Editing Ethan Frome

{{Short description|1911 novella by Edith Wharton}}
{{For|the film adaptation|Ethan Frome (film)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book 
| name          = Ethan Frome
| title_orig    = 
| translator    = 
| image         = Ethan Frome first edition cover.jpg
| image_size = 200px
| caption = 
| author        = [[Edith Wharton]]
| illustrator   = 
| cover_artist  = 
| country       = United States
| language      = English
| subject       = 
| genre         = 
| publisher     = [[Charles Scribner's Sons|Scribner's]]
| release_date  = November 6, 1911
| media_type    = Print (hardback & paperback)
| pages         = 195 pp
| ISBN          = 0-486-26690-7
| external_url  = https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edith-wharton/ethan-frome
}}

'''''Ethan Frome''''' is a 1911 novella by American author [[Edith Wharton]]. It details the story of a man who falls in love with his wife's cousin and the tragedies that result from the ensuing [[love triangle]]. The novel has been adapted into a [[Ethan Frome (film)|film of the same name]].<ref name="film review">{{cite web|last=Canby |first=Vincent |title=Liam Neeson in Lead Of Wharton Classic |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1DE1F3CF931A25750C0A965958260 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=1993-03-12 |access-date=2008-02-11 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110519222556/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1DE1F3CF931A25750C0A965958260 |archive-date=2011-05-19 }}</ref>

==Plot==
An unnamed male narrator is working for a power plant, and due to a carpenter's strike finds himself forced to spend a winter in the nearby small town of (fictional) Starkfield, Massachusetts. The man who daily chauffeurs him to work is a limping, quiet man named Ethan Frome, a lifelong resident and local fixture of the community. The narrator learns that Frome's limp arose from being injured in an accident. The story then flashes back 24 years to detail Frome's past.

The young Frome is married to a sickly woman named Zeena (Zenobia), who appears older than her age, is unkind to Ethan, and whose life revolves around seeking expensive treatments for her varied illnesses. Although the Fromes have limited means themselves, they have charitably taken in Zeena's cousin Mattie, whose family is poor. Ethan falls in love with Mattie, and it becomes increasingly clear that Mattie also loves him. While it remains ambiguous if Zeena suspects Ethan's unfaithfulness, she makes plans to send Mattie away. Zeena claims that, because of her failing health, her physician has recommended she hire a maid who will relieve her of housework. Zeena has already arranged for the hired girl to arrive by train soon, and Mattie must vacate her room immediately. Ethan, miserable at the thought of losing Mattie, considers running away with her, but he lacks the money to do so, and will feel guilty about leaving Zeena with the farm.

The next morning, Ethan rushes into town to try to get a cash advance from a customer for a load of lumber in order to have the money with which to elope with Mattie. His plan is unhinged by guilt, however, when the customer's wife expresses honest compassion for Ethan. He realizes that he cannot cheat this kindly woman and her husband out of their money.

Ethan comes back to the farm and picks up Mattie to take her to the train station. They stop at a hill upon which they had once planned to go sledding and decide to sled together as a way of delaying their sad parting. After their first run, Mattie suggests a suicide pact: that they go down again, and steer the sled directly into a big [[Ulmus americana|elm]] tree, so they will never be parted and so that they may spend their last moments together. The resulting crash leaves both of them alive, Ethan with a permanent limp and Mattie paralyzed from a [[Spinal cord injury|spinal injury]].

Returning to the present, the narrator tells of being forced by a [[blizzard]] to stay the night at the Frome house, the first stranger to enter the house in 20 years.  He witnesses an unhappy scene with Mattie and the Fromes living together, with Zeena as Mattie's caregiver. Ethan and Mattie have gotten their wish to stay together, but in mutual unhappiness and discontent, and ironically Mattie has now developed an irritable disposition, and the sickly Zeena is rising to the challenge of becoming a caretaker.  Zeena is a constant presence between the two of them, although it remains ambiguous as to whether she knew of their dalliance.

==Development==
The story of ''Ethan Frome'' had initially begun as a French-language composition that Wharton had to write while studying the language in [[Paris]],<ref name="nightmare">{{Cite book|last=Springer|first=Marlene|title=Ethan Frome: A Nightmare of Need|series=Twayne's Masterwork Studies|location=New York City|publisher=Twayne Publishers|year=1993}}</ref> but several years later she took the story up again and transformed it into the novel it now is, basing her sense of New England culture and place on her ten years of living at The Mount, her home in [[Lenox, Massachusetts]]. She would read portions of her novel-in-progress each day to her good friend Walter Berry, who was an international lawyer. Wharton likely based the story of Ethan and Mattie's sledding experience on an accident that she had heard about in 1904 in Lenox.<ref name="context">{{cite web|title=Ethan Frome – Context|url=http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frome/context.html|work=[[SparkNotes]]|year=2006|access-date=2008-02-11}}</ref> Five people total were involved in the real-life accident, four girls and one boy. They crashed into a lamppost while sledding down Courthouse Hill in Lenox. A girl named Emily Hazel Crosby was killed in the accident. Wharton learned of the accident from one of the girls who survived, Kate Spencer, when the two became friends while both worked at the [[Lenox Library (Massachusetts)|Lenox Library]]. Kate Spencer suffered from a hip injury in the accident and also had facial injuries. It is among the few works by Wharton with a rural setting.<ref name="context"/> Wharton found the notion of the tragic sledding crash to be irresistible as a potential extended metaphor for the wrongdoings of a secret love affair.

