Why did edith wharton write ethan frome

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.

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. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the “natives” were easily singled out by their lank longitude3 from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. 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. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley4 days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line.

‘’He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s twenty-four years ago come next February,” Harmon threw out between reminiscent pauses.

The “smash-up” it was—I gathered from the same infor- mant—which besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s fore head, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post office window. He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the

PROLOGUE 1

1. bbaayy.. Reddish-brown horse 2. ccoolloonnnnaaddee.. Set of columns supporting a roof 3. lloonnggiittuuddee.. Length. Here, height 4. pprree--ttrroolllleeyy.. Before the coming of trolleys, electric streetcars that got their

power from overhead wires

WWords For EverydayUse stri • king (str�¯́ki˜) adj., outstanding, impressivelank (lãk) adj., long and slendergriz • zled (�riz´əld´) adj., gray-hairedchron • i • cle (krän´i kəl) n., historical record of facts and events in the order inwhich they happenedrem • i • nis • cent (rem´ə niś́ ənt) adj., characterized by recall of the past

√ Why is Ethan Frome a striking fig- ure? What else does the narrator notice about his figure? What surprises the narrator?

√ What effect has the “smash-up” had on Ethan?

distributing hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the postmas- ter would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia—or Mrs. Zeena—Frome, and usually bearing con- spicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his spe- cific.5 These documents my neighbor would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post master.

Everyone in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word. When this happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes on the speaker’s face, and answer in so low a tone that his words never reached me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in the direction of his farm.

“It was a pretty bad smash-up?” I questioned Harmon, looking after Frome’s retreating figure, and thinking how gal- lantly his lean brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

“Wust6 kind,” my informant assented. “More’n enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box—also with a druggist’s label on it—which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone. “That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!”

Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek.

2 ETHAN FROME

5. ssppeecciiffiicc.. Medicine having a specific effect on a disease 6. WWuusstt.. Worst

WWords For EverydayUse con • spic • u • ous • ly (kən spik´yo�o— əs lē)adv., noticeablytem • pered (tem´pərd) adj., adjustedgrave (�rāv) adj., serious mien (mēn) n., way of looking, appearanceta • ci • turn • i • ty (tas´ə t r´nə tē) n.,silence, dislike of much conversation

® What does Ethan usually receive in the mail? How does he react to what he receives?

“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.”

“Why didn’t he?” “Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There

warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust7 his father—then his mother—then his wife.”

“And then the smash-up?” Harmon chuckled sardonically. “That’s so. He had to stay

then.” “I see. And since then they’ve had to care for him?” Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek.

“Oh, as to that: I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring.” Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his

mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus8 about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.”

Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant. Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural delivery,9 when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and Shadd’s Falls, had libraries, theaters and YMCA halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But when winter shut down on Starkfield, and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome’s young manhood.

I had been sent up by my employers on a job connected with the big power-house at Corbury Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters’ strike had so delayed the work that I found myself anchored at Starkfield—the nearest habitable spot—for the best part of the winter. I chafed at first, and then, under the hypnotizing effect of routine, gradually began to find a grim satisfaction in the life. During the early part of my stay I had been struck by the contrast between the

PROLOGUE 3

7. FFuusstt.. First 8. nnuucclleeuuss.. Center around which other things are grouped 9. rruurraall ddeelliivveerryy.. Mail delivery to those in remote farm areas

WWords For EverydayUse sub • se • quent (sub´si kwənt) adj., followingin • fer • ence (in´ fər əns) n., conclusionbased on direct evidencede • gen • er • ate (dē jeń ə rit) adj., having sunk below a previous or normal conditionne • ga • tion (ni �ā´shən) n., lack or opposite of some positive traitchafe (chāf) vt., rebel

√ What effect does Harmon suggest the winters in Starkfield have had on Ethan? Why didn’t Ethan get away?

√ What does the narrator realize about the winters in Starkfield during Ethan’s youth?

