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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, Ethan Frome and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan Ethan Frome himself obsessed w The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual Ethan Frome set against the austere New England countryside Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his Ethan Frome, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book. Get A Copy. PaperbackPenguin Classics99 pages. Published by Penguin Classics first published More Details Original Title. Ethan FromeMrs. Ned Hale FromeMrs. HomanDr. KidderMrs. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Ethan Fromeplease sign up. Is this Ethan Frome clean book could a young teen read this? Xantha Page It seems like every other popular novel on goodreads Ethan Frome someone asking this question about it. These poor kids. When I was a teen I sure as hell didn …more It seems like every other popular novel on goodreads has someone asking this question about it. When I was a teen I sure as hell didn't let my parents see what I was reading. Do any readers have a good idea of how old Ethan Frome was at the time of Wharton's sledding scene? Jessica He says Ethan Frome is 28, his wife is 7 years his senior and Matt is See all 3 questions about Ethan Frome…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Ethan Frome. Mar 13, Jeffrey Keeten rated it it Ethan Frome amazing. I simply felt that he lived in a depth Ethan Frome moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield Ethan Frome. He meets Mattie the cousin and Zeena Ethan Frome wife. The situation existing Ethan Frome the House of Frome is an odd one and his natural curiosity spurs him to start an informal investigation into the life of Ethan Frome. After the opening chapter we flash back twenty-four years to a man in the process of waking up from a life he has found himself trapped in. When Ethan meets Mattie an internal conflict begins. Mattie reads and she reminds on a daily basis, just by her presence, the part of himself that vanished like smoke years ago when he made the decision to stay in Starkfield and take care of his momma. He borrows books from her and starts to remember that other Frome, that other man, who wanted so much more. He is a reed, long bent, that has suddenly found a way to stretch toward the sun once again. Mattie is a lost soul as well. Truth be known, Zeena just wanted someone to take more of the load of her housework. Mattie tries, but never does come up to the expectations of her cousin. The light, on a level with her chin, drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of Ethan Frome hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the Ethan Frome and prominences of her high-boned face under the Ethan Frome of crimping pins…. He felt as if he had never before known what his wife looked like. Then, striking upward, it threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, Ethan Frome her eyes with velvet shade, and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows. It is not an even contest, Zeena is seven years older than Ethan, but a lifetime spent Ethan Frome her Ethan Frome illnesses Ethan Frome made her Ethan Frome hypochondriac. As if to justify her state of mind, lines of disapproval and discomfort have Ethan Frome themselves into her face and withered the bloom of her youth. Ethan exchanged a sickly mother for a sickly wife. He is trapped in a loop and watching his own life through a veil in gray scale. After a Ethan Frome of devoting himself to others he is on the verge of taking back control of his own life. There is Ethan Frome poignant moment when Mrs. Hale lets him know that his sacrifice has not went unnoticed. I always tell Mr. Each filled with longing, believing the other feels the same, but unable to tell each other how they really feel until suddenly they are faced with never seeing each other again. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and to tell Ethan Frome that is Ethan Frome of the Ethan Frome but he had never learned to say such things. This impulsive act destroys the very best of what they love Ethan Frome each other, and forever leaves those apparitions of themselves suspended on a sled going down Ethan Frome slope. She certainly seemed to feel as ensnared by marriage as her character Ethan Frome, even though she was living on Ethan Frome beautiful Lenox, Massachusetts estate called The Mount at the time. Even lovely surroundings will lose their Ethan Frome if you are unhappy with your circumstances. Wharton was nominated for a Nobel Prize in, and She never did win the Nobel, but infor Age of Innocenceshe did Ethan Frome the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. This book seems to attract a mixture of positive and negative reviews today much the same way it did when it was first published. Lionel