Introduction
In 1911, Edith Wharton completed and published her masterpiece and most famous novel, Ethan Frome. Readers of her other pieces (myself not included) will likely note a departure from her previous work as far as prose and dialogue go, finding a simpler, easier read. It is in some circles actually considered a novelette rather than a novel : I assume that modern copies of it are a little over a hundred pages long1. Its reading is slightly difficult by today's standards, but is still elegant and sharp. Interestingly enough, Wharton herself was a wealthy, middle aged member of New York's high society when she composed Frome, the tale of a lonely farmer. She likely did not spend a day of her life inside of a home like Frome owns in the story. The fact that she managed to tell the thing with such realism while simultaneously breaking away from her accustomed style of writing is truly remarkable. Indeed, one has to wonder where she had the idea for the story to begin with. . .
((The copy of Ethan Frome I had for my own reading was printed sometime in the 1930s. It's a blank, blood-red hardcover, with fire damage at the spine (most of which flaked off long ago) and at one or two of the corners. Printed across the front is simply Ethan Frome, in calligraphy that looks almost as though it was painted on by hand. Obviously, most of us would be hard pressed to locate a copy like this, and, once locating it, most of us would then be hard pressed to actually take the monstrosity home with us and read it; but the damaged media on which Wharton's story was in this case transcribed only enhanced the reading material within. The book was humbled just as Wharton simplified her language to tell the story of a lonely farmer. Messed up books can be a treasure ... this one is one of my all-time favorites.))
Writing as a sign of the times : Disillusionment from the First World War
The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night was so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray against the snow, clumps of bushes made black stains on it, and the basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across the endless undulations.
--Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
The reader notices almost immediately the painstaking detail in which Wharton describes Starkville, Massachussetts, which is the physical setting of the piece. There, people are more preoccupied with survival than with cultural advancement. Wharton paints them with a seamless gaze, juxtaposing their struggle through an apparently meaningless existence with the cold, hard backdrop in which they base it. Starkville, Massachussetts is a place inextricably tied with, even exemplified by, the fight against resignation and torpor. Ethan Frome is likely one of the most depressing books you will ever read.
But why?
The very bleak feel of Ethan Frome is a result of both the tendencies in the author and the times in which that author wrote. The content of a story must be taken simultaneously with the period and circumstances in which it is written. Frome is no different, despite its simplicity: stories never come out of nowhere. The air of hopelessness and solitude Frome presents owes itself to the mass-depression the world fell into in the years of World War I.
The United States at the turn of the century was a radically different place from the United States of the 1930s. Before the trauma of the first World War, Americans were a group possessed of a very optimistic outlook and a genuine belief that world peace was a viable possiblity. President Wilson’s League of Nations, for example, was the perfect show of the American resolution to change the world through compromise and negotiation. It was that very optimism that ralied America's muscle in World War I. However, when the fighting commenced in full swing during the 1910s, optimism, faced with the brutal deaths of millions of people, gave way to disillusionment and fatalism. Edith Wharton was not immune to the blow. She actually joined the many compatriots who emigrated to France to escape American society. Her dejection, and the dejection of her potential audience, helped patch the sad fabric of her story.
Main Characters
The Narrator
An interesting aspect of Ethan Frome is in the way Wharton plays with perspective. The entire story is technically related through the perspective of the narrator, but the narrator has almost nothing to do with the story : presumably, this person is male, and we find out early on in the novel, mostly through offhand references, that he is a labor negotiator. We get the sense that he is knowledgeable, erudite, and perhaps a little young. He is mildly likeable. Otherwise, he is merely a static entity through which the events of the story are related to the reader. He perhaps owes his impartiality and objectivity to his profession (we really know him as nothing more than a negotiator). The detail in the story (among other things) leads to the assumption that the narrator, after the occurrences of which he speaks (again, he is almost completely detached), found a nice quiet place and wrote it all down. That would be another explanation for the sharp difference between physical descripion and character development within the novel : for example, the narrator takes paragraphs to describe Frome's farm, but gives only scant details about the characters in the story. One can only assume that the narrator does not expound upon the "personas" of those involved in the story he tells simply because he can't.
