Girl in hyacinth blue chapter 6 summary

Final Literature Essay

Topic 1: It has been written that "in many ways the world of My Ántonia is still with us, a neglected but significant part of America." The same may be said of The Marrow of Tradition. What relevance do these novels have today, and what do they reveal to us about our collective past?

Topic 2: Identify and discuss the main themes of Ethan Frome and Billy Budd.

Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton

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The Life and Works of Edith Wharton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Echoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Time Line of Wharton’s Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

The Historical Context of Ethan Frome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

Characters in Ethan Frome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii

Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction by Edith Wharton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv

Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Plot Analysis of Ethan Frome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Creative Writing Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Critical Writing Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Selections for Additional Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Handbook of Literary Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Table of Contents

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF

Edith Wharton

EEddiitthh WWhhaarrttoonn ((11886622––11993377)).. In 1862, Edith Newbold Jones was born into a wealthy and distinguished New York family. Her family traveled to Europe when she was three years old to escape the inflation that followed the Civil War. There they remained for eight years. Her private education by a gov- erness was supplemented by her own voracious reading. At the age of seventeen, Wharton made her debut into society. Her first engagement was broken by her fiancé’s mother, who was angered by the cold reception she received from the Jones family. Shortly after this incident, Wharton met Walter Berry and, although they did not meet again for sev- eral years, the two became lifelong friends. In 1885, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, a rich Boston banker twelve years her senior.

In the early 1890s, Wharton began to suffer from severe depression. After a series of rest cures, she recovered only to dis- cover her husband’s mental illness. In 1901, she designed and built The Mount, a country house in Lenox, Massachusetts, which served as a retreat from society where she could work steadily. Concern for her husband’s ill health kept her from making The Mount her permanent home, but for several years the Whartons spent summer and autumn there. Teddy Wharton’s condition grew worse; beginning in the spring of 1908, he had several affairs and used his wife’s money to sup- port his social interests. Wharton had an affair as well, with Morton Fullerton, also a writer. A stay in a sanitarium seemed to help Teddy’s condition, but Wharton’s marriage did not improve. She decided to sell The Mount and move permanently to France. Wharton’s unhappy and unsatisfy- ing marriage to Teddy Wharton ended in divorce in 1913.

Wharton lived as an expatriate in France for the rest of her life. During World War I she dedicated four years to the war effort, serving as the head of the American committee of an organization called the Accueil Franco-American, which dis- tributed meals, clothing, and information. When asked by the queen of Belgium to aid 650 orphans, she established the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee to care for the children

iv ETHAN FROME

Edith Wharton

and place them in homes; she took six children into her own home. To support the cause, Wharton organized The Book of the Homeless, a compilation of works donated by musicians, such as Igor Stravinsky; artists, including Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin; and writers, including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and William Butler Yeats. Wharton translated the works that were not written in English.

Wharton’s war efforts taxed her health considerably. She spent her last winters at Pavillon Colombe, an eighteenth- century house outside of Paris that she began restoring in 1918, and her last summers at a restored monastery at Hyères. She maintained contact with her homeland through corre- spondence with the people she knew in the United States. She returned to her country rarely, on one occasion in 1923 for only a few days to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University. She was the first woman to be so honored. In 1924, she also became the first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the American Society of Arts and Letters. When Wharton died in 1937, she was buried in Cimetière des Gonards at Versailles next to the ashes of Walter Berry.

From childhood, Wharton had a passion for words and writing. Her efforts were not taken seriously, however, and were often referred to as “scribbling.” When she was sixteen, she wrote a volume of poetry which her parents, despite their disapproval of her literary activity, had published pri- vately. Wharton struggled with the expectations of her social role as a woman of the upper class and her own liter- ary aspirations for many years. During her early years as a writer, she had little encouragement other than from Berry, who greatly influenced her work and aided in the editing and revising process. Her husband did not share her literary and creative interests, but the two did share a passion for travel. After a trip to Europe with her husband in 1888, Wharton’s productivity began to escalate. She published poetry and short stories in magazines such as Scribner’s and Harper’s. Critics called her stories of this period Jamesian in reference to qualities they shared with the writings of American writer Henry James. After reading several of Wharton’s short stories, James wrote to her, and they met in 1903 in London. James visited Wharton at The Mount and in Paris; they also traveled together. The two authors shared an interest in literary theory and in examining the craft of fiction. Wharton was only beginning her career when she met James, who had already published several distinguished works. She was, however, not his disciple; her work is not derivative of his. Rather, each author supported the other.

