“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”

n  n

Our narrator, we never learn his name, hired Ethan Frome to drive him around in a sleigh for a few days. A winter storm necessitates that he spend an evening and a night in Frome’s house. He meets Mattie the cousin and Zeena the wife. The situation existing in the House of Frome is an odd one and his natural curiosity spurs him to start an informal investigation into the life of Ethan Frome.

After the opening chapter we flash back twenty-four years to a man in the process of waking up from a life he has found himself trapped in. When Ethan meets Mattie an internal conflict begins. Mattie reads and she reminds on a daily basis, just by her presence, the part of himself that vanished like smoke years ago when he made the decision to stay in Starkfield and take care of his momma. He borrows books from her and starts to remember that other Frome, that other man, who wanted so much more. He is a reed, long bent, that has suddenly found a way to stretch toward the sun once again.

Mattie is a lost soul as well. She hasn’t found her place in the world. She has been sickly, too delicate to find work, and is basically living off the “kindness” of her cousin Zeena. Truth be known, Zeena just wanted someone to take more of the load of her housework. Mattie tries, but never does come up to the expectations of her cousin. Frome can’t help, but compare the differences in the two women.

”Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of her hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollow and prominences of her high-boned face under the ring of crimping pins…. He felt as if he had never before known what his wife looked like.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

”She held the light at the same level, and it drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat and the brown wrist no bigger than a child’s. Then, striking upward, it threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, edging her eyes with velvet shade, and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows.”

n  n
Drawing from the CD cover of the Douglas Allanbrook Opera of Ethan Frome.

It is not an even contest, Zeena is seven years older than Ethan, but a lifetime spent embracing her own illnesses has made her a hypochondriac. As if to justify her state of mind, lines of disapproval and discomfort have etched themselves into her face and withered the bloom of her youth. Ethan exchanged a sickly mother for a sickly wife. He is trapped in a loop and watching his own life through a veil in gray scale. Until:

“They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods”

A man deserves some happiness. After a lifetime of devoting himself to others he is on the verge of taking back control of his own life. There is this poignant moment when Mrs. Hale lets him know that his sacrifice has not went unnoticed.

”I don’t know anybody around here’s had more sickness than Zeena. I always tell Mr. Hale I don’t know what she’d ‘a’ done if she hadn’t ‘a’ had you to look after her; and I used to say the same thing ‘bout your mother. You’ve had an awful mean time, Ethan Frome.”

As Zeena starts to become suspicious of Ethan’s growing feelings for Mattie she takes steps to send her away and finds a new maid to come live in the house.

“She had taken everything else from him, and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for it all.”

Wharton, deftly, has both characters dance around their feelings. Each filled with longing, believing the other feels the same, but unable to tell each other how they really feel until suddenly they are faced with never seeing each other again.

”They had never before avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and to tell her that is smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to say such things.”

One kiss can change everything.

They commit a desperate act, born out of fear and sadness, that leaves them both shattered shells of themselves. This impulsive act destroys the very best of what they love about each other, and forever leaves those apparitions of themselves suspended on a sled going down a slope.

n  n
The Mount

Edith Wharton wrote this book during a time when she was having difficulties with her husband, Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton. She certainly seemed to feel as ensnared by marriage as her character Ethan Frome, even though she was living on her beautiful Lenox, Massachusetts estate called The Mount at the time. Even lovely surroundings will lose their luster if you are unhappy with your circumstances. Wharton was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1927, 1928, and 1930. She never did win the Nobel, but in 1921, for Age of Innocence (1920), she did become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. This book seems to attract a mixture of positive and negative reviews today much the same way it did when it was first published. Lionel Trilling says it was lacking in moral or ethical significance. The type of criticism that leaves me shaking my head wondering if we read the same book.

n  n
One of my favorite pictures of Edith Wharton

Another interest point was the theme departure this book has from the bulk of Wharton’s writing. Most of her books are centered around the elite New York society, but this one was set in rural Starkfield and involved characters of the lower classes. Despite the change in venue Wharton’s signature writing style is on wondrous display.

We have all felt trapped by our circumstances, maybe a stale relationship or an unfulfilling job or a long stint caring for a sick relative. This book is a masterpiece because it is simply unforgettable and those that love it and even those that didn’t like it are going to have moments in their lives when they think about Ethan Frome, and wish they had a sled and a slope of snow that will take them somewhere else.

