liff Hyatt belongs to the rough mountain settlement Charity has spent her life trying to rise above, yet he is also the one thread that might lead back to her origins. He is wary and inarticulate, uneasy when Charity pre
- [Dr. Merkle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/dr_merkle.md): Dr. Merkle practices in the neighboring town, outside North Dormer's web of gossip, and his examinations carry a candor that the village never offers. He treats Charity in a moment of crisis, and his verdict lands with t
- [Julia Hawes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/julia_hawes.md): Julia Hawes left North Dormer under scandal and returns as a cautionary figure, her freshness gone and her face thinner under its paint. She recognizes Charity across the crowd and greets her with a sneer that cuts deepe
- [Old Verena Marsh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/old_verena_marsh.md): An elderly woman from the mountain who knows Charity's origins.
- [Annabel Balch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/annabel_balch.md): Annabel Balch is the rival Charity never has to meet to feel defeated by, since she embodies the education and ease that Charity lacks. She is not a villain but a standard, the kind of wife it would be natural for a man 
- [Old Mrs. Hobart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/old_mrs_hobart.md): A local widow who takes in boarders and knows everyone's business.
- [Mary Hyatt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/mary_hyatt.md): A member of the Hyatt family, possibly related to Liff.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters