Customer Reviews

Ethan Frome (Oxford World's Classics)

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This is a nice edition of this novel. I hadn't read any of Wharton's books, though I've seen several film versions of some of her work. I saw the movie Ethan Frome with Liam Niesson which sparked my interest in the novel. I wanted to compare the two. The book is very short. This is a good edition of the novel because it has some pages of discussion of Wharton's writing style and meanings of events in Ethan Frome. That was a plus for being new to her work. The plot is interesting and I enjoyed Wharton's writing style.

Although a thoroughly well written and nostalgic book, the story is depressing to the uttermost. The story of a triangular love has the most ironic of endings with many unexpected and sad moments along the way. I tell my students that they need a sharp razor blade when reading the book, so that when the depression overwhelms them, they will not make a jagged cut.

Perhaps the author is giving us a glimpse into her own ultimately failed marriage as she records the quest of love by the protagonist who is married to a shrew who is a bitter woman. His awkwardness and slowness to speak to his desire adds to the suspense and to the eventual loss of opportunity.

This is a frame story, with a narrator who begins and ends the tale, being a traveler who inquires of the strange man he encountered, the one with the strange, deformed limp.

The reader will not so much ENJOY this novel as they will come to APPRECIATE its art. Edith Wharton is a master story teller, but have a DVD of a very funny comedy available to cheer you up when you finish this short novel.

Edith Wharton filled her novels with a feeling of ruin, passion and restriction. People can fall in love, but rarely do things turn out well.

But but few of even her books can evoke the feeling of "Ethan Frome," whick packs plenty of emotion, vibrancy and regrets into a short novella. While the claustrophobic feeling doesn't suit her writing well, she still spins a beautiful, horrifying story of a man facing a life without hope or joy.

It begins nearly a quarter of a century after the events of the novel, with an unnamed narrator watching middle-aged, crippled Ethan Frome drag himself to the post-office. He becomes interested in Frome's tragic past, and hears out his story.

Ethan Frome once hoped to live an urban, educated life, but ended up trapped in a bleak New England town with a hypochondriac wife, Zeena, whom he didn't love. But then his wife's cousin Mattie arrives, a bright young girl who understands Ethan far better than his wife ever tried to. Unsurprisingly, he begins to fall in love with her, but still feels an obligation to his wife.

But then Zeena threatens to send Mattie away and hire a new housekeeper, threatening the one bright spot in Ethan's dour life. Now Ethan must either rebel against the morals and strictures of his small village, or live out his life lonely. But when he and Mattie try for a third option, their affair ends in tragedy.

Wharton was always at her best when she wrote about society's strictures, morals, and love that defies that. But rather than the opulent backdrop of wealthy New York, here the setting is a bleak, snowy New England town, appropriately named Starkfield. It's a good reflection of Ethan Frome's life, and a good illustration of how the poor can be trapped.

Even when she describes a "ruin of a man" in a cold, distant town, Wharton spins beautiful prose ("the night was so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray against the snow") and eloquent symbolism, like the shattered pickle dish. There's only minimal dialogue -- most of what the characters think and feel is kept inside.

Instead she piles on the atmosphere, and increases the tension between the three main characters, as attraction and responsibility pull Ethan in two directions. It all finally climaxes in the disaster hinted at in the first chapter, which is as beautifully written and wistful as it is tragic.

If the book has a flaw, it's the incredibly small cast -- mainly just the main love triangle. Ethan's not a strong or decisive man, but his desperation and loneliness are absolutely heartbreaking, as well as his final fate. Mattie seems more like a symbol of the life he wants that a full-fledged person, and Zeena is annoying and whiny up until the end, when we see a different side of her personality. Not a stereotypical shrew.

"Ethan Frome" is a true tragedy -- as beautifully written as it is, it's still Wharton's description of how a man merely survives instead of living, hopeless and devastated.