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Few novels feel as aptly suited to the barren chill of winter as Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Short in length but rich in atmosphere and emotional drama, it’s a slim novella that unfolds for me like the frozen rasp of snow underfoot — slow, deliberate, and laden with the threat of collapse. It’s a wintry tale of quiet desperation and impossible longing, told with an icy precision that cuts to the bone.

The story centers on Ethan, a farmer bound by duty to his ailing and embittered wife, Zeena, and tortured by his love for her cousin, Mattie. Wharton traps her characters in the stark, snow-covered landscape of Starkfield, Massachusetts, a setting as oppressive as it is sublime to me, especially when reading in the winter months. The blanketing snow and frigid cold here aren’t merely atmospheric; they seep into the marrow of the novel, shaping every mood and movement. Wharton’s descriptions — of snow-draped fields, crystalline moonlight, and the claustrophobia of a one-room farmhouse — have both a painterly beauty and an unrelenting constriction around the chest, a testament to Wharton’s mastery of tone.

To read Ethan Frome in winter is to feel its chill twice over: in the frozen world of Starkfield and in the bleak inevitability of its story. Wharton writes with a scalpel, carving out in ice the futility of Ethan’s dreams with merciless precision. And yet, to me, beneath this bleakness, there is a kind of brutal beauty. Ethan and Mattie’s unspoken desires — glances held too long, the brushing of hands — are suffused with a fragile intensity that lingers, even as the shadow of ruin looms ever larger.

That said, the novel’s economy is both its triumph and its trap. Wharton crafts a narrative as compact and unforgiving as the winter snow itself, and while the brevity intensifies its impact, it also leaves me longing for a thaw that never comes. Ethan Frome is not a novel that proffers easy catharsis; to me its striking force lies in its refusal to do so. The famous sledding scene, a moment of reckless abandon that veers into devastation, is a masterstroke — Wharton pulls us as readers into its exhilaration only to leave us gasping in its aftermath.

For all this starkness, Wharton’s prose does achieve an elegance that transcends its grim subject and gelid setting. She imbues the story with a lyricism that captures both the beauty and the brutality of its frozen world. Her sentences, spare but evocative, mirror the desolation of Starkfield while offering moments of piercing, clear-as-ice clarity. Still, some plot points do feel far-fetched, edging toward melodrama, and occasionally the narrowness of the novella’s focus freezes us out from further emotional depth. Wharton’s gaze is so fixed on the inevitability of Ethan’s tragedy that it occasionally neglects to let the plot feel grounded or its characters breathe. Zeena, and even Mattie at times, feel more like shadows than fully realized figures — a limitation shaped in part by the novel’s narrative structure. The story is framed by a first-person narrator who arrives in Starkfield, piecing together Ethan’s tragic past through fragments of gossip and observation. But when the narrative shifts into Ethan’s history, it switches to third-person limited, immersing us in his interior world. By anchoring us so closely to Ethan’s perspective, Wharton deepens our understanding of his inner struggles but narrows our view of the women in his life — Zeena and Mattie often feel partially obscured by Ethan’s subjective gaze, their individuality blurred into echoes of his desires and fears. Sure, it’s an intentional constraint that mirrors the claustrophobia of Ethan’s life, but it also means the women feel more like projections of his turmoil than whole people in their own right. Though, in a novel where every moment feels steeped in inevitability, this sparseness could be taken as a deliberate reflection of lives constricted by poverty, duty, and the unyielding grip of winter.

For fellow fans of seasonal reading, plunging into Ethan Frome in the cold months heightens its potency. The novel is a lovely companion to the season for those who appreciate winter’s bleak beauty, stark frozen landscapes under a moon-suffused sky, and Gothic-tinged melodramas that feel like they cut through even the warmest fireside. Like any good wintry novel, Wharton invites us not to escape the cold, but to sit with it, to feel both its weight and its allure, to grapple with the characters’ fragile threads of hope that persist even in the deepest freeze.

To me, despite its weaker narrative moments, Ethan Frome’s strength lies in its wintry atmosphere, its expedition into the limits of desire, the destruction caused by passivity, and its quiet tragedy etched into the frost of memory. It’ll always be associated with winter for me — a slim novel to read while wrapped in a heavy blanket, as snow gathers quietly at the windowpane.

3.5/5

7.0/10

I do love me some melodrama -- I really do -- and sometimes one just savours it.

But there are times when you just toss the book back into the library slot, and Pffft! like a bad dream, it's already forgotten, except for a faint echo of the doom-and-gloom wintery landscape.