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF EDITH WHARTON v

During her early career, Wharton distinguished herself with nonfiction writing as well as with short stories. An interest in order and aesthetics and her desire to improve her home in Newport, Rhode Island, led Wharton to collaborate with architect Ogden Codman, Jr. on a book entitled The Decoration of Houses, which was published in 1897. Other nonfiction works include Italian Villas and Their Gardens and Italian Backgrounds. Throughout her career, Wharton wrote about both European and American subjects and settings. Her first novellas, The Touchstone and Sanctuary, were not as well polished as her short stories. They were followed by sev- eral novels which established her as one of America’s great writers. Her first novel, Valley of Decision, addresses a recur- ring theme in her work, the struggle between individual free- dom and the role of society, a struggle Wharton herself knew well. The House of Mirth, published in 1905, established Wharton’s fame and is still considered one of her best works. Two years later, Madame de Treymes and The Fruit of the Tree were published.

Ethan Frome was published in 1911, first serially in Scribner’s Magazine, and then in book form. The novella, now perhaps Wharton’s best known and most widely read work, did not achieve wide commercial or critical success until the 1920s. Wharton’s other novels include The Reef; The Buccaneers; The Custom of the Country, which critics deem one of her highest achievements; and The Age of Innocence, another critically acclaimed novel, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. Wharton’s complete works include other novels; several collections of short stories; collections of poetry; many reviews and articles; The Writing of Fiction, Wharton’s ideas about the craft of writing; and A Backward Glance, her autobiography.

vi ETHAN FROME

ECHOES vii

Echoes: Quotations from Edith Wharton

My poor little group of hungry, lonely New England villagers will live again for a while on their stony hill-side before finally joining their forebears under the vil- lage headstones.

—from Wharton’s introduction to the dramatic adaptation of Ethan Frome

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immatu- rity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

—from The Art of Writing Fiction

The New York of Newland Archer’s day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called “plain people”; an honorable but obscure majority of respectable families who . . . had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans. People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn’t expect the old traditions to last much longer.

—from The Age of Innocence

She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

—from The House of Mirth

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

—from Xingu

There are two ways of spreading light—to be the candle or the mirror that reflects the candle.

Life is the saddest thing, next to death.

If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral issue.

viii ETHAN FROME

1862

1865–1872

1872–1879

1879

1880–1882

1882

1884

1885

1888

early 1890s

1891–1893

1897

1900

1901

1902

1903

1904

1905

1907

1909

1910

1911

Time Line of Wharton’s Life

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton is born on January 24 in New York.

Wharton lives in Europe with her family.

Wharton spends winters in New York and summers at the family home in Newport, Rhode Island.

Wharton makes her social debut.

Wharton travels in France and Italy.

Wharton’s father dies, and Wharton lives with her mother in New York City and Newport.

Wharton meets Walter Berry, who becomes a dear friend.

Edith marries Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton.

Wharton and her husband cruise the Aegean for three months. They return to Land’s End in Newport.

Wharton suffers from depression.

Wharton writes “Bunner Sisters.”

Wharton publishes The Decoration of Houses, a book that she wrote with architect Ogden Codman, Jr.

Wharton publishes her first novella, The Touchstone.

Wharton builds The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Wharton publishes her first novel, Valley of Decision.

Wharton meets fellow author Henry James. Teddy Wharton begins to show signs of mental illness.

Wharton publishes Descent of Man and Other Stories and Italian Villas and Their Gardens.

Italian Backgrounds and The House of Mirth are published.

Wharton travels in France with her husband and Henry James. She pub- lishes Madam de Treymes, A Motor Flight Through France, The Greater Inclination, and The Fruit of the Tree. Teddy Wharton has a severe mental breakdown. The Whartons take a winter home in Paris.