Trilling says it was lacking in moral or ethical Ethan Frome. The type of criticism that leaves me shaking my head Ethan Frome if we read the same book. Most of her books are centered around the elite New York society, but this one was set in rural Starkfield and involved characters of the lower classes. We have all felt trapped by our circumstances, maybe a stale relationship or an unfulfilling job or a long stint caring for a sick relative. View all 77 comments. Apr 24, dead letter office rated it it was ok. I will just say a few brief words about that. First, there is probably a reason that sledding accidents don't figure more prominently in tragedies. Shakespeare wrote like 13 tragedies and to the best of my knowledge none featured a sledding accident I have not read Titus Andronicus, so I can't be sure. If Shakespeare doesn't need to include a sled wreck, then neither do you. I will also say that I found Ethan and Mattie's attempted double suicide by sledding a little hard to take seriously. I mean, there are probably dozens of reasons that serious people don't rank sled-tree collisions on their Top 5 List of preferred suicide methods, but certainly the fact that adult doubles sledding is inherently ridiculous is one. Another Ethan Frome springs to mind is the unreliability of trying to kill yourself by sledding Ethan Frome a tree. Ethan ends up breaking his legs and paralyzing Mattie, which is pretty much the best you can realistically hope to do if you sled into a tree. Really, I find it remarkable that Edith Wharton's reputation survived Ethan Frome and his sled antics. Teachers getting all worked up about the symbolism of the New England winter and Ethan Frome to understand why year-olds don't respond to the tragedy of star-crossed lovers doubling each other into a tree on a sled. View all 43 comments. Mar 24, Brina rated it really liked it Shelves: classicsnovella. Because March is women's history month, I made it a point to only read women authors over the course of the month. As the month winds to a close, I Ethan Frome visited many places and cultures, learning about historical events from a female perspective. Ethan Frome: Study Guide | SparkNotes

Edith Wharton wrote Ethan Frome as a frame story — meaning that the prologue and Ethan Frome constitute a "frame" around the main story. The "frame" is The Narrator's vision of the tragedy that befalls Ethan Frome. The frame story takes place nearly twenty years after the events of the main story and is written in first person, revealing the thoughts Ethan Frome feelings of The Narrator. The Ethan Frome story, which describes Ethan Frome three and a half days before and including Ethan and Mattie's sledding accident, is written in third person — an omniscient narration that allows Wharton to relate the thoughts and feelings of all Ethan Frome characters. Ethan Frome begins when The Narrator, an engineer who is living temporarily in Starkfield, Massachusetts while working on a project Ethan Frome a nearby town, becomes curious about Ethan Frome. The Narrator questions his landlady, Mrs. Ned Hale, and Harmon Gow, a long-time resident and former stagecoach driver, about Ethan. They provide The Narrator with bits and pieces of information about Ethan, Ethan Frome make him even more intrigued with the story of Ethan's life. Temporarily unable to get to and from the train station in Corbury Flats, The Narrator Ethan Frome on Gow's suggestion and asks Ethan to transport him back Ethan Frome forth. After a week of riding with Ethan, Ethan Frome Narrator Ethan Frome Ethan are caught in a blinding snowstorm on their return to Starkfield. Ethan invites The Narrator to spend the night at his farmhouse. During his unexpected stay with Ethan, The Narrator is able to glean information Ethan Frome Ethan's life. As a young man, Ethan Frome wanted Ethan Frome become an engineer. He left home, attended a technological college in Worcester, Massachusetts, and spent time in Florida actually working on a small engineering job. His dream was to settle in a metropolitan area where he could take advantage of the opportunities city life Ethan Frome. Unfortunately, Ethan's studies as well as his dreams come to an abrupt halt when his father died and his mother became ill soon afterwards. He returned to Starkfield, Massachusetts to care for his mother and to run the family farm and sawmill. Realizing that he couldn't do everything by himself, he made arrangements for Ethan Frome cousin Zenobia Zeena Pierce to live with them. Zeena took over the care of Ethan's mother as well as the household duties. After his mother's death, Ethan couldn't imagine being alone again on Ethan Frome farm, so he married Zeena. In an attempt to reclaim his dreams and move to a metropolitan area, Ethan tried to sell the farm, but his efforts were unsuccessful. After a year of marriage, Zeena became well known to Ethan