LBravo-presenting Ethan Frome (Word)

 

ABOUT EDITH WHARTON 

E.W. was almost surely born in 1862 (like many other biographical facts, she kept her birth year secret, because gossip held that the family's English tutor—not George Frederic Jones—was really Edith's father) in New York, in the paternal family of the Joneses, that were a very wealthy and socially prominent family. She was also related to the Rensselaers, the most prestigious of the old patroon (landholder) families.

Wharton was born during the Civil War, although she does not mention it, except to give a reason to her family’s travels to Europe (in particular, in France, Italy, Germany and Spain); indeed, the war had caused American currency’s depreciation and this wasn’t positive for the Joneses, since they worked in real estate.

She rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time (which were intended for women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties), considering them superficial and oppressive. Indeed, she thought the key to life was “to be happy in small ways”.  

Edith wanted more education than she received, so she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends. However, American children's stories containing slang were forbidden in Wharton's childhood home and her mother forbade her also to read novels until she was married, and Edith obeyed those commands: we consequently understand that she had a very strict family, to whom she was very obedient.

In 1885 (23 years old), despite her lifelong love for the lawyer Walter Berry, she married unhappily Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, from whom she received her surname, which originally was Jones. He was 12 years senior than her and came from a well-established Boston family; he was a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love for travel. 

From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from acute depression, and the couple ceased their extensive travel, living almost exclusively at their estate The Mount (in Massachusetts). During those same years, Wharton herself was said to suffer from depression, and also asthma.

In 1908 her husband's mental state was determined to be incurable. In the same year, she began an extramarital affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for The Times, in whom she found an intellectual partner. She divorced Edward Wharton in 1913 after 28 years of marriage, after it emerged that he had embezzled his wife’s money to “fund a love nest” for another woman.

Edith Wharton later died of a stroke in 1937 at Le Pavillon Colombe, in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (France).

 

HOW HAS HER LIFE INFLUENCED HER WAY OF WRITING?

Writing novels was Edith Wharton’s way of coming to terms with the disappointments of her life and her inner side.

There is a Puritan in Edith Wharton, and this Puritan is always insisting that we must face the unpleasant and the ugly, that usually are people in bad life conditions. Let’s think about Zenobia and Ethan: they’re not “Greek Gods” and they live in poverty.

In the novel “Ethan Frome” Zenobia is always presented only with her husband’s surname, as Edith Wharton is known by us: this was a habit in Puritan society after a woman had married.

A central theme in her novels was the conflict between social and individual fulfillment. For some people it was difficult to avoid pressure from society and behave according to what their mind and heart were telling them. She has always been constricted in a lot of choices that she didn’t felt like properly hers (her first husband, her first reading choices,...) and for this reason her art products reflect upon the distance from the reproduction of society’s imaginary (that was a duty as a Puritan) and the individual fulfillment. Let’s think about Ethan:  he doesn’t move from Starkfield in order to keep his good reputation as a man who followed his duties as son, husband, ...

She has also been a victim of society’s gossip since she was born (as the Fromes family becomes after the accident), and for this reason she also reflects upon the difficulty to avoid pressure from society.

She also presents forbidden and unhappy love relationships (as some of hers); it is emblematic of this the unable realization of the relationship between Mattie and Ethan.

Still, it is also celebrated her love for culture and the importance given to it by the Puritan society: acculturated people are always presented as higher than the others in her writings (for example: Ethan shows interest on a science book that the engineer has with him on a travel on his sleigh; Mrs Ruth Hale is highly considered and “far” from her neighbours for her wide culture).

What is more, in Ethan Frome, she presents as first narrator an engineer that had moved to New York for work, and the USA at her time were affected by a massive immigration of people searching better work conditions.

 

HER DESCRIPTIVE STYLE

She uses a lot of descriptions in her writings in order to give more realism to her products. In addiction, descriptions of the environment often reflect the mood of a character, his/her attitude,… Indeed, they are useful to convey better the personality of a specific character.

As a matter of fact, “Ethan Frome” is set in a very harsh and silent environment (the town of Starkfield, in Massachusetts) that is a metaphor of Ethan’s former and Zeena’s lives, full of solitude and depression, and conveys better the presentation of Zeena and Ethan as the victims of the story. The third person narrator himself tells that Ethan had been formed by the climate of his town.

“Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street, past the bank and Michael Eady's new brick store and Lawyer Varnum's house with the two black Norway spruces at the gate. Opposite the Varnum gate, where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley, the church reared its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs with heavily blanketed horses.”

 

THE NARRATIVE VOICES IN ETHAN FROME

Throughout the novel we meet two narrators. The first one is the first person narrative voice in the prologue and the epilogue: a nosey engineer who is struck by Ethan’s physical appearance.

“I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield”

The second one is a third person omniscient narrative voice, that narrates us Ethan’s probable story connected to the accident which shaped him.

“Now he thought she understood him, and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired.”

 

LOVE IN ETHAN FROME

Love is presented as tragic: it seems to be put on an unreachable pedestal. Every romantic moment is lived with tension and anxiety, because the characters are stuck in a love triangle from which escape is impossible. This kind of prohibited love probably interested Edith for her own experience of love and also for the fact that she belonged to a Puritan society, where this kind of love was extremely criticised and rejected.

“It pleased Ethan to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts; but he felt a pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness.”

I am attracted too by this kind of prohibited love, because it’s not externalized as people do nowadays: the two persons considered feel society’s judgment on their shoulders and so they remain on an incomplete satisfaction level for social pressure; this generates suspense, so you are consequently steadily in tension and pushed to continue the reading.

 

WHAT IS ETHAN ATTRACTED BY?

Ethan at the beginning was attracted by any person who could distract him from loneliness and keep him away from his sadness breaking silence.

However, he marries a woman that after marriage becomes extremely needy, unappreciative, constantly complaining, harsh, unloving. He is constantly exposed to all of her negative qualities, so when someone with opposite qualities (both in personality and look) comes along (Mattie) he is attracted by her. However, at the end of the novel, after the accident, we find that Mattie is more like Zeena than we originally were led to believe: the accident took a physical and emotional toll on her. She has dramatically aged and also lost her sweetness and charm that originally attracted Ethan to her, so Ethan now doesn’t love her anymore.

 

THE VICTIM OF THE NOVEL

I consider both victims Zeena and Ethan. Ethan is a person that feels too much his status duties on his shoulders, and for this reason he never does what he really wants (like moving to another place, or escaping with Mattie); what is more, he married Zeena as a kind of woman and with the marriage she completely changed, so I can’t blame him too much for having fall in love with another person.

However, also Zeena is a kind of victim, because she invites at her home a cousin to help her, and Mattie thinks almost only at having fun, and then becomes also the lover of her husband. In spite of everything, at the end she is able to force the two lovers to an unhappy life, having in this way her revenge, so she’s a kind of “winner”. Who is still a loser, a person condemned only to unhappiness, is Ethan.