A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.
The opening line of the novel introduces two major characters—one unidentified and deceptively identified—as well hinting at the setting. The reader is inclined to wonder who the girl is and why this Royall person is described as a lawyer. The stage thus set, the process of revealing the answers can begin.
“How I hate everything!”
The very first words spoken by the girl standing on the doorstep—and even before she has been identified by name—the reader is treated to an introduction into the psychological state of mind which will define her far better than the surprising revelation of her named: Charity. The first line of dialogue is quite telling about the charity which inhabits Charity.
In spite of everything—and in spite even of Miss Hatchard—lawyer Royall ruled in North Dormer; and Charity ruled in lawyer Royall's house. She had never put it to herself in those terms; but she knew her power, knew what it was made of, and hated it.
Miss Hatchard is the spinster librarian who is North Dormer’s most respected citizen. The lawyer named Royall is its most power. But there in between respect and power lies Charity who hates everything. Including, it would seem, her own power over the most powerful man in town. The question, posed early, becomes why? Why of all the things she hate is this unique position one of them?
After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer interval of darkness followed, and then the whole night broke into flower. From every point of the horizon, gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed each other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their flaming petals and hung their branches with golden fruit; and all the while the air was filled with a soft supernatural hum, as though great birds were building their nests in those invisible tree-tops.
Ironically, the literal fireworks come to an end just as the figurative fireworks are about to take off. The imagery here out of context seems mundane enough, but within the context of the developing romance between Charity and Harney, the flower symbolism in this work of prose is as sexually explicit as a flower painted by Georgia O’Keefe. Charity is the flower with the flaming petals and golden fruit here and this paragraph is representative of Wharton’s writing style throughout the novel. It is symbolically expressive to a tremendous degree.
Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to the door of the red house.
The final line of novel puts the entire story into juxtaposition with the opening line. That girl standing on the doorstep is doing so under the sky of a warm summer afternoon. The girl is alone outside the house belonging to lawyer Royall. Here is the same girl and the same red house under the sky of a cool fall night. The girl and the owner are no longer separated, but have been united into a “they.”