I'm being completely irreverent, I realize, when I suggest a better name for Ethan might have been Eeyore, and so I bow with humility in the face of all those who loved and lost -- and raved about Ethan. But. My. God.

While I understand, very well, that the forces that shape us are often unseen and unexpected; that our lives hang by Fates more often than they hang by our own design, in this instance Wharton failed her character completely; or conversely he failed her. I don't think Wharton had enough of a grasp of the Fromes of the world -- she was just one second behind the beat, at every turn: just couldn't synchronize true poverty and despair with anguish and defeat, for the life of her. She might have understood the anguish of the "rich and famous", but she's a step behind on that "poverty thing."

The novel sounds so hopelessly contrived, that I'm surprised I'm giving her such a high rating.

I think the language moved me -- the language of landscape, that is: for that, Wharton has a keen eye, deep appreciation and true understanding.

As for Eeyore, ahem ... Ethan ... there are straw scarecrows with more backbone and substance.

To marry someone because she was ... there?? Obviously, Ethan left all the wit he had back at Worcester college where he studied; and so it seems to me this book would be better termed Just Desserts.

He's not a sympathetic character for me because he bears the signs of a creature observed, and painted, rather than of someone whom one knows and understands.

Perhaps unwittingly, Wharton herself avows this approach to the novel. In discussing her work with Daniel Berkeley Updike, from Merrymount Press, Wharton said to him:

One wintry autumn afternoon we were driving in the country near Lenox, and on the top of a hill on the left of the road stood a battered two-story house, unpainted, with a neglected door-yard tenanted by hens and chickens and a few bedraggled children sitting on the stone steps before the door. 'It is about a place like that,' said Mrs. Wharton, 'that I mean to write a story.' Only last week I went to the village meeting-house [church] and sat there for an hour alone, trying to think what such lives would be and some day I shall write a book about it.'

Sat there for an hour.

I've given more thought to this review than she gave to the likes of Frome.

Unfair on my part? Undoubtedly.

Still ... it's the kind of thing that we pick up on, and nit pick, a century after the fact. But it's not completely unwarranted on my part.

While writers glean inspiration from everything in life, it feels much too contrived to me, to sit and "observe a population", like a scientist and then try to deliver a moral tale on the subject. It seems to me that two disparate forces are at play, and that's probably why this doesn't work for me. It's jarring. It's inauthentic.

I read Wharton's own marital debacle, in this novel, more than I read a true portrait of Ethan. Zeenia seems to be an exorcism of Teddy Wharton, her hubby, who suffered from horrific depression; was more than a little bit of a cad even when he was sane; and, ultimately, in the nut-house department would have given even Mrs. Rochester a run for her money.

Frome is weak and lazily sketched; Zeenia, Xenophobia, Zenobia* is a caricature (even if not a downright literary assassination) of her hubby; and Mattie is barely a ghost in all of this, representing Ethan's ephemeral longing for a last hurrah for freedom. Even in this, he proves to be rather spineless -- but in the end manages only to damage Mattie's spine. What (silly, silly) irony!

And so, to wrap up this review like a proper grammar-school essay, "I like Wharton quite a bit when she sticks to things she knows something about."


* Wikipedia tells me: Zenobia was a cultured monarch and fostered an intellectual environment in her court, which was open to scholars and philosophers. She was tolerant toward her subjects and protected religious minorities. The queen maintained a stable administration which governed a multicultural multiethnic empire. Zenobia died after 274, and many tales have been recorded about her fate. Her rise and fall have inspired historians, artists and novelists, and she is a patriotic symbol in Syria.

Huh. Who knew?!

In this delicious irony, maybe it's the one point Wharton got right.

