How does Wharton use imagery to develop character or theme? Example? (focus on one).

The setting of the novel takes place near a lake and a few scenes of significance take place there but, but it is a hardly a novel that can be easily situated within a genre associated with the sea. Nevertheless, imagery associated with water is almost as pervasive as in a Melville novella. Charity feels the suffocating summer heat in “smothering waves” on her face. Behind storefront windows “waves of silk and ribbon broke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like tropical orchids.” Distant hills are described as eddying away to the sky like the waves of a receding tide.” All these images of serve to delineate a world surrounding Charity which is as uncertain as that of a sailor on deck of a ship at the mercy of an uncontrollable and insecure foundation beneath.