Feminista 100 Greatest Works of 20th Century Fiction by Women Writers
This brief but tragic novel casts a weirdly mesmeric spell, helped greatly
by the fact that you can read it in one or two sittings. Ethan Frome
is a strapping young New England farmer; like George Bailey he dreams of
becoming an engineer and getting out of his small town. But circumstances
conspire against him as he is first forced to care for his ailing parents,
then impulsively marries the young woman who was brought in to help his
Mother in her final days. His wife, Zenobia, proceeds to develop
her own health problems, real or imagined, and Ethan is trapped in a loveless
marriage on a hard scrabble farm that he can not possibly maintain.
Then Zenobia's cousin Mattie Silver, who is destitute, comes to stay
with them and help around the house. Ethan falls in love with her
and she with him, but Zenobia, realizing that something is going on, determines
to send the girl away. Ethan struggles against fate, but is too decent
to actually run away with Mattie and leave an invalid wife behind.
Despite which, an awful tragedy intervenes and warps the lives and bodies
of all concerned.
This ineffably sad tale is filled with all the revulsion at convention
that we associate with Wharton and it is also an insidious and subtle attack
in the long American war between the advocates of urban and rural life.
Wharton, the ultimate chronicler of urban society, marshals everything
from the name of the town, Starkfield, to the portrait of the barren homestead,
to the final image of the shattered family left on that farm, to paint
the most dismal possible picture of rural life.
It is a deeply affecting work and you will not soon forget the heart
rending plight of Ethan Frome.
(Reviewed:24-Jan-00)
Grade: (A)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-The
Edith Wharton Society Home Page
-Edith Wharton
Restoration
-Edith
Wharton's World (National Portrait Gallery)
-Edith
Wharton: an Overview with Biocritical Resources
-Domestic
Goddess: Edith Wharton
-PAL:
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)(PAL: Perspectives in American Literature:
A Research and Reference Guide)
-The
San Antonio College LitWeb Edith Wharton Page
-Edith
Wharton (Kutztown)
-Wharton,
Edith: Ethan Frome (Medical Humanities)
-Literary
Research Guide: Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (Spark Note Writer,
Jim Cocola)
-ETEXTS:
by Edith Wharton
The
House of Mirth (1905)
Ethan
Frome By Edith Wharton (1911)
-ETEXTS:
of Contemporary Reviews of Wharton's Works from the University of Virginia
E-Text Center
-TEACHING
GUIDE: Edith Wharton (1862-1937) Contributing Editor: Elizabeth
Ammons
-ESSAY:
Edith Wharton's World: Portraits of People and Places (Stephen May,
The Bee)
-ESSAY:
The New York That Wharton Turned Into Art (MICHAEL FRANK, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
In Search of Edith Wharton (BARBARA SHOUP, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Summers in an Age of Innocence: In France With Edith Wharton
(Leon Edel, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Streetscapes: Edith Wharton; In 'The Age of Innocence,' Fiction Was Not
Truth (CHRISTOPHER GRAY, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Wharton and the House of Scribner: The Novelist as a Pain in the Neck
(Marc Aronson, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Filming Edith Wharton's World: You Were How You Ate (JIM KOCH, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
Elizabeth Hardwick: Mrs. Wharton in New York, NY Review of Books
WORKS BY AND ABOUT EDITH
WHARTON DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Edith Wharton: Novels (The
House of Mirth, The Reef, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence)
The Mother's Recompense
by Edith Wharton
Old New York: False Dawn
(The 'Forties), The Old Maid (The 'Fifties), The Spark (The 'Sixties),
New Year's Day (The 'Seventies) by Edith Wharton
"Bunner Sisters" in Madame
de Treymes and Others by Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton: A Biography
by R.W.B. Lewis