Am citit din recenziile straine ca aceasta carte este sperietoarea elevilor si ca atunci cand profesorii amintesc de ea, reactia generala este: "Oh, nu! Iarasi Ethan Frome!". Sunt curioasa care ar fi reactia lor daca ar trebui sa invete "Morometii" spre exemplu. Probabil ca noi am fi schimbat in secunda a doua locurile cu ei. Personal prefer genul acesta de lectura in detrimentul celei obligatorii din scolile romanesti.
Edith Wharton, ca si mentorul ei Henry James, imbratiseaza cu perfectiune realismul psihologic si ne ofera romane foarte profunde, pline de probleme morale ce dau de gandit cititorului.
"Ethan Frome" este despre resemnare in fata sortii, despre renuntare, viata irosita si despre neimplinirea dorintelor si viselor. Romanul debuteaza cu o introducere in care naratiunea se face la persoana intai si care il infatiseaza pe Ethan Frome batran, bolnav si sarac dar cu o poveste de viata pe care nu doreste s-o spuna, intr-atat de dureroasa este. Totusi in capitolul intai, naratiunea trece la persoana a 3-a si incepe povestea lui. Prins intre sotie si femeia pe care o iubeste, intr-un sat in care greutatile sunt mari si viata e aspra, Ethan Frome isi tese tot felul de vise despre fericire si iubire care se prabusesc odata cu neputinta lui. Sotia sa, care stie despre cealalta femeie, este bolnava si se foloseste de asta pentru a-l santaja emotional, il iscodeste, il chinuie, ii pune tot felul de piedici si il tine numai in reprosuri.
Cele mai frumoase mi s-au parut descrierile iernii. Peisajul este sordid, salbatic, necrutator si atat de autentic descris incat cititorul simte parca pe piele frigul acela crancen, crivatul aspru si atmosfera greoaie. Interesant este de urmarit efectul vremii asupra psihicului personajelor si vietii acestora.
Finalul este extraordinar, demn de 4 stele si vine ca o lovitura morala:
"Nu prea vad mare diferenta intre cei care locuiesc la ferma si cei care se odihnesc in mormintele familiei."

4.5/5

Labai sodrus, bet trumpas skaitinys, vieno prisėdimo, bet tikrai ne greito apibendrinimo – nei kitam, nei sau pačiam. Nevienareikšmis – ar tikrai viskas buvo taip, kaip parašyta? Kiek galime pasitikėti pasakotoju? Reikalaujantis susikaupimo ir atidos, ypač smulkmenoms. Įtampa jame kyla kaip geriausiame trileryje, o kiekviename žingsnyje sekantis beviltiškumas skaiytojui tampa nelengvu iššūkiu. Visus veikėjus galima užjausti, visus norisi suprasti o ir visų poreikiai atsiremia į tuos esminius, bendražmogiškus – rūpestį, meilę, gyvenimo prasmę. Wharton nutolsta nuo sau įprasto stiliaus ir piešia niūrią, sunkią buitį – be pagražinimų ir be glamūro, su kuriais siejama per savo populiariausius kūrinius – „Nekaltybės amžių“, „Linksmybės namus“. Visgi, tik eilinį kartą įrodo, kad ar kalbėtų apie aukštuomenę, ar apie žavingas damas, ar apie beturčius kaimiečius, problemos vis tiek išlieka tos pačios. Net šiek tiek gąsdinančiai panašios. Tačiau kitaip nei kiti Wharton kūriniai, šis ypač atmosferiškas, o ir labai, jai neįprastai trumpas. Visgi, daugiau puslapių ir nereikia – jei būtų daugiau, tokiame skausme murkdytis gali būti nebepakeliama.

Gal atrodytų gana absurdiška, bet pabaiga man priminė „Mano policininką“ ir jo keliamą problematiką – meilės, atsidavimo, kaltės išpirkimo, labai krikščioniško, „nuplausiu savo priešui kojas“ simboliško. Ir nors negaliu sakyti, kad patiko labiau nei „Linksmybės namai“, tikrai labiau nei „Nekaltybės amžius“ – šis romanas sukėlė kur kas daugiau jausmų, o ir jo autobiografiškumas tiesiog prisidėjo prie „Itano Fromo“ paveikumo. Žinoma, negalima nepagirti ir nuostabaus Jūratės Žeimantienės vertimo – toks meniškas ir toks subtilus. Labai rekomenduoju.

3.5 This was my first book by this writer. I will continue reading her books. She is a great writer. This story was just so depressing though.

Una historia desgarradora, eso ha sido Ethan Frome. No había leído nada de Edith Wharton hasta la fecha y voy a repetir. Esta mujer escribía de una forma sencillamente maravillosa. Una prosa desgarradora, que hace que ese frío se nos meta dentro. Casi podemos ver la nieve cubriéndolo todo mientras Ethan lucha a brazo partido por sacar una granja prácticamente en ruinas adelante. Trabajo que su mujer, Zeena, no le pone precisamente fácil.
Siendo una historia tan corta, creo que cualquier cosa que diga será demasiado; así que sólo me queda pediros que, si tenéis dudas, os lancéis de cabeza. Ethan vale cada palabra, palabrita. Y Mattie... Mattie también.

I'm not sure why I thought this would be a pleasant, happy story. It is Edith Wharton after all!