Lenox is also where Wharton had traveled extensively and had come into contact with at least one of the victims of the accident; victims of the accident are buried in graves nearby Wharton family members. In her introduction to the novel, Wharton talks of the "outcropping [[granite]]" of [[New England]], the austerity of its land and the stoicism of its people. There are frequent references to [[Larix laricina|larch]], [[Ulmus americana|elm]], pine, and [[Tsuga canadensis|hemlock]] trees.  The connection between land and people is very much a part of [[Naturalism (literature)|naturalism]]; the environment is a powerful shaper of man's fate, and the novel dwells insistently on the cruelty of Starkfield's winters.<ref>Lewis, R.W.B. ''Edith Wharton: A Biography''. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975.</ref>

==Reception==
''[[The New York Times]]'' called ''Ethan Frome'' "a compelling and haunting story."<ref>{{cite news|title=Three Lives in Supreme Torture|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1911/10/08/104878602.pdf|page=BR603|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=October 8, 1911|access-date=2008-02-11 | format=PDF}}</ref> Wharton was able to write an appealing book and separate it from her other works, where her characters in ''Ethan Frome'' are not of the elite upper class. However, the problems that the characters endure are still consistently the same, where the protagonist has to decide whether or not to fulfill their duty or follow their heart. She began writing Ethan Frome in the early 1900s when she was still married. The novel was criticized by [[Lionel Trilling]] as lacking in moral or ethical significance.<ref name="nightmare"/> Trilling wrote that the ending is "terrible to contemplate," but that "the mind can do nothing with it, can only endure it."<ref>[http://www.novelguide.com/EthanFrome/essayquestions.html "Review of ''Ethan Frome''"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140716205915/http://www.novelguide.com/EthanFrome/essayquestions.html |date=2014-07-16 }}. NovelGuide: Ethan Frome. Novelgide.com, n.d. February 24, 2010.</ref>

Jeffrey Lilburn notes that some find "the suffering endured by Wharton's characters is quite bleak and makes for a dull read," but others see the difficult moral questions addressed and note that it "provides insightful commentary on the American economic and cultural realities that produced and allowed such suffering." Wharton was always careful to label ''Ethan Frome'' as a brief reminiscence rather than a novel. Critics did take note of this when reviewing the book, some in more candor than others. Elizabeth Ammons reflected that reading Wharton's novel compelled her to reminisce upon when literature was more enthralling. She found a story that functions as a "realistic social criticism," a reminder that some are willing to indulge in dull prose based solely upon the name of the author. Despite her obvious quarrels with the work, Ammons proceeded to analyze the text. The moral concepts, as described by Ammons, are revealed with all of the brutality of Starkfield's winters. Comparing Mattie Silver and Zeena Frome, Ammons suggests that Mattie would grow as frigid and crippled as Zeena, so long as such women remain isolated and dependent. Wharton cripples Mattie, says Lilburn, but has her survive in order to demonstrate the cruelty of the culture surrounding women in that period.<ref>Lilburn, Jeffrey. "Ethan Frome (Criticism)." ''Answers.com''. Retrieved 2010-02-24.</ref>

==Adaptations==
The book was adapted to the 1993 [[Ethan Frome (film)|film of the same name]], directed by [[John Madden (director)|John Madden]], and starring [[Liam Neeson]], [[Patricia Arquette]], [[Joan Allen]] and [[Tate Donovan]].<ref name="film review"/>

[[Cathy Marston]] adapted the book to a one-act ballet titled ''Snowblind'' for the [[San Francisco Ballet]]. The ballet premiered in 2018, with Ulrik Birkkjaer as Ethan, [[Sarah Van Patten]] as Zeena and [[Mathilde Froustey]] as Mattie.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://dancetabs.com/2018/04/san-francisco-ballet-unbound-festival-prog-b-myles-thatcher-cathy-marston-david-dawson-sf/|title=San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program B: works by Myles Thatcher, Cathy Marston, David Dawson – San Francisco|website=DanceTabs|last=Desaulniers|first=Heather|date=April 23, 2018}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
{{Wikisource|Ethan Frome (Scribners 1911)|''Ethan Frome'', 1st edition of 1911}}
{{Wikisource|Ethan Frome (Scribners 1922)|''Ethan Frome'', 2nd edition of 1922, with added introduction by the author}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edith-wharton/ethan-frome}}
* {{Gutenberg|no=4517|name=Ethan Frome}}
* {{FadedPage|id=20161208|name=Ethan Frome}}
* {{librivox book | title=Ethan Frome | author=Edith WHARTON}} (2 versions)
* [https://archive.org/download/BestPlays/BestPlays53-09-1351EthanFrome.mp3 1953 ''Best Plays'' radio adaptation] at [[Internet Archive]]

{{Edith Wharton fiction}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1911 American novels]]
[[Category:Novels about infidelity]]
[[Category:American novels adapted into films]]
[[Category:Frame stories]]
[[Category:Novels adapted into ballets]]
[[Category:Novels by Edith Wharton]]
[[Category:Novels set in Massachusetts]]