Ethan Frome
Ethan is likely the poorest man living in the town of Starkville, Massachussetts. An accident of some sort, which is one of the main sticking points of the novel, has left his body warped and disfigured. Ethan is an almost absurd monolith of a silent man; he is incredibly strong-willed as well, but just the same, the reader gets the sense that the attrition of a hard life has lent itself to a perhaps imminent resignation from existence. Just what that attrition was, however, is the great mystery of the story, the answer to which is revealed little by little, bit by bit; the reader notices immediately that the relationship he has with his wife Zeena consists almost entirely of brief, curt exchanges, during which the reader can easily sense the sharp bitterness just barely veiled by each side. The reader finds out that Ethan married Zeena more out of fear of loneliness than out of love; Zeena, seven years Ethan's senior, came into Ethan's life via his ailing mother, acting as her nurse. Ethan's bitterness is amplified by Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver, with whom Ethan falls in love.
Zenobia Frome
Zenoboia (Zeena) Frome, Ethan's suspicious, querulous wife, is recognizeable as the story's antagonist almost from the outset. She seems to suffer from an illness of some sort, the nature of which is never fully revealed to the reader, and which requires treatments that drain almost all of Ethan's funds. The obscurity of Zeena's condition invites speculation that there isn't any illness at all--that she is merely a hypochondriac, or draining Ethan's funds out of bitterness. She seems to "fall ill" just after marrying Ethan. She refuses to lift a finger on the farm while Ethan slaves to keep his farm afloat and his funds strong enough to take care of her demands. Through her inactivity she makes snide comments to Ethan, and constantly deprecates Mattie Silver's housekeeping prowess. ((You will grow to truly hate Zenobia Frome.)) The depreciation of Mattie is obviously a manifestation of her jealousy, which she takes no pains to hide. A curious element of Ethan Frome is that love/hate relationship Zeena seems to have with Ethan--if not for the jealousy, we would be inclined to think that Zeena has nothing but hatred for the man.
Mattie Silver
Mattie Silver, object of Ethan's passions, secures residence on the Frome farm after being orphaned and unemployed. She immediately strikes the reader as the only ray of light in the whole book (and, for that matter, in Ethan's life) : her carefree spirit and humble vitality stand as an absolute contrast to the resigned Ethan and bitter Zeena, drawing out in the reader a genuine concern for the other characters and hope for good end for them. Despite Zeena's attacks upon her domestic ineptitude, Mattie works tirelessly to impress her. You'll notice an association of the color red with Mattie Silver : a red streak in the hair, a red ribbon as a perpetual adornment about the neck. This serves to further distance her from her background; her personality places her apart from the other inhabitants of the Frome farm while the red in her hair and clothing outline her against the drab, colorless Starkville landscape. The reader can only hope that her unendurable sweetness is not subdued by the harshness abound ...
A Summary of the Plot
((The following is a somewhat basic overview of the plot and occurrences within the novel. I will attempt to convey a sense of the piece with as much clarity as I can; and, in doing so, will likely include bits and pieces that might spoil the book for those that haven't read it yet. My intent here is to create an academically sound study guide. Be warned ...))
A full version of Ethan Frome can be found at
http://www.americanliterature.com/EF/EFINDX.HTML
And, courtesy of kthejoker, right here on E2.
A stay on the farm
2
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.
--Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
The story begins thus, with that detached, almost nonchalant description of the mysterious creature known as Ethan Frome. That carefree air evidently gives way to stronger fascinations, for the narrator starts soon thereafter to ask about Frome, hoping to get a little insight on the events that warped his body and left him so hard and sad. Inquiries yield, as can be plainly seen from the passage above, conflicting and vague theories. It is expressed definitively that Frome lives on a dilapidated farm that fell into his hands twenty years before through the deaths of his parents. The "smash-up" that damaged his body is at this point purely a matter of speculation.
