Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Naturalism Growing concern with social injustice and the gradual acceptance of realistic subject matter and techniques opened the way for naturalistic fiction. The new theories of Darwin, Freud, and Marx were suggesting that biology, psychology, and economics determine each individual’s destiny. Naturalistic novelists applied these theories to their presentation and interpretation of human experience. Writers would depict life as grim, the universe as cold and spiritless, and the individual as a hapless victim of heredity, society, and natural forces. Naturalism, therefore, was in direct opposition to Romanticism and Transcendentalism which envisioned a holy and mystical presence in nature. Naturalistic novelists exposed poverty, cruelty, corruption, and the futility of war.

Steven Crane’s, “A Man Said to the Universe” “Sir, I exist!" “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me “A sense of obligation.”

Background Notes American regionalist writers tended to focus on country life through “rose-colored spectacles” and Wharton wanted to counter that unrealistic portrayal through Ethan Frome. Wharton wrote Ethan Frome as a starkly simple novel to probe the ordinary lives of an isolated rural people instead of exposing the lives of the rich as in her previous novels. Ethan Frome is considered a tragedy

Ethan Frome is a dramatic departure from Wharton’s previous novels in that it specifically examines the lethal inclination to passivity that dwells deeply buried in every human heart. Wharton resented society’s expectation for girls in that they were supposed to be innately pure, free from sexual desire, and innocent of any specific information concerning sexuality.

Wharton’s own upbringing and relationship with her parents is reflected in this novel: her father was affectionate but distant, and allowed his wife to dominate the household; her mother was repeatedly characterized as “cold,” and Wharton as a little girl often felt hungry or starved for love. As a grown woman, Wharton would experience a fit of anxiety every time she would come home. The threshold of her mother’s home triggered fear in her.

There are three parts to this novel: Prologue, Body, and Epilogue. There is a climactic sledding scene in the novel which was based on an actual event that was reported in the newspapers during the winter of 1904.

The narrator of the novel is not Ethan Frome but an outsider. He is a sophisticated engineer who recounts his tale to us-- this storyteller is Ethan’s double: he is what Ethan could have been versus what he is. Imagery is one of the novella’s most poignant elements conveying coldness, absence of passion, the desperate need for affection, hence the name of the town Starkfield. The setting is a rural town in Massachusetts at the turn of the century, and Wharton portrays a middle class farm that has fallen into difficult times.

Main Conflict The inability to communicate freely and honestly. This inability is what causes the tragedy in Ethan Frome. We will discuss the reasons for this inability to communicate (think social acceptance, individual personalities, customs of the period, etc.)

Theme Conflicts existing between personal inclinations and group obligations (Passion vs. Duty).

Hypothetical Question