124. ETHAN FROME

Edith Wharton 1911

Ethan Frome catches the attention of an unnamed narrator who is new to the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The narrator ponders about Ethan's sullen demeanor, the circumstances surrounding the smash-up accident that caused his limp and his apparent devotion to the small town that seems always gray and wintry. In this remarkable novella, the mystery surrounding Ethan Frome vividly unfolds as we learn about his life as a struggling farmer, his loveless marriage to Zeena and his unspoken and unrealized passion for Matti.

'I had known something of New England village life long before I made my home in the same county as my imaginary Starkfield; though, during the years spent there, certain of its aspects became much more familiar to me.'(opening lines)

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... 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.'(3)

"Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.'(13)

'He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, of such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of 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 winters.'(14-15)

'The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effect produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead. "It's like being in an exhausted receiver," he thought.'(27)

'Once or twice in the past he had been fairly disquieted by Zenobia's way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences. Of late, however, there had been no room in his thoughts for such vague apprehensions. Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an unsubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight of sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of it being otherwise.'(39)

'These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome. The motion of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him, and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired.'(46)

'"I've been in a dream, and this is the only evening we'll ever have together." The return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anaesthetic. His body and brain ached with indescribable weariness, and he could think of nothing to say or to do that should arrest the mad flight of the moments.'(95)

'With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was.'(143)

"I know we can fetch it... It's waiting for us, it seems to know."(170)

A Penguin book Edition, 1987

181 pages

Book owned

A fantastic review of the book from Coffee and a Book Chick is here.