Because of an illness that strikes the horses of the Starkfield stables, Ethan offers to take the narrator to his job at Corbury Junction on his own animals, and the narrator’s interest in the silent Ethan grows further despite his reluctance to divulge information about himself. When the narrator casually refers to an engineering job that he had once held in Florida, he discovers that Ethan also holds an interest in the field. He is also surprised when Ethan reads one of his books on popular science that he had accidentally left in the sleigh. But Ethan is hesitant to discuss his interest in more detail, especially because he seems frustrated that he had never heard many of the new theories and concepts that had emerged in the world of science while he had been mired in Starkfield.
During a night of escpecially fierce weather, Frome extends the use of his house for a night to the narrator. The narrator gladly accepts Frome's offer, presumably hoping for a more lengthy history of the man's life, and Frome guides them to his farm for the night. It is evident in the descriptions provided by the narrator that the farm is in an unfavorable condition; family tombstones rise from the snow surrounding the structures as a silent reminder of what lies ahead, and the inescapable rut in the Starkville life. Perhaps the most notable feature of Frome's farm-home is a missing L-shaped hall that once connected the house to the woodshed and cow-barn; this can be taken to symbolize a sort of castration, or unwillful distancing from the fruits of the earth. Nevertheless, the corrolation between the missing "L" and Ethan's own deterioration is intriguing.
Wharton creates an almost hellish atmosphere inside Ethan Frome's house--the furniture, hardly visible in the darkness, is ancient and barely usable; somewhere a voice drones and complains, but is left with enough absense of description to fortify the reader's imagination. You think immediately that the person behind that droning voice is in unbearable pain ... and the way Wharton finishes up this bit of introduction is wonderful. It is in that night in Frome's house that the narrator finds the painful answers to all his questions.
Twenty years back
The setting changes now to twenty years before the narrator's stay on the Frome farm, and begins under this new gaze to watch Ethan in the throes of love for Mattie Silver. He is in his twenties now, strong still in body and will. His farm is in good shape now. We see him for the first time in this new guise waiting outside a dance hall for Mattie, in the hopes that he will be able to escort her back to the farm. Wharton piles on the heartache immediately; in describing Mattie from Ethan's eye the reader becomes fixed on Ethan's plight, and the problems of betrayal presented by his feelings.
Ethan is secretly very pleased with Mattie's gratitude and happiness when he finds her after the dance. Ethan shows Mattie a hazardous sled-run, where, waiting at the crook of a sharp curve, is an elm tree. Ethan boasts that he can take the run with no danger of hitting the tree, and promises Mattie that he will someday treat her to a ride there.
Several days later Zeena announces her plans for a pilgrimage to a doctor in another town on the basis of her worsening illness. Her message is conveyed with such curtness as to suggest loaded barbs and deliberate hurtfulness. Ethan, by this point likely immune to Zeena's thorns, silently rejoices : time without Zeena is time alone with Mattie. ((This is itself loaded--you get the sense from the language Wharton uses that Ethan is going to spend a night alone with Mattie, as opposed to time alone with Mattie; I can assure you that, despite Wharton's loaded words, that Ethan's intentions are as innocent as can be.))
A night fraught with symbolism
That night, Mattie fixes a special dinner and even drags Zeena's prized red pickle dish ((Mattie and red go together, remember)) from hiding to sit on the table as a centerpiece as she and Ethan eat. It is an awkward yet charming affair, in which the reader feels Ethan's apprehension with painful accuracy. The idyllic atmosphere is breached only by Zeena's black cat who, as Ethan and Mattie chat, skulks around the house eyeing them suspiciously. Here the fickleness of the essence of character shows through; the cat becomes Zeena just as the dilapidated farm became Frome, disabled and incomplete. There is also the conclusion that the cat and Zeena represent a witch-and-familiar pair in the old time sense; Zeena the witch keeps a keen eye on events that she would not want to miss through the eyes of her familiar.
