Customer Reviews

Ethan Frome (Penguin Classics)

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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.

This is a short, intense novel that absolutely gripped me when I read it. The cold, bleak setting seems so appropriate to Ethan Frome's existence. A life full of obligation and duty, with no hint of joy or spontaneity.

Mattie Silver, a cousin of Ethan's wife Zenobia (Zeena) brings a small amount of light and life into Ethan's life. Ethan pays a heavy price for this, as do both Mattie and to a lesser extent Zeena.

This is a sad novel about duty, tragedy and mutual obligation. It is not a light read, but it is a wonderful piece of prose that demonstrates that there is a form of beauty in brevity.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I recently checked out another edition of this book from our local library to enjoy this great writer's melancholy tale once again. The library had the 1997 Scribner paperback edition, with an afterword by Alfred Kazin.

Don't read that edition! Choose one of the other available editions, like this one or others offered by Amazon. Kazin totally ruins the reading experience. He compares Wharton unfavorably with other writers and mocks her choice of words and word pictures. When he does compliment her, it is always preceded by a caveat that strips her of her every achievement.

What an uncharitable piece of writing. It's incomprehensible to me why a publisher would chose to accompany Wharton's fine tale with this mean-spirited rant. An online encyclopedia says of Kazin that he wrote "out of a great passion -- or great disgust -- for what he was reading." You can say that again.

"Ethan Frome" is unlike any other Edith Wharton novel, yet it is perhaps one of the most widely read of her works, and for good reason. Not to shortchange her other novels, but "Ethan Frome" holds a unique place within American literary history and it is a story, simple in concept and feeling, that has universal appeal. A bleak and lonely tale of tragedy, "Ethan Frome" is both beautiful and haunting, a story that will stay with the reader long after they have finished reading it.

The story begins (and ends) with a sort of narrative framing device. An outsider to the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, longs to know the tragic tale surrounding Ethan Frome, a scarred man who drives the narrator around town. Pieced together from what other townspeople have to say and a bleak winter night spent in the Frome household, the narrator pieces together the tragedy that befell Ethan. Ethan, seven years younger than his wife Zeena whom he married after she had nursed his dying mother, has begun to feel the insularity of their isolated life. Zeena is constantly sick and Ethan can barely scratch an existence out of their meager farm. Yet when Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to stay with them, Ethan is awakened from his langor by an unexpected love for his wife's cousin. Doomed to keep his love secret, Ethan finds that he cannot do so, especially when a suspicious Zeena threatens to send Mattie away. Ethan has few options, for he doesn't have the money to run away with Mattie and support her, nor does he wish for anyone within the town to think poorly of him. The actions he does decide to take change the course of all three lives forever.

Readers know from the very beginning that something very tragic has happened to Ethan Frome, yet it is only as the narrator pieces together the tale of his loveless, cold marriage and his budding love for Mattie, that they begin to sense what may have happened to this shattered wreck of a man. Wharton's story is fast-paced, as if the words were being told to readers direcly by Ethan himself, and there is a lyrical beauty that underlies the bleak, desolate lives of these three unhappy creature. It is easy to see why "Ethan Frome" has had such an enduring legacy within American literature.

Edith Wharton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, in 1921, the first woman to win the award, for her work The Age of Innocence. Most of her works, and she wrote over 40, including the Pulitzer Prize winner, concern New York society. Ethan Frome is a notable exception, set in rural western Massachusetts, on a farm not all that far from the fictional, and aptly named village of Starkfield. This book was first published in 1911; the novel's time period is unspecified, but must be around the turn of the century (yes, that century, the commencement of the 20th.) The setting, the weather, and the people are bleak and morose. It is a hard-scrabble existence, with financial calamity never far away. As stereotypical New Englanders, the three principal characters are taciturn to a fault: a grunt here, a monosyllabic answer there. There is Ethan Frome, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, Mattie Silver.

This book is a good introduction to Wharton. It is a novella that can be read in one setting. It is a well-structured and finely woven story, with a thread of dramatic suspense that commences on page 2, with a denouement not until the very end. It is a story within a story. At the very beginning one learns that Frome has been injured in a "smash-up" that occurred 24 years earlier. He must be around 50, but looks twice his age. Then the flashback tale is told, from the earlier time, of the events that led to the "smash-up." Frome is still in his 20's; his wife is seven years his elder, and "sickly." They met when Zeena was caring for his sickly mother. Mattie Silver is Zeena's youthful cousin who has come to help on the farm, and assist Zeena. As all good wives can, she can sense the threat from a more youthful and vivacious rival, and commences a plan to remove the "competition." The plot evolves against, and reflects the dire climate, and the direr financial struggle of eking out an existence on the stony land. Wharton presents a sympathetic portrait of Frome's dilemma, as well Mattie Silver aspirations. Zeena comes across less favorably.