Wharton moves to a new home in France where she will live until 1920. Artemis to Actaeon, a collection of poetry, is published.

Teddy Wharton has continued mental health problems.

Ethan Frome is published. Wharton separates from her husband and sells The Mount.

TIME LINE OF WHARTON’S LIFE ix

The Reef is published.

Wharton divorces her husband. She travels in Germany with Bernard Berenson. The Custom of the Country is published.

Wharton travels in northern Africa with Percy Lubbock and Gaillard Lapsley and in Majorca with Walter Berry. She returns to Paris and orga- nizes war relief.

Fighting France is published.

The Book of the Homeless is published. Wharton takes charge of more than six hundred Belgian orphans. Henry James dies.

Summer and Xingu and Other Stories are published. Belgium awards Wharton the Order of Leopold. She is made a member of the French Legion of Honor.

Wharton buys Pavillon Colombe, a house near Paris.

In Morocco and The Age of Innocence are published. Wharton restores a medieval monastery on the Riviera as a summer home.

Wharton receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence.

Wharton is the first woman to be awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Yale University. She makes her last trip to the United States to receive it.

The Mother’s Recompense and The Writing of Fiction are published.

Twelve Poems and Here and Beyond are published. Wharton charters a yacht to repeat her Aegean cruise of 1888.

Twilight Sleep is published. Walter Berry dies.

Teddy Wharton dies.

Hudson River Bracketed is published. Wharton is seriously ill.

Certain People is published. Wharton is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance, is published.

Ghosts and Buccaneers are published. Wharton dies on August 11, follow- ing a stroke. She is buried in Cimetière des Gonards at Versailles next to the ashes of Walter Berry.

1912

1913

1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

1920

1921

1923

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1934

1937

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF

Ethan Frome

Sources of Ethan Frome and Wharton’s Literary Background

Edith Wharton first wrote the seed of the story that would become Ethan Frome as part of an exercise given to her by her French tutor. The French story is a mere skeleton and differs greatly from the final version of Ethan Frome; in the final ver- sion, Wharton introduces a more complex structure and delves deeper into the emotional despair of the relationships Ethan Frome has with his wife and with Mattie Silver. The idea of the dramatic “smash-up,” mentioned early in the story, may have come from a newspaper account of an actual sledding accident in western Massachusetts (see Selections for Additional Reading, page 111).

Wharton read widely and liked to examine the technical aspects of writing, including how books are structured. The structure of Ethan Frome, in which a first-person narrator opens a frame for the central story, can be compared to Emily Brontë’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. In Wharton’s introduction to Ethan Frome, she tells the reader that she has chosen a form used by Honoré de Balzac in La Grande Bretêche and by Robert Browning in The Ring and the Book (see page xvi). Both of these works explore different versions of a single story and struggle to find truth amid the various details; in the same way, the narrator of Ethan Frome tries to satisfy his own curiosity by collecting the pieces of Frome’s story and putting them together.

Local-Color Writing and Wharton’s New England

The literature of the early nineteenth century in America was dominated by Romanticism and centered in New England. Romantic writers usually wrote sentimental, nos- talgic, and idealistic pieces, designed to inspire lofty emotions. In the latter part of the century, regional local-color writing became increasingly popular. As the United States expanded, interest in other areas of the growing country increased, and writers such as Brett Harte and Mark Twain vividly depicted the unique dialect and social customs of the West or along the Mississippi. During the post–Civil War period, local-color writing, which was often nostalgic in nature, also served to

x ETHAN FROME

celebrate a past way of life and to glorify the far-flung regions of the newly united country. Local-color writers combined elements of Romanticism and Realism to create a detailed, though often idealistic, view of a region. Wharton shunned the sentimentality of many New England local-color writers, noting, “I had had an uneasy sense that the New England of fiction bore little—except a vague botanical and dialectical— resemblance to the harsh and beautiful land as I had seen it.” She believed that the work of such writers as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Sarah Orne Jewett denied the substance of the New England experience. Wharton’s often hard-edged and bleak depictions of New England earned her a great deal of criticism.