In the course of the night, the cat breaks Zeena's pickle dish, morphing an otherwise almost perfect night into a disaster, and dooming all minute traces of "things that should not have happened" to scrutinization and subsequent punishment by Zeena. Mattie is hysterical; she is unable to make a good impression as things stand, and the destruction of a prized pickle dish just might be justification for her expulsion.
But not if Ethan has anything to say about it! He promises the distraught and fearful Mattie that he will find glue the next day and fix the shattered dish before Zeena's return. With Ethan thusly cast as hero, he and Mattie retreat to their respective beds and sleep. Ethan is pleased with the night's events, even with the realization that he did not even touch Mattie's hand.
Expulsion
Ethan sets out the next morning as promised to search the markets of Starkville for a bottle of glue, finding a neighbor to retrieve Zeena in his stead. After several frustrating attempts to locate some glue, (the reader is bewildered that there is hardly glue in Starkville), including shopping at rival stores, Ethan finally manages to get hold of some and return home.
By the time he has arrived on the farm, however, Zeena has already returned from the doctor. He is unable to fix the pickle dish, but reassures Mattie that he will still do so if presented with the opportunity. He then extends a dinner offer to the neighbor who retrieved Zeena, but is politely refuted : Zeena has evidently not returned from the doctor a happy woman, and made as much clear during the journey back.
Then comes the bombshell : Zeena announces to Ethan (again, almost triumphantly) that she was ordered by the doctor to hire a permanent maid. This means that Mattie has to go. Mattie bursts into tears and Ethan is livid, protesting that his wages can't possibly be enough to hire permanent help. Zeena replies coolly that with Mattie gone, there will be one less mouth to feed. ((I told you that you will grow to hate her.))
Then it seems that the deal is sealed : Zeena finds the shards of her prized pickle dish. After Mattie confesses to bringing the dish out, Zeena explodes, telling her that she knew that she should have never taken her in and that people had advised her not to do so. Ethan, upset by this exchange between the two, retreats to his private parlor and tries to devise a plan so that he and Mattie could stay together. ((Ethan's inability to stand up to Zeena is extremely frustrating. I was reminded of Hamlet.))
"You wanted to make the supper-table pretty; and you waited till my back was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I've got, and wouldn't never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner, or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge-" Zeena paused with a gasp, as if terrified by her own evocation of the sacrilege. "You're a bad girl, Mattie Silver, and I always known it. It's the way your father begun, and I was warned of it when I took you, and I tried to keep my things where you couldn't get at 'em- and now you've took from me the one I cared for most of all-" She broke off in a short spasm of sobs that passed and left her more than ever like a shape of stone.
"If I'd 'a' listened to folks, you'd 'a' gone before now, and this wouldn't 'a' happened," she said; and gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body...
--Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
Departure
Ethan, while in his parlor, concocts a wild idea to elope with Mattie to the West and leave Zeena with the farm. He even begins to write a “Dear John” letter to Zeena, telling her that he is sorry that he and Mattie have gone away together. But he then realizes that they could never find enough money to make the trip, and if they could, he would be at a loss to support Mattie anyway. And Zeena could certainly not take care of the farm by herself. Completely hopeless, he realizes that there is no way out of the situation and that he must go along with what Zeena has commanded.
The next morning we find that Zeena already has a girl that she has hired as the permanent help, and that she has made arrangements with a family friend to take Mattie to the train station from which she will depart. Ethan asserts one final effort to keep Mattie on the farm; he departs to make an attempt at getting a cash advance from a neighbor to who he had sold some lumber. His attempt is unsuccessful, and depression and resignation finally begin to settle in ...