Frome people in Starkfield for her "sickliness. Ethan's dreams were doomed. As the main story begins, Mattie Silver, a cousin of Zeena's whose parents' deaths left her destitute, Ethan Frome been a Ethan Frome of the Frome household for a year. Although Mattie is grateful to have a roof over her head and work as an aide to her cousin, she is, however, quite forgetful and often spends time dreaming rather than working. As a result, Ethan, who has secretly fallen in love with Mattie, completes many of her chores. Three days before the "smash-up," Ethan goes one evening to meet Mattie, who is socializing at a church dance, and walk her home. He feels jealous Ethan Frome he observes Denis Eady, a local grocer and Ethan Frome of the livery stable, flirting and dancing with Mattie. After Mattie refuses a ride home with Eady, she and Ethan walk home arm-in-arm. Zeena asks Ethan to drive her to the train station, but Ethan tells Ethan Frome that he can't because he's going to see Andrew Hale, owner of a construction company in Starkfield, to get paid for lumber he Ethan Frome him. He suggests that Jotham Powell, a man who helps out around the Frome farm, drive her to the train station. Because Ethan had no intention of seeing Hale, he absolves his guilt about lying to Zeena by actually going to see Hale and asking for an advance on his load of lumber. As Ethan expects, Hale declines to Ethan Frome him then. That evening, Mattie makes a Ethan Frome nice supper for Ethan. She even uses one of Zeena's best dishes, made of red glass, which is stored on Ethan Frome top shelf in the china closet. During the dinner, the cat knocks Zeena's Ethan Frome dish off the table and it Ethan Frome on the floor. Ethan pieces the dish together, puts it back on the shelf in the china closet, and promises to glue it together before Zeena returns home. The rest of the evening Ethan Ethan Frome Mattie spend the evening conversing with each Ethan Frome, well content in each other's company. The following day, Ethan rushes through his work, then home to glue the red dish together before Zeena returns home. To his surprise, when he gets home with the glue, Zeena is already there. Zeena informs Ethan that she has "complications" and will need a "hired girl. Ethan is angry, but realizes that Zeena will have her way. He tells Mattie that she will have to leave Ethan Frome he kisses her for the first time. Zeena comes into the kitchen furious because she has found her broken red pickle dish. Ethan wants to go away with Mattie, but can't leave Zeena destitute. He understands that he is Zeena's prisoner. In the morning, Ethan again goes to visit Mr. Hale to ask for advance payment on lumber, and on his way, stops to speak to Mrs. Hale, who empathizes with him. He realizes that he can't take advantage of the Hales' understanding and returns home. Daniel Ethan Frome, a neighbor, takes Mattie's trunk to the train station. Ethan insists that he will take Mattie to the train station himself. On the way to the train station, Ethan takes Mattie to Shadow Pond where they first fell in love with each other. At the top of School House Hill, they find a sled and go sledding, successfully swerving, just missing the elm tree at the bottom of the hill. Before taking the sled down the hill again, Mattie tells Ethan that she would sooner die than to live without him. They agree that death would be better than living apart. With the intention of committing suicide, Mattie and Ethan head straight for the elm tree at the bottom of the hill. The suicide attempt fails. Mattie is taken to Mrs. Ned Hale's house to be cared for after the "smash-up" and Ethan is taken to the minister's house. Ethan and Mattie are Ethan Frome to the Frome farmhouse when they are physically able Ethan Frome are cared for by Zeena. Despite injuries from the smash-up, including a permanent limp, Ethan manages to support the three of them by resuming working on the farm and in the sawmill. When The Narrator stays Ethan Frome at the Frome farm, over twenty years after the smash-up, he is surprised Ethan Frome find that Mattie — crippled by the accident — complains incessantly. In fact, because the women are now so much alike, he has difficulty distinguishing them. Next About Ethan Frome. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks? My Preferences My Reading List. Ethan Ethan Frome Edith Wharton. Book Summary. Adam Bede has been added to your Reading List! Ethan Frome Study Guide | Literature Guide | LitCharts

