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    Ethan Frome
    Ethan Frome
    Ethan Frome
    Ebook122 pages2 hours

    Ethan Frome

    By Edith Wharton

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooklassic
    Release dateJun 12, 2015
    ISBN9789635225828
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an acclaimed American novelist. Known for her use of dramatic irony, she found success early in her career with The House of Mirth, which garnered praise upon its publication. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her tour-de-force novel, The Age of Innocence.

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    Reviews for Ethan Frome

    3.5/5

    2,212 ratings97 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Dark and shadowy and full of foreboding. Predictable near the end, but the epilogue isn't.
    • 4/5
      I reread this because I read it in high school and HATED it. It is a big ball of misery - I wanted to read it again, partially because I wanted to see if knowing how depressing it is going into it would make it a better read. And it did - it's really well-written story. But also now I need something extremely cheerful to read...
    • 4/5
      It's Tiny Book Tuesday! This gem is part of the 1001 books to read before you die list. I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. It's about a married couple whose wife's cousin comes to live with them. The husband falls madly in love with the cousin but keeps it secret from everyone. I did not see the ending coming and was shocked! Very sad indeed.
    • 4/5
      Most excellent!...her style is unmatched...my second favorite of the three of her books I have read so far....Age of Innocence is No. 1
    • 4/5
      Ethan Frome is a story with a tragic ending. It expresses the power of love and how far one will go for love. Even though Ethan is married, his love for Mattie Silver causes the two to partake in an unthinkable act. Edith Wharton uses this theme, illicit love to present "a drama of irresistible necessity." The emotion of Mattie and Ethan was very evident and could be felt by the reader. It's hard to believe that anything so classic could be such a page turner. This novel is recommended for anyone who wants to read a short, simple love story.
    • 4/5
      A great novel about forbidden love, regret, back luck, and despair. Not as depressing as it sounds though. A must read for anyone who lives in New England.
    • 3/5
      So sad, though it can be so hopeful. Excellent study of hu;man nature in such a short book.
    • 5/5
      I don't think I'll be forgetting this book anytime soon- or ever.
    • 1/5
      I enjoyed invasive oral surgery more than I enjoyed reading this book. All three of them, actually. The first one made me rather sick, due to the general anesthesia. At least the dentist provided anesthetics during the procedure. There was nothing dulling the pain of reading this book. It should NOT be on the required reading list for any high school.
    • 4/5
      It's hard to review such a book as this without giving away its ending, and its secrets. It should be enough to say that this is one of the most movingly sad, tragic little books I have ever had the pleasure to come across, and as depressed as I became by the end I'm still exceptionally glad to have read it.
    • 4/5
      I decided to download this novel because a character in my favourite film refers to it as 'a horrible book' that should be taken off the curriculum; apart from that, I was only on nodding acquaintance with the title. Though depressing, Ethan Frome is not a horrible book - stark, yes, but also evocative and powerful. (My nomination for the 'Horrible Book' award goes to Moby Dick.) Opening with a pointless narrator like Wuthering Heights, Frome's Yorkshire stable mate, Ethan Frome tells the story of a miserable husband so frustrated that he drives himself and the object of his affections into a tree. Personally, I would have strapped the wife to the sleigh, but then none of the characters are perfect. Ethan is weak, Zeena manipulative, and Mattie immature. Still, I was hoping for a more satisfying ending, or at least an escape route for Ethan, but hey ho.
    • 4/5
      A melancholy read, with such descriptive writing that the snow on the stark fields of Starkfield glistens as you read, and the countenance of the various characters as they speak, convey their words straight to your mind's eye. The story a tragedy; the writing brilliant.
    • 4/5
      A classic tragedy - a man who pays too dearly for his impulses and who has the best of himself stamped out by the unkindness of those who should have loved him best.
    • 4/5
      I read this because so many people had told me how horribly depressing it was. True, this is not a happy story, but if you can get beyond that and look at it for literary merit it is beautiful. Every emotion is perfectly and miserably described. It is a perfect depiction of a heart-breaking situation.
    • 4/5
      This was a fine story to read. The words were crafted so well and the mood and setting pulled you into the tale. I loved the way the author chose to present the story and can see why it has become a classic and part of American Literature classes. I'm just glad that I didn't read the description on the back of the book before I read the story though. It ruined the climax of the tale.
    • 5/5
      I adored this book as a teenager, I remember it extremely vividly. I wonder what I would think of it 20 years later, I want to re-read this soon.
    • 3/5
      I'm not an Edith Wharton fan, but I enjoyed this. Nice ending.
    • 4/5
      Great book, sad, read in one sitting, page turner.
    • 5/5
      Ethan Frome is one of the most hauntingly beautiful books to earn its place as an essential of American literature. Wharton manages to portray an almost Hawthornian tale of the socially taboo with just as powerful an emotional impact.
    • 4/5
      Ethan Frome is House of Mirth made over with a male protagonist and a rural backdrop. Wharton's Starkfield (!) has become the literary epitome of wintry hardscrabble New England. Like Lily Bart, Ethan chooses freedom and happiness. He wants to pay for that choice with his death, but instead pays for it with his life.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was... well, very well-written, and all of that good stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't read it through, I read it in about 3 sections, with a few hectic days of interruption in between.

