Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Publisher: Seahorse Publishing (2013)

98 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $0.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

A young engineer new to town, finds himself drawn to Ethan Frome and the sad story of his life that surrounds him, and by piecing bits together here and there he begins to flesh out the story that everyone seems reticent to speak of.

My Thoughts:

Ethan’s story is one of dashed hopes, squandered dreams and the heavy burden of duty and responsibility. Ethan was a strapping young man of promise, pulled from his passion for his studies to care for parents and take over the farm, which led to a marriage entered out of a sense of being beholden to the woman that nursed his mother, which kept him apart from the woman he loved and led them to drastic measures that ended badly for all involved. This is such a sad, depressing story, but I like the mysteriously quiet character at the center of it all and the way the narrator goes about finding out about him. Many of us, at one time or other have seen someone and wondered how they came to be what they are, but few of us have had the time or inclination to find out. I’m usually not one for infidelity, but I think this story questions where that line is drawn, and what forms of happiness can be granted between two people restricted by society and duty.

Edition Notes:

This Seahorse edition is supposedly annotated according to its description, but I could find no evidence of it. It does contain an author’s biography at the end, but other than that it is just the main text. That said, if you don’t mind missing out on the annotations, this is a very good ebook edition, very well organized for maneuverability within the text and pleasingly organized. A decent reading copy for the price.

Quotes:

“Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Most of the smart ones get away—Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father—then his mother—then his wife.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“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—I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He was not the kind of man to be turned from his business by any commotion of the elements—“ -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—a flash of watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 2

“It was formed of Zeena’s obstinate silence, of Mattie’s sudden look of warning, of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would be rain.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 3

“It seemed to him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 4 

“But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had not even touched her hand.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“She had taken everything else from him; and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for all the others.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 7

“—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, Chapter 7

“Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 8

“—it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 9

Movie Adaptations:

Ethan Frome (1993)

Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen

Movie Rating: PG

My Rating: 4 Stars

Adaption: Verbatim-Tweaked-Veiled

Eye Candy: Plain-Pretty-Sultry

This adaption follows the book fairly closely, with a few exceptions; it replaces the engineer narrator with a minister and takes Ethan and Mattie’s relationship beyond the kissing that it had been limited to in the book. I think overall, it still does a good job at maintaining the spirit of the book, but I was a bit disappointed that it took the mostly innocent relationship between Ethan and Mattie and made it somewhat torrid. There were a few invented scenes and dialogue, but it was mainly in keeping with what had been in the book.