Ethan Frome Background Information 10H English Ms. Russo

Part I: Biographical Sketch of Edith Wharton Edith Wharton was born Edith Jones, into an upper-class New York City family in She was privately educated by governesses and tutors, both at home and abroad. At an early age she displayed a marked interest in writing and literature, a pursuit her socially ambitious mother attempted to discourage. She received a marriage proposal at a young age, but her prospective in-laws ended the engagement because they felt the Jones family was too snobbish. Then, in 1885, after another broken engagement, Edith married Edward Wharton, an older man whom the Jones family found to be of a suitably lofty social rank.

The temptations of illicit passion constitute an undeniable focus of Wharton’s fiction, and many have pointed to Wharton’s unhappy marriage as an explanation. Wharton found temporary solace in her surreptitious affair with the journalist Morton Fullerton, which coincided with the collapse of her marriage. It was in the wake of this affair and her ensuing divorce that Wharton wrote many of her most successful and endearing works.

Wharton’s fiction was especially effective at piercing the veil of moral respectability that sometimes masked as integrity among the rich. In her fiction, conforming to social norms is constantly at odds with a rejection of conformity.

Ethan Frome (1911) is one of the few pieces of Wharton’s fiction that does not take place in an urban, upper-class setting. Interestingly, Wharton based the narrative of the novel on an accident that occurred in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she traveled extensively and had come into contact with one of the victims of the accident.

In 1937, after nearly half a century of devotion to the art of fiction, Wharton died in her villa near Paris at the age of seventy-five. She remains one of America’s most cherished novelists.

Quotes by Edith Wharton: “There are two ways of reflecting light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” “True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” “The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.” “I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, and consequently suggests more tugging, and pain, and diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.” “How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be ‘American’ before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?”

Realism & Naturalism as Literary Movements Realism is, in art and literature, a term covering a broad range of views centered on the attempt to depict life as it is usually experienced, without recourse to miraculous events, larger-than-life characters, or supernatural intervention. In a realistic text, the emphasis is on the way things are for ordinary people, whose behavior and speech mirror their social position and cultural attitudes. In this sense, realism is opposed to romance, which represents life as we would like it to be, or to other anti- realist approaches such as expressionism and impressionism. A key feature of realist literature is its emphasis on the author’s objectivity.

Naturalism was a late 19 th century movement in literature and art that grew out of realism. The basic effort of naturalism lay in the attempt to produce a scientifically accurate depiction of life even at the cost of representing ugliness and discord.

Examples of Literature from this Period: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome Kate Chopin, The Awakening Willa Cather, My Antonia Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets Upton Sinclair, The Jungle Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

Source Information: The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Lathbury, Roger. Realism and Regionalism ( ): American literature in its historical, cultural, and social contexts. New York: Facts on File, Inc., Quinn, Edward. A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999.