Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, is a classic worth the time it takes to read it. Granted, it is a short story, around seventy pages.
Essentially, it is about forbidden love. Ethan Frome is married to Zeena, a querulous hypochondriac. They hire Mattie, Zeena’s cousin, to be the household help, and Ethan falls in love with her. Respecting his wife, he keeps his love secret for a year, but, of course, it does not last. What happens is shocking and depressing, and you will have to read it to find out! (My apologies.)
While the plot is quite dramatic, the novel is weak in more essential aspects. One critic, Lionel Trilling, believes that Ethan Frome contains no moral ground upon which to discuss. I agree; the story is very sad and depressing but lacks anything further. There are no lessons learned or further social implications. Like I said, it’s just a simple bedtime story. In the words of Lionel Trilling, the novel seems to be a mere “literary impulse.” It lacks justification for the tragic events that occur.
This description may make Wharton sound an evil puppet master. After all, it seems she created a sad story simply for entertainment of the masses, but this is not the case. Wharton labored over the creation of the novel, not its plot, but the construction of its organization. The story begins as a first person narrative, switches to a flashback of twenty years earlier in the third person, and then back to the first person. She wrote in her introduction that this organization took much care. I’m not impressed. However, that’s that not to say I didn’t like her writing.
Ethan Frome takes place in a rural town in New England in the early 1900s. Surprisingly, Edith Wharton perfectly captured the setting with skillful imagery to which any New Englander could relate. I add “surprisingly” because Wharton actually wrote this novel while living in Paris, several years after leaving New England. Furthermore, Ethan Frome is described as a poor man working on a farm, yet Wharton was rich and lived in mansions. She imagined stories like that of Ethan Frome while driving leisurely through the countryside.
I had to write an analysis on the book for class, and my final assessment was simple: Ethan Frome is a well-written, sadistic bedtime story.