Ah, the ending, is both predictable, and then it's not, a real reflection of Wharton's story telling ability, as well as her insights into the human condition, and the need to be, well, needed. This is one of those "school assignment" books, as reflected by the current 36 1-star reviews (ah, I can get the teacher back...!). If the teacher could only assign these 1-starers to, say, pick lettuce in the Imperial Valley of California for a year, and learn something of real life, and then read the book. It could be an effective program of remediation, and even raise Wharton's star score, though she is long beyond caring. I AM glad I dodged this as a school assignment, learned something of life, and can now appreciate Wharton's skill and insights. 5-stars.

I have always had this strange obsession about Ethan Frome. It's very different from Edith Wharton's other novels. This is a very depressing story about love, marriage, duty, desire, and morality. It's a quick read and unbelievably gloomy. But, it's amazingly well-written and captivating. I highly recommend it!

Ethan Frome is not considered typical of the Wharton oeuvre. Published in 1911, it is short and the rural setting is as much or more of a factor bearing tragedy than the rigid social convention Wharton skewered in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. And there is something else that sets Ethan Frome apart from Wharton's other novels: the author addresses the reader in a preface in which she sets out the risks she took in portraying a character who is a product of the harsh winter landscape of New England and the difficulty of revealing the story of a man seemingly as silent as the granite outcroppings that surround him. She needn't have worried.

What she did was to use a narrator who arrives on the scene as a stranger to the rural outpost of Starkfield, Massachusetts. A civil engineer working on a power plant project, he is struck by a silent, limping figure about town--that's Ethan Frome. He gets sketchy details about Frome from his landlady and the postmaster, something about a tragic smash up years before, but it isn't until the engineer and Frome are caught in a storm together and take refuge in the latter's farmhouse that the story comes into focus, one that begins shortly before the accident, when Frome was still young but honoring marriage vows to a controlling hypochondriac wife. When her young, pretty relative arrives to attend to her, Frome's heart is tempted.

Wharton delivers a long ago America in shattering clarity, defined by the terrain, the isolation and a code of morality that are as much fully drawn characters in this drama as are the human beings. Wharton's style is clear, and her exercise of symbolism, setting, character, plot and perspective are brilliant.

Ethan Frome is easily Edith Wharton's most accessible work, and I believe her most relevant. I challenge any reader to read this text and not see a bit of themselves in some of the plot devices.
Wharton sets this frame story in the middle of a desolate and dreary landscape and her evocation of the harsh environment easily surrounds the reader and forces us to succumb to the numbing depression and pain that the main characters feel. This text is essentially a three character study and although there is little "action" to speak of it carries the reader along at a good clip. I have never read this book, or talked about it with other readers, when we were not all gripped from the beginning with the novel's ambiguities and tensions.
Ethan Frome is a novel that is endlessly debatable and regardless of one's final perspective it will leave you casting about with a void in your heart. Beware; a reader will feel the pangs of recognition, or the fellowship of sympathy, upon completing this text. Either way, it will stay with you long after you set it down.
This is an excellent choice for students or book clubs. It is not a long or difficult read and the novel is wonderfully symbolic and suspenseful in just the right places.

Edith Wharton is best remembered for the classics, The House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence. Ethan Frome is a short work (130 pages) that details the tragic life of a simple man. The book begins with an untitled chapter which shows Frome in middle age as a man defeated by life. He goes about the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts in a grim and largely silent fashion. This chapter, narrated by an unnamed character, mentions his "smashup" and sets the tone for the story to follow.

The story itself begins with the next chapter and starts with the young Frome, a struggling farmer and mill owner, unhappily married to a slightly older woman, Zeena. He married her largely out of gratitude for her caring for his sickly mother until she died. But Zeena herself becomes sickly and theirs is a marriage in name only. Into this drab situation comes Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver, to help Zeena around the house. Mattie is joyful and innocent and Ethan grows to love her and their relationship, although not overt, grows. But Zeena resents Mattie and criticizes her constantly. Then Zeena leaves to visit a doctor and Mattie and Ethan have one evening alone. They spend it quietly but it is clear they love each other. On Zeena's return she states that the doctor told her she is very ill and needs a "hired girl" and that Mattie must leave. The stage is now set for the tragic results that follow.

While unrelievedly tragic, Ethan Frome is well worth reading. The scenes between Mattie and Ethan are touching and show an innocence that is rarely found in modern novels. It bears some resemblance to The Scarlet Letter in that it is set in New England and involves a forbidden love. But unlike Hawthorne, Wharton gives us no hope at the end except a lonely and broken man living out his days.

Few books capture New England as well as this one does. Moreover, it captures the innocence of youth with the reality of maturity. This is a fantastic read.