      However, I can say that my expectations were not disappointed, and that I really like the characters - they are not entirely likeable. Mattie is naive and Ethan is somewhat weak, first for marrying Zeena for all the wrong reasons and then for what happens in the rest of the book. But then, it wouldn't be any good if it was your stereotypical hero...

      And the book ends very well. I was rather impressed with the epilogue-style last chapter.
    • 4/5
      Short but beautifully-written: a perfect miniature portrait of the claustrophobic natures of the harsh winters of small communities in North America in the mid-nineteenth century, of poverty and of a loveless relationship.
    • 2/5
      I think there was supposed to be some deeper metaphor in the story, but it didn't do much for me.
    • 4/5
      A short, spare novella detailing the doomed relationship between a man and his wife’s cousin. There are plenty of reviews, so I won’t rehash any of it. What I found most compelling was Wharton’s ability to make her reader invest in a story that does little more than detail the bleak landscape of New England and the icy nature of New Englanders’ emotional existence. A total downer, but a beautifully written and evocative one. I listened to this on audio, narrated by Scott Brick, and will return to the story in printed format at some point, as I think I missed some powerful writing.
    • 2/5

      A true classic, written with simple beautiful language, this shows us the romance of the 19th century in its tragic form.

    • 2/5
      So, yeah...I can safely say I have no idea why anyone likes this. Not a damn thing of any interest happened. It's about an "affair" (though not much more beyond affectionate feelings happen). As a former high school English language arts teacher, I can easily see how "classics" like this can kill a student's potential enjoyment of literature. It was just ridiculously mediocre.
    • 1/5
      Dreadful and boring.
    • 4/5
      I try to have a classic book going on at all times, just there in the background, and this one was thin and quick and easy to read. Wharton's style is light and engaging, her characters interesting, and the whole story just kind of flowed out smoothly. I'm not as compelled by these characters as some of her others, but Ethan Frome's story was a good read and kept me turning the pages, even when I totally knew what was going to happen. It was well-crafted, and I enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Okay, so once I got over my temper tatrum at my professor's effrontery to make me read for class, I actually liked this book! Now, that's saying something, because usually I grade classics just like I would any other book - none of this: "Ohhh, gee, Author Person! You're book is all kinds of wonderful just because IT'S OLD and lots of people have to write term papers over it!" Nope. The funny thing that I can't get over is that I absolutely HATE books like this one: not a whole lot of action, really indecisive characters, circumstances that are not overcome, etc. And yet Ethan Frome really got to me. I read the whole thing kicking and screaming, saying "No! I WILL NOT like this book! You can't make me!" but it was no use. Here's the scoop (and it's a pretty easy scoop): A poor farmer with an ultra-whiny hypochondriac wife (or at least that's my professor's interpretation) live with the ultra-whiny wife's pretty and vivacious cousin, and the poor downtrodden farmer falls in love with the enchanting cousin (Mattie) but can't seem to escape his circumstances. That's it. And yet, there's so much more. I don't like Ethan, I certainly don't like Zeena...Mattie's really the only character I truly liked...and yet I cared about them all and was rooting for Ethan even though he's such a dadgum loser! Maybe my parents were a little too into the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kids!!!" growing up but I really felt like circumstances weren't near as bleak as Ethan made them out to be. We talked about that a lot in class today: psychological realism novels are really big into the whole "appearances vs. reality" scenario, and I just found that so intriguing. I hate to admit it, but I found myself wishing Ethan and Mattie would just elope and get it over with, and a pox on that scurvy Zeena! Maybe that's why this book is a classic: it's so incredibly simple, and yet by the time you're finished, you feel emotionally exhausted. This book doesn't make you feel better about yourself or life (unless you thank God you're not operating a sawmill in Starkfield, MA in the winter!) and I'm still not entirely sure what message (if any) Edith Wharton was trying to send, but the story just captivated me. Now granted, this is NOT the type of thing I look for in outside fun-reading, but I'm glad I had the experience. It's like when you're in a bookstore or a library and you pass a classic, you can beam with pride and point and declare, "I READ THAT!" So thank you, Dr. Bruce, and thank you to my mom who is an English teacher/principal who let me use her teaching copy - the one with all the notes and unlined passages. :D - Definitely recommended to Classics Lovers. And if you're a student and you find Ethan Frome on your "Required Reading" syllabus, don't fret, for this is an easy read. It could be a heck of a lot worse. *thinks of T.S. Eliot and shivers*
    • 4/5
      This is a very well written and constructed, but rather nasty and ugly story. I would recommend it most to fans of Shirley Jackson. Others may find that their dislike for the plot overwhelms any admiration for the prose.