Unlike many of Wharton’s novels, including The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, which focus on the lives of the wealthy and socially powerful people of turn-of-the-century New York, Ethan Frome is set in a rural New England village and addresses the lives of the destitute inhabitants of this isolated area. One critic mistakenly called the novella “an interesting example of a successful New England story writ- ten by someone who knew nothing of New England.” In fact, Wharton did know New England, living for several years at The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts. During this time she often drove through the countryside, examining the landscape and the people of the region she toured. In the late nineteenth century, many small communities in rural New England declined, presenting Wharton with a starkness she later depicted in her fiction. Wharton also notes the devastation and grimness of the winters that made life there even more difficult and added to its isolation.

TThhee GGrroowwtthh ooff CCiittiieess aanndd WWeessttwwaarrdd EExxppaannssiioonn

The declining population in rural New England can be attributed to several causes, including an exodus to urban areas and the lure of the West. By 1900, 40 percent of the American population lived in urban areas. Many who lost hope in the crowded cities of the East set out for a new life in the West. The Homestead Act of 1862, which, for a small fee, granted 160 acres of land in the Western Territories to anyone who would live on the land for five years, as well as gold rushes prompted many to seek their fortunes in the West. The lure of the West continued in the following decades.

Ethan Frome is set in Starkfield, an isolated village, during a time when cities were preeminent. Ethan continues to farm as the economy shifts to industry, but like many people of the period, when he finally seeks a way out of the life he knows, he looks to the West for a new start.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF ETHAN FROME xi

Characters in Ethan Frome

Main Characters

EEtthhaann FFrroommee.. The title character of the novel, Ethan Frome is first presented as a broken man, aged beyond his years. His disfiguration and tragic appearance catch the attention of the narrator, who offers a “vision” of the story that led to his “smash-up.”

ZZeennoobbiiaa ((ZZeeeennaa)) FFrroommee.. Zeena is Ethan’s wife. She came to Starkfield to nurse his ailing mother. She often complains of being sickly herself.

MMaattttiiee SSiillvveerr.. Mattie Silver is a cousin to Zeena. After the death of her parents, she was left without home or money. Zeena takes her in to help around the house.

NNaarrrraattoorr.. The narrator’s name is never revealed. He is an out- sider who has been sent to the small town of Starkfield to work on an engineering project. He is fascinated by the story of Ethan Frome, some of which he learns from Harmon Gow, some from Mrs. Ned Hale with whom he is staying, and some when he is thrust into the Frome house.

Minor Characters

HHaarrmmoonn GGooww.. Harmon Gow works at the post office and shares stories and local information with the narrator.

RRuutthh VVaarrnnuumm ((MMrrss.. NNeedd HHaallee)).. The narrator stays with Mrs. Ned Hale, whose maiden name was Ruth Varnum. As young women, Ruth and Mattie were close friends. She was one of the first to see Mattie after the “smash-up.”

NNeedd HHaallee.. Ned Hale is a young man of about Mattie Silver’s age. He marries Ruth Varnum.

AAnnddrreeww HHaallee.. Andrew Hale is a friendly and happy-go-lucky builder to whom Ethan sells lumber. He is Ned’s father.

DDeenniiss EEaaddyy.. Denis Eady is the son of a merchant. He is infat- uated with Mattie Silver.

JJootthhaamm PPoowweellll.. Jotham Powell sometimes works as a handy- man on Ethan’s farm. He is often glad of a free meal.

xii ETHAN FROME

ILLUSTRATION xiii

“The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ.”

INTRODUCTION

by Edith Wharton

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.

Even before that final initiation, however, I had had an uneasy sense that the New England of fiction bore little— except a vague botanical and dialectical—resemblance to the harsh and beautiful land as I had seen it. Even the abundant enumeration of sweet-fern, asters and mountain-laurel, and the conscientious reproduction of the vernacular, left me with the feeling that the outcropping granite had in both cases been overlooked. I give the impression merely as a per- sonal one; it accounts for Ethan Frome, and may, to some readers, in a measure justify it.