When Ethan returns to the farm, he announces that he will take Mattie to the train station, and refutes the bits of protest Zeena offers. He hurries to help load Mattie's possessions into the sleigh he will drive, and finds her in tears. In comforting her he almost tells it all ... ((At this point you can't stand it that Ethan doesn't just confess everything.)) Ethan is at this point in a state of silent hysteria, condemned, it seems, to live the remainder of his years under Zeena's heel, without the redemption of the joy Mattie brings.
Confession
The sled ride is quiet and excruciating. Ethan's mind is wild; he wonders if he should confess his feelings right there on the sleigh ((in accordance with dramatic logic, the time just before a cataclysmic severing of ties is perfect for the disclosure of a crush)), but he is stilled by the unsettling mystery of Mattie's feelings for him. They drive past a place known as Shadow Pond, where there had once been a church picnic to which Mattie had invited Ethan but met refusal. Ethan had ended up coming to the picnic and surprising her; rememberance of the picnic overfills Mattie with emotion, and she produces the beginnings of the Dear John letter that Ethan had scribbled in the parlor and demands his intentions. Ethan finally confesses his feelings and finds to his immense delight that Mattie's feelings for him are mutual.
Bloodletting
Under the light of this new revelation Ethan decides almost on impulse to take Mattie on the sled ride he had promised her days before. They make their way up to the run and take it through with a small on-hand sled, whipping safely past the curve with the deadly elm. In the rush of the run they realize the despair they face in a life apart, and in the hike back up Mattie proposes a solution : a second run down the slope, ending with a deadly crash into the elm.
Ethan, in his state of hysteria, agrees; once reaching the top of the run, he and Mattie seat themselves on the sled (he in front) and push off. On the way down, Ethan is almost diverted by a vision of Zeena but manages through sheer force of will to stay on track; the sled, Mattie and Ethan and all, smash violently into the tree ...
Ethan regains consciousness shortly thereafter, to the sound of pathetic chirping; it is Mattie, maimed.
Role reversal in tragedy
Perspective jumps ahead twenty years, and returns to the narrator's time, just after he and Ethan have entered the house. The narrator spots two women in the kitchen--one is decrepit, so thin that she is like a sheet of paper against her wheelchair; the other tall and seemingly robust in health.
The one in the wheelchair is Mattie. It is her voice that is droning hellishly in the beginning of the story; she has become like Zeena, youth and vitality stripped away on impact and long since hopeless of return. Ethan seems almost apologetic of the state of his home. Presumably, it is here that the narrator culled the beginning pieces of Ethan's story ...
The next day the narrator searches the residents of Starkville for word on the aftermath of the deadly sled ride. He learns that both Ethan and Mattie were almost killed as a result of their stunt and that Zeena nursed the two of them back to health and now takes care of them; apparently, Zeena cast away her hypochondria in light of the smash-up. The general consensus in the town of Starkville is that Mattie and Ethan would have been better off perishing in that ride; the sadness in Frome's house in the narrator's time is unendurable, and the residents within are resigned to a lifetime of cold and misery. ((This, readers, is a prime example of tragic irony, worthy of a slot on the same shelf of the inauspicious Greek pieces of old.)) They have become the embodyment of the Starkville syndrome, gelded to the role of the town story of tragedy. The reader is prompted to select the lesser of three evils : death in the sled; obedience of Zeena's decrees; present state. It's a terrible situation in which the reader can only be thankful that there is no one actually involved, but just the same Wharton manages, despite toying, to present the people of Ethan Frome so convincingly that their plight evokes genuine, heartfelt depression.
1 The copy that I read, described in the second paragraph, is 181 pages long. This is because the text in that edition is very large: each line fits about ten words, and there are 21 lines of text on each page. AEton informs me that hir new copy comes in at 157 pages.
2These headings are not chapter titles in the book, and to not correspond chronogically with such; I use them here to accompany my method for sectioning up the plot with a sense of what is coming in each respective section.