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- Wharton began the story that became Ethan Frome in the early 1900s as an exercise in writing for a tutor she hired to improve her French conversational skills. She based the tale on her experiences of several summers' residence at the Wharton country home in Lenox, Massachusetts.
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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. Previously, Frome was married to a sickly woman named Zeena (Zenobia), who became jealous when Frome fell in love with her cousin Mattie.
- Edith Wharton
- 1911
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About Ethan Frome. Wharton began the story that became Ethan Frome in the early 1900s as an exercise in writing for a tutor she hired to improve her French conversational skills. She based the tale on her experiences of several summers' residence at the Wharton country home in Lenox, Massachusetts.
The climactic scene in Ethan Frome was inspired by a sledding accident in Lenox in 1904 that killed one young woman and gravely injured four of her companions (Wharton knew one of the victims). The fatal paralysis of Wharton's neighbor Ethel Cram after a pony-cart accident in 1905 also played a role in shaping the narrative.
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The story uses a frame narrative to reveal the tragic life of Ethan Frome, his unfulfilled ambitions, and the impact of Mattie Silver, the cousin of his ailing wife Zeena. Symbolism, duty, desire, and the irony of fate play crucial roles in this poignant tale.
Wharton based the narrative of Ethan Frome on an accident that had occurred in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she had traveled extensively and had come into contact with one of the victims of the accident. Wharton found the notion of the tragic sledding crash to be irresistible as a potential extended metaphor for the wrongdoings of a secret love ...
As a fairy story, Ethan Frome terrifies because it is inverted. Incredibly, the witch triumphs. Mattie Silver becomes Zeena's double rather than Ethan's complement. Wharton's moral, her social criticism, emerges logically from this fairy tale. Ethan Frome maintains that witches are real. There are women whose occupation in life consists of ...
Where in the text of Ethan Frome can we detect Wharton’s professed commitment to portraying life in New England “as it really was”? Based on Ethan Frome, what are some characteristics of rural New England and the people who live there? How do we know that the story is as much about Starkfield—the place—as it is about Ethan, the person?