Ethan Frome is a book by American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Fromein The novel is a framed narrative. The framing story concerns an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield while in the area on business. He spots a limping, Ethan Frome man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his demeanor and carriage. This is Ethan Frome, who is a lifelong resident and a local fixture of the community. Ethan Frome is described by Ethan Frome narrator as "the most striking figure in Starkfield", "the ruin of a man" with a "careless powerful look Curious, the narrator sets out to learn about him. 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, and the narrator fails to learn much more from Frome's fellow townspeople other than that Ethan's attempt at higher education decades before was thwarted by the sudden illness of his father following an injury, forcing his return to the farm to assist his parents, never to leave again. Because people seem not to wish to speak other than in vague and general terms about Frome's past, the narrator's curiosity grows, but he learns little more. Chance circumstances arise that allow the narrator to hire Frome as his driver for a week. A severe snowstorm during Ethan Frome of their journeys forces Frome to allow the narrator to shelter at his home one night. Just Ethan Frome the two are entering Frome's house, the prologue ends and the framed story begins. The narration switches from the first-person narrator of the prologue to a limited third-person narrator. We Ethan Frome embark on the "first" chapter Chapter Iwhich takes place twenty-four years prior. In Chapter I, Ethan is waiting outside a church dance for Mattie, his wife's Ethan Frome, who has for a year lived with Ethan and his sickly wife, Zeena Zenobiain order to help out around the house and farm. Mattie is given the occasional night off to entertain herself in town as partial recompense for helping care for the Fromes, and Ethan has the duty of walking her home. Ethan Frome is quickly clear that Ethan has deep feelings for Mattie. Passing the graveyard, he thinks in an intense moment of foreshadowing that, "We'll always go on Ethan Frome here together, and some day she'll lie there beside me. When Zeena leaves for an overnight visit to seek treatment for her various complaints and symptoms in a neighboring town, Ethan is excited to have an evening alone with Mattie. During this evening, the narrator reveals small actions that show that they each have feelings for the other, including a lingering of touching hands on the milk jug, although neither openly declares their love. Mattie makes supper and retrieves from a high shelf Zeena's treasured pickle dish, which Zeena, in a symbol of her stingy nature, never uses, in order to protect it. Mattie uses it to present Ethan with a simple supper, and disaster ensues when the Fromes' cat jumps on the table and knocks it off, shattering it beyond repair. Ethan tries to help by setting the dish's pieces neatly in the cupboard, presenting the false impression of wholeness if not examined closely, with plans to purchase some glue and fix it as soon as he can. In the morning Ethan's hopes for more private time with Mattie are foiled by the presence of his hired Ethan Frome. Ethan then goes into town to buy glue for the broken pickle dish, and upon his return finds Ethan Frome Zeena has also come home. Zeena retreats upstairs, proclaiming her illness, and refusing supper because she is not hungry. Ethan Frome, she informs Ethan that she plans to send Mattie away and has already hired another girl to replace her, claiming that she needs someone more efficient because her health is failing more rapidly than ever. Ethan is angry and frustrated to the point of panic by the thought of losing Mattie, and he is also worried for Mattie, who has no other place to go and no Ethan Frome to support herself in the world. He returns to the kitchen and joins Mattie, Ethan Frome tries to eat, but he is distraught and suddenly blurts out Zeena's plans to send Mattie 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, who has decided that she is hungry after all. After supper, Zeena discovers the Ethan Frome pickle dish and is heartbroken and enraged; this betrayal cements her determination to send Mattie away. Ethan, miserable at the Ethan Frome of losing Mattie and worried sick about her fate, considers running away with Mattie, but he lacks the money to do so. He feels that he cannot abandon Zeena because he knows that she would neither be able to run the farm nor sell it the poor quality of the place has been discussed at several points in the story already. Every plan he thinks of is impossible to carry out, and he remains in despair and frantically trying to think of a way Ethan Frome change this one more turn of events against his ability to have a happy life. The next morning, Zeena describes her specific and imminent plans for sending Mattie on her way. Panicked, Ethan rushes into town to try to get a cash advance from a customer for a load of lumber in order to have the money with which to abscond with Mattie. His plan is unhinged by guilt, however, when his customer's wife expresses compassion, understanding, and empathy for Ethan's lot, which has involved