I've loved her work since I first read The House of Mirth and she lived a good portion of her time in Massachusetts, which is my home state. When I saw I could listen to the audio free through Prime, I downloaded it and here I am.

Written in the early 1900's, the story takes place in the fictional town of Starkfield. It's one of the few tales from Wharton that does not take place in a location of high society. It's the story of a simple man, whose life plans change so that he can care for his ailing father. Rather impulsively, he marries a sickly woman to avoid being alone after his father passes. A few years later his wife's young cousin comes to stay and their lives will change forever.

I never expected this tale to go in the way it did. It was sad and tragic for everyone involved. It's amazing to me that Wharton was capable of packing so much into a relatively short story. Perhaps it is dated in regards to its setting, but the emotions and the characters involved are still perfectly relatable in today's day and age.

I have a volume of Wharton's ghost stories that I hope to read soon. In the meantime, I will be thinking of the cold town of Starkfield and Ethan's fate.

Jesus H Christ but this is bleak stuff! Even the town name Wharton chose, Starkfield....holy shit, hide the guns, rope and knives!

I was born and raised in New England, wandering about the wooded, hilly landscapes of Massachusetts, Vahmont, New Hampshah and Maine for much of my youth. The springs and summers were green and alive. The autumns and winters were dark and dead. So half the year was glorious, good times and the other half you spent desperately trying to survive while wondering if it wouldn't be better to let the icy roads have their way and let your car fly off a bridge. Ethan Frome is solidly stuck in the latter.

The story of Ethan, a troubled married man in love with another woman, is revealed through deft flashbacks. Though I found the dramatic climax, the tragic sled ride, a touch melodramatic, this is otherwise excellent reality writing. Life does not work out the way you want or expect it sometimes, Wharton is saying. Her ironic twists are not so very fantastical, but rather they are the necessary conclusion.

If you like when hopes and dreams are mercilessly dashed, read away! If you relish ruin and decay, have at it! But do read Ethan Frome, do.

I thought I had read this novel before, but honestly cannot remember it at all. Does that ever happen to you?

I'm so glad that I read this one now. It was a quiet, beautifully told story of suffering, pain, and mundane life on a small Massachusetts farm. We meet an unnamed narrator who gets caught in a snowstorm and has to hire this mysterious Mr. Frome to taxi him back and forth to the station for work. The novel switches perspectives and we go back in time to find out what happened to Ethan. Ethan is married to Zeena and she suffers from constant pain and contributes nothing to the household. She has taken in her cousin Mattie for help, although she finds her an annoyance and looks to get rid of her as soon as possible. Ethan loves having Mattie around to being some small joy into his hard and dull life with Zeena. Tragedy sets the story on its axis and a quick turn of events makes for a hard ending.

I enjoyed the writing and the complicated relationships of all these characters. I savored the landscape of a winter in Starkfield and Wharton was able to fully tell this story within the comfort of a 100 pages. I won't soon forget this one.

OMG.
Esta novela tan cortita es de esas que empiezas y hasta que la terminas NO PUEDES PARAR.
La ambientación opresiva, angustiosa y gélida me ha atrapado por completo, Wharton consigue que tu mundo se reduzca a esa cocina congelada con esas tres personas tristes y angustiadas.
¡Me ha encantado!
Es increíble lo bien que escribe esta mujer... Diría que me ha gustado más que 'La edad de la inocencia' a pesar de que esta historia es mucho más "simple"

***Edith te respeto cada día más por esa mente tan oscura tuya, que lo sepas xD

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”

Don't fall for the old myth that classics are boring. This novella of forbidden love, originally published in 1911, is filled with emotion. I didn't want to stop listening to the audio.

Wharton tells the tale of Ethan Frome, his hypochondriac wife Zeena, and Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver. The landscape of Starkfield, MA (particularly the cold, barren winters) is as much of a character as any of the people in the story.

Young Ethan is interested in science and engineering. He wants to escape the nothingness of Starkfield and move to a larger town where people are interested in ideas and education. He loves nature, but has no interest in agriculture. Unfortunately life's circumstances keep him tethered to Starkfield and the family farm. He marries Zeena, though they aren't well-suited. When Zeena's cousin Mattie comes to live with them, he sees an alternative to his bleak life. With Mattie in the house Ethan has a new lease on life -- though his interactions with her are completely chaste. This happiness is short-lived; however. Why? You'll have to read the book ;-)

I have to thank my GR friend Julie for encouraging me to read this. I was not disappointed!

4.5 Stars