Portrait of Edith Wharton
by Percy Lubbock
-REVIEW:
of THE HOUSE OF MIRTH THE REEF THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
By Edith Wharton (Janet Malcolm, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Gabriele Annan: A Night at the Opera, NY Review of Books
'Fast and Loose' and 'The
Buccaneers' by Edith Wharton
The Buccaneers by Edith
Wharton and completed by Marion Mainwaring
The Age of Innocence directed
by Martin Scorsese, screenplay by Jay Cocks, and Martin Scorsese
The Age of Innocence: A
Portrait of the Film Based on the Novel by Edith Wharton by Martin Scorsese
and Jay Cocks
The Age of Innocence by
Edith Wharton and introduction by R.W.B. Lewis
-REVIEW:
of THE BUCCANEERS By Edith Wharton. Completed by Marion Mainwaring
(Wendy Steiner, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton by Cynthia Griffin
Wolff Edith Wharton's Secret (Karl Miller, NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
Irvin Ehrenpreis: The Rescue of Edith Wharton, NY Review of Books
Edith Wharton: A Biography
by R.W.B. Lewis
-REVIEW:
Eleanor Clark: "Angel of Devastation", NY Review of Books
The Two Lives of Edith Wharton
by Grace Kellogg
Edith Wharton and Henry
James: The Story of Their Friendship by Millicent Bell
Edith Wharton 1862-1937
by Olivia Coolidge
The Edith Wharton Reader
selected with an Introduction by Louis Auchincloss
The Reef by Edith Wharton
and Introduction by Louis Auchincloss
-REVIEW:
Marius Bewley: Mrs. Wharton's Mask, NY Review of Books
A Blackward Glance: The
Autobiography of Edith Wharton Introduction by Louis Auchincloss
Summer by Edith Wharton
Old New York by Edith Wharton
-REVIEW:
of THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE. By Edith Wharton (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY
Times)
-REVIEW:
of The Stories of Edith Wharton Selected and Introduced by Anita
Brookner (Michiko Kakutani , NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of The Letters of Edith Wharton Edited by R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy
Lewis (Michiko Kakutani , NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of NO GIFTS FROM CHANCE A Biography of Edith Wharton. By Shari Benstock
(Greg Johnson, NY times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of EDITH WHARTON An Extraordinary Life. By Eleanor Dwight (Angeline
Goreau, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of HENRY JAMES AND EDITH WHARTON Letters: 1900-1915. Edited by Lyall
H. Powers (Maggie Paley, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of HENRY JAMES AND EDITH WHARTON Letters: 1900-1915. Edited by Lyall
H. Powers (Michiko Kakutani , NY Times)
FILM:
-REVIEW:
of Ethan Frome (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)
-REVIEW:
of Ethan Frome (Rita Kempley, Washington Post Staff Writer)
-REVIEW:
of Ethan Frome (A Film Review by James Berardinelli)
GENERAL:
-REVIEW:
Helen Vendler: Feminism and Literature, NY Review of Books
Beyond Feminist Aesthetics:
Feminist Literature and Social Change by Rita Felski
Women, Class, and the Feminist
Imagination: A Socialist-Feminist Reader edited by Karen V. Hansen and
Ilene J. Philipson
Feminism/Postmodernism edited
and with an introduction by Linda J. Nicholson
Women Writers of the Seventeenth
Century edited by Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Warnke
Eighteenth-Century Women
Poets: An Oxford Anthology edited by Roger Lonsdale
Hamlet's Mother and Other
Women by Carolyn G. Heilbrun
No Man's Land: The Place
of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century Vol. I, The War of the Words
Vol. II,
Sexchanges by Sandra Gilbert
and Susan Gubar
Sexual Personae: Art and
Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
-ESSAY:
Listening for the Scratch of a Pen (SUZANNE BERNE, NY Times)
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
Thanks, fixed it.
- oj
- Jun-01-2003, 16:03
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Ethan Frome was written by Edith Wharton--not Rebecca West. Gasp
- Dorothy Turk
- Jun-01-2003, 15:43
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