    Book preview

    Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

    978-963-522-582-8

    Introduction

    I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

    If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was.

    It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the natives were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line.

    He's looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that's twenty-four years ago come next February, Harmon threw out between reminiscent pauses.

    The smash-up it was-I gathered from the same informant-which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome's forehead, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window. He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributing hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia-or Mrs. Zeena-Frome, and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his specific. These documents my neighbour would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master.

    Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word. When this happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes on the speaker's face, and answer in so low a tone that his words never reached me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in the direction of his farm.

    It was a pretty bad smash-up? I questioned Harmon, looking after Frome's retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

    Wust kind, my informant assented. More'n enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan'll likely touch a hundred.

    Good God! I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box-also with a druggist's label on it-which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone. That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!

    Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.

    Why didn't he?

    Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn't ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father-then his mother-then his wife.

    And then the smash-up?

    Harmon chuckled sardonically. That's so. He had to stay then.

    I see. And since then they've had to care for him?

    Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek. Oh, as to that: I guess it's always Ethan done the caring.

    Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters.

    Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant. Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and Shadd's Falls, had libraries, theatres and Y. M. C. A. halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there-or rather its negation-must have been in Ethan Frome's young manhood.

    I had been sent up by my employers on a job connected with the big power-house at Corbury Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters' strike had so delayed the work that I found myself anchored at Starkfield-the nearest habitable spot-for the best part of the winter. I chafed at first, and then, under the hypnotising effect of routine, gradually began to find a grim satisfaction in the life. During the early part of my stay I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community. Day by day, after the December snows were over, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents of light and air on the white landscape, which gave them back in an intenser glitter. One would have supposed that such an atmosphere must quicken the emotions as well as the blood; but it seemed to produce no change except that of retarding still more the sluggish pulse of Starkfield. When I had been there a little longer, and had seen this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the. devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months' siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter. Twenty years earlier the means of resistance must have been far fewer, and the enemy in command of almost all the lines of access between the beleaguered villages; and, considering these things, I felt the sinister force of Harmon's phrase: Most of the smart ones get away. But if that were the case, how could any combination of obstacles have hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome?

    During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a middle-aged widow colloquially known as Mrs. Ned Hale. Mrs. Hale's father had been the village lawyer of the previous generation, and lawyer Varnum's house, where my landlady still lived with her mother, was the most considerable mansion in the village. It stood at one end of the main street, its classic portico and small-paned windows looking down a flagged path between Norway spruces to the slim white steeple of the Congregational church. It was clear that the Varnum fortunes were at the ebb, but the two women did what they could to preserve a decent dignity; and Mrs. Hale, in particular, had a certain wan refinement not out of keeping with her pale old-fashioned house.

    In the best parlour, with its black horse-hair and mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening to another and more delicately shaded version of the Starkfield chronicle. It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment. She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty, and I had great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of Ethan Frome's story, or rather such a key to his character as should co-ordinate the facts I knew. Her mind was a store-house of innocuous anecdote and any question about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail; but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unexpectedly reticent. There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs, a low Yes, I knew them both… it was awful… seeming to be the utmost concession that her distress could make to my curiosity.

    So marked was the change in her manner, such depths of sad initiation did it imply, that, with some doubts as to my delicacy, I put the case anew to my village oracle, Harmon Gow; but got for my pains only an uncomprehending grunt.

    Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it, she was the first one to see 'em after they was picked up. It happened right below lawyer Varnum's, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks was all friends, and I guess she just can't bear to talk about it. She's had troubles enough of her own.

    All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable communities, had had troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to those of their

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