Ethan Frome
 | |
| Author | Edith Wharton |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scribner's |
Publication date | September 1911 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 195 pp |
| ISBN | 0-486-26690-7 |
Ethan Frome is a book published in 1912 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was transformed into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993.[1]
Plot
The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield, a fictional town in Massachusetts, while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his demeanor and carriage. Curious, the narrator sets out to learn about him, learning the man's name as Ethan Frome. He learns that Frome's limp arose from having been injured in a "smash-up" twenty-four years before, but further details are not forthcoming.
Ethan is angry and frustrated by the thought of losing Mattie and accidentally tells Mattie of Zeena’s plans to send her away. Mattie reacts with shock but rapid acceptance, trying to calm Ethan, while Ethan becomes more agitated and begins to insist that he will not let her go. Ethan kisses her. Moments later, they are interrupted by Zeena.
After supper, Zeena discovers the broken pickle dish and is enraged. Ethan, miserable at the thought of losing Mattie, considers running away with Mattie, but he lacks the money to do so.
Development
The story of Ethan Frome had initially begun as a French-language composition that Wharton had to write while studying the language in Paris,[2] but several years later she took the story up again and transformed it into the novel it now is, basing her sense of New England culture and place on her 10 years of living at The Mount, her home in Lenox, Massachusetts. She would read portions of her novel-in-progress each day to her good friend Walter Berry, who was an international lawyer. Wharton likely based the story of Ethan and Mattie's sledding experience on an accident that she had heard about in 1904 in Lenox, Massachusetts.[3] Five people total were involved in the real-life accident, four girls and one boy. They crashed into a lamppost while sledding down Courthouse Hill in Lenox. A girl named Hazel Crosby was killed in the accident. Wharton learned of the accident from one of the girls who survived, Kate Spencer, when the two became friends while both worked at the Lenox Library. Kate Spencer suffered from a hip injury in the accident and also had facial injuries. It is among the few works by Wharton with a rural setting.[3] Wharton found the notion of the tragic sledding crash to be irresistible as a potential extended metaphor for the wrongdoings of a secret love affair.
Lenox is also where Wharton had traveled extensively and had come into contact with at least one of the victims of the accident; victims of the accident are buried in graves nearby Wharton family members. In her introduction to the novel, Wharton talks of the "outcropping granite" of New England, the austerity of its land and the stoicism of its people. The connection between land and people is very much a part of naturalism; the environment is a powerful shaper of man's fate, and the novel dwells insistently on the cruelty of Starkfield's winters.[4]
Reception
The New York Times called Ethan Frome "a compelling and haunting story."[5] Edith Wharton was able to write an appealing book and separate it from her other works, where her characters in Ethan Frome are not of the elite upper class. However, the problems that the characters endure are still consistently the same, where the protagonist has to decide whether or not to fulfill their duty or follow their heart. She began writing Ethan Frome in the early 1900s when she was still married. The novel was criticized by Lionel Trilling as lacking in moral or ethical significance.[2] Trilling found the ending is "terrible to contemplate," but that "the mind can do nothing with it, can only endure it."[6]
Jeffrey Lilburn notes that some find "the suffering endured by Wharton's characters is excessive and unjustified," but others see the difficult moral questions addressed and note that it "provides insightful commentary on the American economic and cultural realities that produced and allowed such suffering." Wharton was always careful to label Ethan Frome as a tale rather than a novel. Critics did take note of this when reviewing the book. Elizabeth Ammons compared the work to fairy tales. She found a story that is "as moral as the classic fairy tale" and that functions as a "realistic social criticism." The moral concepts, as described by Ammons, are revealed with all of the brutality of Starkfield's winters. Comparing Mattie Silver and Zeena Frome, Ammons suggests that the Matties will grow as frigid and crippled as the Zeenas, so long as such women remain isolated and dependent. Wharton cripples Mattie, says Lilburn, but has her survive in order to demonstrate the cruelty of the culture surrounding women in that period.[7]
References
- ^ Canby, Vincent (March 12, 1993). "Liam Neeson in Lead Of Wharton Classic". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 19, 2011. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|deadurl=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ a b Springer, Marlene (1993). Ethan Frome: A Nightmare of Need. Twayne's Masterwork Studies. New York City: Twayne Publishers.
- ^ a b "Ethan Frome – Context". SparkNotes. 2006. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
- ^ Lewis, R.W.B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975.
- ^ "Three Lives in Supreme Torture" (PDF). The New York Times. October 8, 1911. p. BR603. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
- ^ "Review of Ethan Frome". NovelGuide: Ethan Frome. Novelgide.com, n.d. February 24, 2010.
- ^ Lilburn, Jeffrey. "Ethan Frome (Criticism)." Answers.com. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
External links
Media related to Ethan Frome at Wikimedia Commons
Texts on Wikisource:
- Ethan Frome, 1st edition of 1911
- Ethan Frome, 2nd edition of 1922, with added Introduction by the author
Ethan Frome public domain audiobook at LibriVox (2 versions)- Ethan Frome at Project Gutenberg
- Ethan Frome at Faded Page (Canada)
- Personal or Social Tragedy? A Close Reading of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome
- Ethan Frome at Literapedia
- 1953 Best Plays radio adaptation at Internet Archive
