Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome was published in 1911, when Wharton was already an established and successful writer. She lived primarily in Paris between 1905 and the outbreak of World War II, and these years were productive. She was growing more self-assured in her art, and during the writing of Ethan Frome she felt a control and confidence that she had never known before.

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome Although she was in control of her art, emotionally she was facing difficult times. Ethan Frome is more clearly understood in the context of Wharton's personal life. In 1908, she began a passionate adulterous affair with Morton Fullerton. Her marriage to Edward Wharton had been difficult from the beginning, and sexual dissatisfaction with her husband had been one of the central problems. The affair with Fullerton was passionate but doomed; he was a married man, and Edith Wharton was not his only extramarital partner. The relationship ended in Wharton's marriage was also heading to an end: the two divorced in 1913, although Edith retained her husband's name until she died.

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome The force of (doomed) passion is a central theme of the novel, and Wharton's own life makes clear why she was so preoccupied with this theme during these years of her life. Readers familiar with Wharton's other works may be surprised by Ethan Frome's rural setting; perhaps setting the tale of adulterous passion in Wharton's own social world would have been making the story too close to home.

Context The novel can also be understood in the context of other early twentieth century novels exploring the harsh conditions of rural life. Like Sherwin Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio, Ethan Frome reacts strongly against a strain of literature romanticizing poverty and rural living. The novel depicts Starkfield, Massachusetts as a harsh, unforgiving world. There are passages that describe the country's natural beauty with great feeling, but this beauty is not soft or nurturing. In Wharton, nature may be beautiful, but it is also unforgiving and hostile to human life, and still more hostile to human desires.

Naturalism Wharton was deeply interested in the philosophical/literary movement of Naturalism, which explored the power of the environment over man. In many of her novels, human beings seem to have very little control over their own lives. They are always the victims of circumstance, chance, or heredity: The fault is only being in the wrong place with the wrong set of skills; the naturalists took from Darwin that the world is selective, unforgiving, and unconcerned by human morality.

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome The novel is also very short, and the plot is uncomplicated. Wharton's strengths preserve the novel from insubstantiality: she is a great observer of human nature, and in Ethan Frome she skillfully develops characters with a minimal number of strokes. The novel is also filled with evocative passages that describe the harsh splendor of winter in rural New England. Although Wharton's contact with farmers and rural towns was limited, her sensitivity to natural beauty and human psychology make the novel a convincing and powerful portrait of rural life. It remains one of Wharton's most popular novels. Despite its slim size, Ethan Frome holds a firm place as one of American literature's great tragic love stories.

Themes Passion and Transgression: Wharton shows the difficulties of repressed and illicit passion, passion without any sanctioned outlet. Ethan has had a loveless marriage, and Mattie Silver has been the catalyst for some very powerful emotions. Passion is blocked by social convention and circumstance. Wharton is a devotee of naturalism, and in many of her novels the environment is the true shaper of men's destinies. Ethan's situation dooms his passion for Mattie Silver. But passion should not necessarily be seen as a potential liberator; in the novel passion seems more like yet another force that robs men of their agency.

Themes Determinism/Naturalism: Determinism is an important theme in this novel and in many of Wharton's other books. Starting with late- nineteenth century American literature, exposure to Darwin began to have a strong influence on American novelists. Naturalism, the school of thought that makes individuals subject to forces of heredity and environment, was a new philosophical force in novels and plays. Individuals have little or no agency, and the environment destroys or nurtures as it sees fit. A person is either born to adapt or made to fail. In Ethan Frome, the influence of this Darwin-inspired outlook is undeniable. Wharton links it to an older form of determinism, the harsh philosophy of New England's old Calvinists, by choosing Starkfield, Massachusetts as her setting. The historical backdrop of Puritanism is for atmosphere rather than for religious instruction: there is little God in Wharton. The environment, which can be natural, cultural, or situational, is the force that decides men's fates.

Themes The land and the people: The connection between the land and the people is a recurring theme of the novel. The narrator is amazed by the harshness of the Starkfield winters, and through his experience of the winter he comes to understand the character of the people. In her introduction to the novel, Wharton talks of the "outcropping granite" of New England, the powerful severity of its land and people. This connection between land and people is very much a part of naturalism; the environment is a powerful shaper of man's fate, and the novel represents this relationship by constantly describing the power and cruelty of Starkfield's winter.

Themes Isolation: Rural New England in winter is a land under siege, with tiny towns and tinier farms separated by vast expanses of cold and snow. The isolation is both physical and emotional. Ethan feels from a young age that he is alone in his sensitivity to natural beauty and his curiosity about science. By the time of the narrator, the tragedy of Ethan Frome has removed him even farther from the other people of Starkfield. The narrator remarks that in a town like Starkfield, people's lives are harsh enough so that they have little time to alleviate the pain and troubles of others.

Themes Lost potential: This theme is closely connected to the themes of determinism, connection between the land and the people, and isolation. As Starkfield is not a nurturing world, Ethan's curiosity and intellect have had few outlets. Both in his youth and in his old age, the disparity between his intellectual curiosity and the limitations of his environment is painful. By the time the narrator meets him, Ethan is not only the ruin of the man that he was, but the ruin of the man that he could have been.

Themes Loss and transience: Wharton also creates a feeling of loss and transience. Wharton uses the flashback structure to draw attention to buildings that once were beautiful that now have decayed. In Frome's youth the buildings are new and handsome, whereas by the time the narrator sees them they are old and faded. Beginning with Chapter 1, the tone of the descriptions is much more sensual: there is a sense of the town as a living place, with smells and colors described evocatively. But we are looking at the past, and it is a far cry from the dead world the narrator of the opening shows us. The effect is a very bleak portrayal of the relationship between a small town and the passage of time. In a big city, old buildings become historic, or they are replaced by new buildings. In Starkfield, old buildings simply fall into disrepair. Family fortunes dwindle, and men like Ethan Frome fade and deteriorate as slowly and certainly as the buildings of their immediate environment. The most horrible contrast is between the young and vibrant Mattie Silver and the broken and hateful old crone that the narrator meets in Chapter 10.

Themes Poverty: From the author's own introduction to the novel, written in 1922 and included in most editions, there is a sense of frustration with earlier portrayals of rural life in New England. Wharton is reacting against a kind of literature that romanticizes poverty and rural life. She depicts rural life as incredibly harsh. Poverty's greatest curse is that it takes away options. It traps Ethan at the farm, just as later it forces Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie to live under the same roof.