So much for the origin of the story; there is nothing else of interest to say of it, except as concerns its construction.

The problem before me, as I saw in the first flash, was this: I had to deal with a subject of which the dramatic climax, or rather the anti-climax, occurs a generation later than the first acts of the tragedy. This enforced lapse of time would seem to anyone persuaded—as I have always been—that every subject (in the novelist’s sense of the term) implicitly con- tains its own form and dimensions, to mark Ethan Frome as the subject for a novel. But I never thought this for a moment, for I had felt, at the same time, that the theme of my tale was not one on which many variations could be played. It must be treated as starkly and summarily as life had always pre- sented itself to my protagonists; any attempt to elaborate and complicate their sentiments would necessarily have falsified the whole. They were, in truth, these figures, my granite outcroppings; but half-emerged from the soil, and scarcely more articulate.

This incompatibility between subject and plan would per- haps have seemed to suggest that my “situation” was after all one to be rejected. Every novelist has been visited by the insinuating wraiths of false “good situations,” siren-subjects luring his cockle-shell to the rocks; their voice is oftenest heard, and their mirage-sea beheld, as he traverses the

xiv ETHAN FROME

waterless desert which awaits him half-way through what- ever work is actually in hand. I knew well enough what song those sirens sang, and had often tied myself to my dull job until they were out of hearing—perhaps carrying a lost mas- terpiece in their rainbow veils. But I had no such fear of them in the case of Ethan Frome. It was the first subject I had ever approached with full confidence in its value, for my own purpose, and a relative faith in my power to render at least a part of what I saw in it.

Every novelist, again, who “intends upon” his art, has lit upon such subjects, and been fascinated by the difficulty of presenting them in the fullest relief, yet without an added ornament, or a trick of drapery or lighting. This was my task, if I were to tell the story of Ethan Frome; and my scheme of construction—which met with the immediate and unquali- fied disapproval of the few friends to whom I tentatively outlined it—I still think justified in the given case. It appears to me, indeed, that, while an air of artificiality is lent to a tale of complex and sophisticated people which the nov- elist causes to be guessed at and interpreted by any mere looker-on, there need be no such drawback if the looker-on is sophisticated, and the people he interprets are simple. If he is capable of seeing all around them, no violence is done to probability in allowing him to exercise this faculty; it is natural enough that he should act as the sympathizing intermediary between his rudimentary characters and the more complicated minds to whom he is trying to present them. But this is all self-evident, and needs explaining only to those who have never thought of fiction as an art of composition.

The real merit of my construction seems to me to lie in a minor detail. I had to find means to bring my tragedy, in a way at once natural and picture-making, to the knowledge of its narrator. I might have sat him down before a village gos- sip who would have poured out the whole affair to him in a breath, but in doing this I should have been false to two essential elements of my picture: first, the deep rooted reti- cence and inarticulateness of the people I was trying to draw, and secondly the effect of “roundness” (in the plastic sense) produced by letting their case be seen through eyes as differ- ent as those of Harmon Gow and Mrs. Ned Hale. Each of my chroniclers contributes to the narrative just so much as he or she is capable of understanding of what, to them, is a com- plicated and mysterious case; and only the narrator of the tale has scope enough to see it all, to resolve it back into simplicity, and to put it in its rightful place among his larger categories.

INTRODUCTION xv

I make no claim for originality in following a method of which La Grande Bretêche and The Ring and the Book had set me the magnificent example; my one merit is, perhaps to have guessed that the proceeding there employed was also applic- able to my small tale.

I have written this brief analysis—the first I have ever published of any of my books—because, as an author’s introduction to his work, I can imagine nothing of any value to his readers except a statement as to why he decided to attempt the work in question, and why he selected one form rather than another for its embodiment. These primary aims, the only ones that can be explicitly stated, must, by the artist, be almost instinctively felt and acted upon before there can pass into his creation that imponderable some- thing more which causes life to circulate in it, and preserves it for a little from decay.

EDITH WHARTON.

xvi ETHAN FROME

PROLOGUE

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 bay1 and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colon nade:2 and you must have asked who he was.