Product Description

This Norton Critical Edition includes: the 1922 edition of the novel; nine letters on "Ethan Frome" from the years 1910-1912; contextual accounts of 19th-century American life; eight contemporary reviews of the novel; and seven recent critical assessments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #308897 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 188 pages

TLS
'Edith Wharton is unique in the intimacy and sureness, not to mention the virile and satiric tone...'

IRISH TIMES
'Wharton's prose, with its menacing images of death and darkness, is superb...'

About the Author
Edith Wharton was born in New York in 1862. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Letters from Yale University and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize with THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, also a film. In 1930 she became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in 1937.

Customer Reviews

A great American classic
Ethan Frome is a farmer in Starkfield, Massachusetts, at the beginning of the 20th century. He is unhappily married to Zenobia (Zeena), a suspicious, hypochondriac, bitter, narrow-minded, ignorant and discontented woman. He is strongly attracted to Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver who shares their household and is entrusted with all the chores which Zeena refuses to do. Ethan's tragic fate begins when Zeena peremptorily decides that they need a "hired girl" which would of course imply Mattie's departure since the Fromes don't have the means to employ two girls.
A novel of great intensity with its slow developing tragedy and characters plunging towards their destiny. The author's masterful economy of language vividly renders the oppressive "silent ache" that permanently hinders communication between Ethan and Zeena. The vision of the three main characters is done in an almost cinematic way as they are trapped indoors in the severe Massachusetts winter. The narrative pattern is original too since the whole plot is told by an unnamed narrator who met the taciturn Ethan many years after the events he is about to tell us. The reader has moments of doubt when the narrator tells a story in all details and long passages of dialogue he could not possibly have known or heard during his meeting with Ethan. But Edith Wharton's extraordinary craft makes the story break away from the contingencies of the frame and it comes to moving life for the reader. A superb novel, one of the finest and most intense narratives in the history of American literature.

As usual with Wharton, a perceptive and moving tale.
Once again, Wharton returns to the inexhaustible subject of sexual love. This is a gripping and poignant story of an intense, forbidden but overpowering passion set against the murderous cold of a New England winter. Vivid, atmospheric, and full of Wharton's insights into the mysteries of the human heart. (I never give 5 stars, but I give this 4.)

A Heartbreaking Tale of Passion.
The short story of an illicit love affair between the introspective Ethan Frome and the bright and vivacious, Mattie Silver, is beautifully told and thoroughly absorbing. 'Ethan Frome' is Edith Wharton's most fondly remembered work, and upon reading the story, it is easy to see why. It is an endearing and poignant tale, full of repressed sexuality and emotion. The suffocating community of Starkfield is our setting from which lovers Mattie and Ethan have to escape if they are to be together forever. Unfortunatley, the desire to escape is pure fantasy, as revealed by the novel's shockingly dramatic conclusion. It seems that residents of Starkfield are fated to stay there for eternity. 'Ethan Frome' is a beautiful and memorable tale. The setting is so romantically and evocatively described by Wharton that we almost feel part of the doomed romance. Equally, Ethan's feelings are so astutely and accurately described that what we are left with is a strikingly realistic character. I cannot imagine anyone who would not fall in love with this book.