√ In what way does the weather contrast with the life in the community?

vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community. Day by day, after the December snows were over, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents of light and air on the white landscape, which gave them back in an intenser glitter. One would have supposed that such an atmosphere must quicken the emotions as well as the blood; but it seemed to produce no change except that of retarding still more the sluggish pulse of Starkfield. When I had been there a little longer, and had seen this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their sup- port; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.10 Twenty years earlier the means of resistance must have been far fewer, and the enemy in command of almost all the lines of access between the beleaguered villages; and, considering these things, I felt the sinister force of Harmon’s phrase: “Most of the smart ones get away.” But if that were the case, how could any combination of obstacles have hin- dered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome?

During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a middle-aged widow colloquially known as Mrs. Ned Hale. Mrs. Hale’s father had been the village lawyer of the previous genera- tion, and “lawyer Varnum’s house,” where my landlady still lived with her mother, was the most considerable mansion in the village. It stood at one end of the main street, its clas- sic portico11 and small-paned windows looking down a flagged path between Norway spruces to the slim white steeple of the Congregational church. It was clear that the Varnum fortunes were at the ebb,12 but the two women did what they could to preserve a decent dignity; and Mrs. Hale, in particular, had a certain wan refinement not out of keep- ing with her pale old-fashioned house.

In the “best parlor,” with its black horsehair13 and

4 ETHAN FROME

10. ppiittcchheedd wwhhiittee tteennttss .. .. .. wwiitthhoouutt qquuaarrtteerr.. Extended metaphor in which the storms of February set up camp for battle, are aided by the winds of March, and the town comes out of a period of being attacked and held prisoner, after six months of winter, like a hungry group of soldiers who surrender without receiving mercy 11. ppoorrttiiccoo.. Covered porch, its roof supported by columns 12. eebbbb.. Low point 13. hhoorrsseehhaaiirr.. Stiff, upholstery cloth made of the hair from a horse’s mane or tail

WWords For EverydayUse re • tard • ing (rē tär´di˜) n., slowingslug • gish (slu�´ish) adj., unwilling tomove, slowbe • lea • guered (bē lē´�ərd) adj., attacked sin • i • ster (sin´ is tər) adj., threatening evilwan (wän) adj., weak, pale

mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening to another and more delicately shaded version of the Starkfield chronicle. It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sen- sibility and a little more education had put just enough dis- tance between herself and her neighbors to enable her to judge them with detachment. She was not unwilling to exer- cise this faculty, and I had great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of Ethan Frome’s story, or rather such a key to his character as should coordinate the facts I knew. Her mind was a storehouse of innocuous anecdote and any ques- tion about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail; but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unex- pectedly reticent. There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs, a low “Yes, I knew them both . . . it was awful . . .” seeming to be the utmost concession that her distress could make to my curiosity.

So marked was the change in her manner, such depths of sad initiation did it imply, that, with some doubts as to my delicacy, I put the case anew to my village oracle,14 Harmon Gow; but got for my pains only an uncomprehending grunt.

“Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it, she was the first one to see ’em after they was picked up. It happened right below lawyer Varnum’s, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks was all friends, and I guess she just can’t bear to talk about it. She’s had troubles enough of her own.”

All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable commu- nities, had had troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to those of their neighbors, and though all conceded that Ethan Frome’s had been beyond the common measure, no one gave me an explanation of the look in his face which, as I persisted in thinking, neither poverty nor physical suffering could have put there. Nevertheless, I might have contented myself with the story pieced together from these hints had it not been for the

PROLOGUE 5

14. oorraaccllee.. Person of great knowledge

WWords For EverydayUse sen • si • bil • i • ty (sen´sə bil´́ə tē) n., abilityto feel or notice thingsde • tach • ment (dē tach´mənt) n., distance in • noc • u • ous (in näk´yo�o— əs) adj., harmlessret • i • cent (ret́ ə sint) adj., holding back in • sur • mount • a • ble (iń s r mount ´́əbəl) adj., unbeatablein • i • ti • a • tion (in ish´ē ā´́shən) n., priv-ileged information

√ From whom does the narrator receive a second version of the story of Ethan Frome? In what way does this story differ from the story told by Harmon Gow?

