Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton is a reread.  I first read it in high school and hated it and I think that was the concensus of pretty much everyone in my class at the time.  But then years later I read Wharton's Tne House of Mirth which I loved.  And so I have had it in my mind all these years to reread Ethan Frome.  Maybe I missed something.  Maybe this is a novel that needs to be read later in life.  And so I have now read Ethan Frome for the second time and this review will contain spoilers. 

Ethan Frome is set in a small New England town, Starkfield, MA, during the late 19th and early 20th century.  The winters are fierce and when the novel begins we meet a young man visiting Starkfield on business.  While in town the young man, who serves as the narrator, spots an elderly disabled gentleman heading into the local store.  Something about this man intrigues the narrator.  He seems depressed, solemn and very much alone. 

The narrator learns that the man is Ethan Frome, he is 52 and a poor farmer who rarely comes into town anymore.  The narrator asks more questions and the rest of the novel takes us back twenty five years to when Ethan was young and living in Starkfield with his whole life before him.

Ethan had wanted to go to college but his father died and then Ethan's mother got sick and he had to run the farm and take care of her.  When Ethan's mother passed on he married Zeena, the nurse who helped care for his mother.  It seemed like a good match.  Zeena was a take-charge, talkative young woman with an energy that Ethan lacked.  But not too long after they married Zeena began to change: 

"She chose to look down on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on her. Even Bettsbridge or Shadd’s Falls would not have been sufficiently aware of her, and in the greater cities which attracted Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of identity. And within a year of their marriage she developed the “sickliness” which had since made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances ... he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms"

To help with her various illnesses Zeena hires her cousin Mattie Silver to cook and clean .  Mattie is young, pretty, cheerful and to Ethan a breath of fresh air.  Ethan falls hard for Mattie and she falls for him as well.  But Mattie is vulnerable.  Her parents are dead and her relatives have had no desire to help her out, only her cousin Zeena who is looking for a live-in caretaker was willing to take Mattie in.  

And then Zeena begins to suspect something is going on between Ethan and Mattie and Zeena decides to hire a new girl and Mattie is asked to leave.  Ethan is devastated.  He contemplates running away with Mattie but what would the neighbors say and how could Zeena run the farm all by herself? 

Ethan decides he has to stay but he offers to take Mattie to the train station.  They travel by sled, it is snowing, and in a reckless act Mattie and Ethan decide not to part but to ride their sled fast down a hill right into an elm tree.  It is Mattie and Ethan's desparate attempt at a way out, suicide.  But it doesn't work and the end of the book twenty five years later has left Ethan, Zeena and Mattie in a much worse place than before the "accident".

And so it's not surprising our high school class had problems with this novel and I can't say now upon a second reading that I have warmed up all that much to Ethan Frome either but there are many who love this book.  The writing is excellent which is not surprising since Edith Wharton is brilliant.  And in trying to analyze the meaning of Ethan Frome I checked Cliff Notes and came upon the following: 

"The message that Wharton conveys through Ethan is that when people fear they are violating the rules of society, they risk becoming enslaved by those rules"

That rings true.  Ethan Frome is a man who wants to leave Zeena, a bitter angry woman who spends her time nursing her imaginary ailments.  He wants to leave with Mattie and have a new start but back in the late 1800's what would society say?  And one of the takeaways from this novel, according to critics, is that sometimes you have to change things regardless of what society will say because if you don't you can end up taking desparate risks that can end in tragedy.

And so my rereading of Ethan Frome has made me realize that its an important classic but maybe it's better as a college read.  I'm not sure kids are ready for it's powerful message in high school.