the repeated duty to care for others, first his parents, then his sickly wife. He realizes that, Ethan Frome all people, he cannot cheat this kindly woman and her husband out of money, since she is one of the few people who have ever seemed to have seen or openly acknowledged Ethan's lifelong plight, Ethan Frome well as Ethan Frome honor in fulfilling his duties. Ethan returns to the farm and picks up Mattie to take her to the train station. They stop at a hill upon which they had once planned to go sledding and decide to sled together as a way of delaying their sad parting, after which Ethan Frome anticipate never seeing each other again. After their first run, Mattie suggests a suicide pact: that they go down again, and steer the sled directly into a tree, so they will never be parted and so that they may spend their last moments Ethan Frome. Ethan first refuses to go through with the plan, but in his despair that mirrors Mattie's, he ultimately agrees, and they get on the sled, clutching each Ethan Frome. On the way down, a vision of Zeena's face startles Ethan into swerving a bit, but he corrects their course, and they crash headlong and at high speed into the elm tree. Ethan regains consciousness after the accident but Mattie lies beside him, "cheeping" in pain like a small wounded animal. Ethan is also injured, and the reader is left to understand that this was the "smash-up" that Ethan Frome Ethan with a permanent limp. The epilogue returns to the framing story and the first-person narrator point of view of the prologue. The framing story resumes precisely where it Ethan Frome off: just as Frome and his visitor, the narrator, enter the Frome household in the story's present. The narrator hears Ethan Frome complaining female voice, and it is easy to assume that it belongs to the never-happy Zeena, but in the final twist of the story, it emerges that it is in fact Mattie, who now lives with the Fromes due to having been paralyzed in the accident. Her misery over her plight and dependence has embittered and "soured" her, and, with Ethan Frome reversed, Zeena is now Ethan Frome to care for her as well as Ethan. Further illustrating the psychosomatic nature of most of Zeena's previous complaints, she has now found the strength Ethan Frome necessity to be the caregiver rather than being the invalid. In an agonizing irony, Ethan and Mattie have gotten their wish to stay together, but in mutual unhappiness and discontent, with Mattie helpless and paralyzed, and with Zeena Ethan Frome a constant presence between the two of them. The story of Ethan Frome had initially begun as Ethan Frome French-language composition that Wharton had to write while studying the Ethan Frome in Paris[2] but several years later she took the story up Ethan Frome and transformed it into the novel it now is, basing her sense of New England culture and place on her ten years of living at The Mount, her home in Lenox, Massachusetts. She would read portions of her novel-in-progress each Ethan Frome 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 in Lenox, Massachusetts. They crashed into a lamppost while sledding down Courthouse Hill in Lenox. A girl named Emily Hazel Crosby was killed in the accident. Wharton learned of the Ethan Frome 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. 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 Englandthe 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. 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 Ethan Frome their Ethan Frome. She began writing Ethan Frome in the early s when she was still married. The novel was criticized by Lionel Trilling as lacking in moral or ethical significance. Jeffrey Lilburn notes that some find "the suffering endured Ethan Frome 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 Ethan Frome and cultural realities that produced and allowed such suffering. 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. 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 Ethan Frome order to demonstrate Ethan Frome cruelty of the culture surrounding women in that period. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the film adaptation, see Ethan Frome film. The Ethan Frome York Times. Archived from the original on May 19, Retrieved Ethan Frome: A Nightmare of Need. Twayne's Masterwork Studies. New York City: Twayne Publishers. Edith Wharton: A Biography. October 8, NovelGuide: Ethan Frome. February 24, Ethan Frome1st edition of Ethan Frome2nd edition ofwith added introduction by the author. Edith Wharton. The Book of the Homeless Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons Wikisource. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ethan Frome. Wikisource has original text related to this article: Ethan Frome1st edition of Wikisource has original text related to this article: Ethan Frome Frome2nd edition ofwith added introduction by the author.