Summer in the City

In Summer in the City, money is more than a resource or symbol of success. According to Elle, it can be a psychological weapon, a barrier to real connection, and a tool of control. Having endured a tough childhood where she watched her mother suffer to get by because of the effect Elle’s wealthy, controlling father had on her life, Elle has a complicated relationship with money where she views it as a tool of control. While she views providing for herself financially as the ultimate freedom, she is judgmental of the wealthy and closed-off to certain romantic prospects, fearing they might use their wealth to control her. The novel interrogates how financial power can both enable and distort relationships, particularly within familial and romantic dynamics. Through the strained ties between Elle and her father and the evolving romance between Elle and Parker, Aster explores how money can be used to assert dominance, erase autonomy, or even mask emotional absence. This theme functions as both personal and cultural critique, especially of the assumptions made about women who date powerful men. Elle’s rejection of wealth is about resisting the narrative that her success must be tied to a man’s.

Elle’s father embodies the theme in its most toxic form. His success enabled him to exert more control Elle’s mother over time. She eventually became dependent on him for everything—from communication and transportation to financial survival—which left her miserable. When she finally left him, he retaliated by withholding child support and sabotaging her job prospects, showing that his support was never unconditional—it was transactional. Later, when Elle seeks help for her mother’s medical care, he offers money in exchange for influence over Elle’s and Cali’s lives. This financial aid, too, comes with strings attached: control over college majors, relationships, and ultimately, his children’s very identities. It’s this complex history with her father that instills Elle with a deep mistrust of money’s role in personal relationships. His power is not merely financial, but narrative: He consistently tries to reframe his children’s lives as his own achievement, mirroring the societal tendency to credit male authority for female success.

Parker, while not malevolent, initially mirrors this pattern of abusing wealth in subtler ways. He uses money to express affection, buying Elle gifts, securing exclusive venues, and even purchasing the Gramercy townhouse she dreamt of someday buying herself. These acts are meant to show love, but to Elle, they reflect a lack of understanding. When she says, “You took that from me… you don’t even understand why that means something to me” (263), it’s a pivotal moment: Parker’s financial gesture replicates the erasure she has fought her whole life. Though he means it as a romantic gesture, unfortunately it is received by Elle as an act of exerting control over her. However, unlike Elle’s father, Parker evolves. He eventually comes to understand that love must include not only giving but also yielding: stepping back so Elle can achieve something for herself. The novel’s ultimate resolution occurs only when Elle buys the Gramercy townhouse herself and Parker acknowledges her need to live on her own terms.