√ Is the narrator satisfied with the answers to his ques- tions about Ethan Frome? Why, or why not?

√ What reason does Harmon suggest for Ruth’s reticence?

provocation of Mrs. Hale’s silence, and—a little later—for the accident of personal contact with the man.

On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the rich Irish gro- cer who was the proprietor of Starkfield’s nearest approach to a livery stable,15 had entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats, where I had to pick up my train for the Junction. But about the middle of the winter Eady’s horses fell ill of a local epidemic. The illness spread to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to it to find a means of transport. Then Harmon Gow suggested that Ethan Frome’s bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me over.

I stared at the suggestion. “Ethan Frome? But I’ve never even spoken to him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?”

Harmon’s answer surprised me still more. “I don’t know as he would; but I know he wouldn’t be sorry to earn a dollar.”

I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the sawmill and the arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through the winter; but I had not supposed him to be in such want as Harmon’s words implied, and I expressed my wonder.

“Well, matters ain’t gone any too well with him,” Harmon said. “When a man’s been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit. That Frome farm was always ’bout as bare’s a milk pan when the cat’s been round; and you know what one of them old watermills is wuth nowa- days. When Ethan could sweat over ’em both from sun-up to dark he kinder choked a living out of ’em; but his folks ate up most everything, even then, and I don’t see how he makes out now. Fust his father got a kick, out haying,16 and went soft in the brain, and gave away money like Bible texts afore he died. Then his mother got queer17 and dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and his wife Zeena, she’s always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the county. Sickness and trouble: that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.”

6 ETHAN FROME

WWords For EverydayUse pro • vo • ca • tion (präv´ə kā´́shin) n., that which excitesaction or feelinga • rid (ar´id) adj., dry and barren 15. lliivveerryy ssttaabbllee.. Place where horses could be rented 16. ggoott aa kkiicckk,, oouutt hhaayyiinngg.. Was kicked by a horse while cutting hay in the fields 17. qquueeeerr.. Mentally unstable

® Under what con- ditions does the nar- rator meet Ethan?

® What troubles have plagued the Frome family?

The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the hollow- backed bay between the Varnum spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his worn bearskin, made room for me in the sleigh at his side. After that, for a week, he drove me over every morning to Corbury Flats, and on my return in the afternoon met me again and carried me back through the icy night to Starkfield. The distance each way was barely three miles, but the old bay’s pace was slow, and even with firm snow under the runners we were nearly an hour on the way. Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or 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 isola- tion 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.

Only once or twice was the distance between us bridged for a moment; and the glimpses thus gained confirmed my desire to know more. Once I happened to speak of an engi- neering job I had been on the previous year in Florida, and of the contrast between the winter landscape about us and that in which I had found myself the year before; and to my surprise Frome said suddenly, “Yes: I was down there once, and for a good while afterward I could call up the sight of it in winter. But now it’s all snowed under.”

He said no more, and I had to guess the rest from the inflection of his voice and his sharp relapse into silence.

Another day, on getting into my train at the Flats, I missed a volume of popular science—I think it was on some recent discoveries in biochemistry—which I had carried with me to read on the way. I thought no more about it till I got into the sleigh again that evening, and saw the book in Frome’s hand.

“I found it after you were gone,” he said.

PROLOGUE 7

WWords For EverydayUse ven • ture (veń chər) vt., undertake the risk ofmute (myo�o— t) adj., silentmel • an • cho • ly (mel´ən kä´lē) adj., sadin • car • na • tion (in kär nā´shən) n., example in human form of a qualitysen • tient (sen´shənt) adj., capable of feelingin • flec • tion (in flek´shən) n., change intone or pitch of the voice

√ Where had Ethan once visited? What does his comment about his memory of this place suggest about the winters in Starkfield?

I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped back into our usual silence; but as we began to crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to the Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk that he had turned his face to mine.

“There are things in that book that I didn’t know the first word about,” he said.

I wondered less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in his voice. He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own ignorance.