Ethan Frome & Summer

Loved ethan frome. Irony at it's finest. Summer was depressing and not very interesting either.

Originally published on my blog here and here in February 2002.

Ethan Frome

There is often a tendency to romanticise American rural life in the days before modern communication, because people admire what they call the "pioneer spirit". When reading accounts from the time, such as the bleaker parts of Laura Ingalls Wilder's memoirs or Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, or this novel, it is clear that it was not in the least an idyllic existence; it was lonely hard work for (in many cases) little return.

The story of Ethan Frome comes in two parts. The framing chapters, a foreword and an epilogue, are told by a stranger who comes to the aptly named New England town of Starkfield in midwinter. There he becomes interested in the figure of Frome, a poor farmer injured in a sleigh accident twenty years previously. The main part of the novel tells the tale of the few days leading up to the accident. Frome's wife Zenobia has over the years since they married (when her vivaciousness provoked a desperate longing in Ethan, lonely after the death of his parents) become a cantankerous invalid, turning the farm's meagre profits into faddish patent medicines. A younger, even poorer, relation of Zenobia's, Mattie Silver, helps Ethan care for her and look after the housework.

The natural consequence of this is that Ethan finds himself increasingly drawn to Mattie, and when Zenobia announces that she has decided to throw her out and hire a girl who will be better at housework, he considers running away with her. But he can't even afford to do this and is driven into a corner from which there appears to be no way to make his life happier.

The other theme of Ethan Frome, then, is doomed desire, first that prompted by desperation (Ethan for Zenobia) then that of one sufferer for another (Ethan and Mattie for each other). The cold winters in which both parts are set, the quietness of the earth covered by drifting snow, form a smothering backdrop for the story which is as appropriate as the heat for Ethan Frome's companion novel of similar themes, Summer. The weather is as symbolic here as it is in the writing of Thomas Hardy.

There is much that is imperfect about Ethan Frome. One of its most obvious flaws is a frequently repeated criticism: the narrator, an outsider to Starkfield, suddenly knows a great deal about the precise actions and feelings of the intensely private Ethan of twenty years earlier. This is clearly a nonsensical conceit on Wharton's part, but the way in which the story is constructed is to a large extent dictated by the way in which she has set up her ending. Flaws apart, Ethan Frome has a strong impact; its atmosphere seems to me as memorable as, say, that generated in Turn of the Screw.

Summer

The companion piece to Ethan Frome, Summer has the same remote New England setting (in a town named, appropriately, North Dormer which is just like the earlier novel's Starkfield), but in the opposite time of year. It is a summer which doesn't end, even though the story is spread over several months.

Charity Royall is brought up as the ward of the only lawyer in North Dormer; she comes from the Mountain, a community of vagabonds outside the town viewed as moral degenerates. Grown up, she fends off the advances of her guardian and falls in love with Lucius Harney, a visitor to the town related to its principal citizens. The novel is basically a battle between their desire and the reactions of those around them, complicated by Charity's feelings of unworthiness because of her background.

Charity's sexuality is much more explicitly described than that of Ethan Frome, though the novel is entirely possible because of her innocence - today she would just sleep with Harney, and that would be the end of it. Things are not uncomplicated; among the aspect of sex which are mentioned is a back street abortionist. Charity's life is far freer than Frome's, as she is able to make trips away from North Dormer, but she is trapped in the same kind of way by her background and situation. The earlier novel works better, though, perhaps because the sense of suffocation is stronger.

If you’ve heard of Wharton, you probably recognize Ethan Frome, published in 1911 and still her best-known novel. The companion piece is not nearly as famous, but I can see why they belong together. Although not set in upper-crust New York like most of Wharton’s fiction, both short novels offer just as fascinating an insight into the young lover’s hot-blooded struggle against polite society. Presenting the stories in chronological order, this edition offers an equivalent to a whole House of Mirth or Age of Innocence. Just don’t read Elizabeth Strout’s introduction first, which gives everything away.

Ethan’s story is touching in its simplicity. New England in winter, the biting frost, the colder marriage and crushing despair were all rendered beautifully in the 1993 movie starring Liam Neeson, superbly cast as the tragic hero. (Update: Hmm … I may have allowed to Hollywood dictate my interpretation of Ethan.) Reading Wharton’s crystalline sentences, the cinematic images replayed in my head, and every bit of foreshadowing stood out like black spruces in the snow, adding to the constant pang of knowing it can only end badly for everyone.

By her own admission, though, the author grew tired of the novel’s acclaim – understandable considering she went on to produce a total of some 60 works, including poetry, short stories, essays on writing, and books on war, travel and architecture. Still, Ethan continues to appeal. Could it partly be that, no matter how poetically logical the ending, the hero’s characters’ plight feels like the reader can still do something about it? Maybe that’s the ultimate effect of the narrator, whom Wharton thought about a great deal before deciding he would tell Ethan’s story. The framing chapters emphasize how many years have gone by, but, as one critic has said, it also gets in the way of the plot events’ realness. We don’t so much have a visceral reaction as that “formal feeling” Emily Dickinson wrote about.

Maybe it’s why, in 1917, Wharton gave Ethan a fellow sufferer in Charity Royall, the heroine of Summer. Everything Ethan was and did, Charity isn’t and will not – let’s just say her name belies her outlook. Yet she is every bit as trapped as he was, which makes her as compelling a character. Even her situation is as complicated as his was straightforward: she lives with Mr. Royall, the lawyer who “brought her down from the Mountain” when she was a little girl and his wife was still alive. She has his last name but isn’t his daughter; she had a chance to enroll in boarding school but declined because her widowed guardian would be lonely. Now 17, she hates everything, including her lonely widowed guardian.

If Charity is Ethan’s counterpart and Mr. Royall is her Zeena, then the Mattie of Summer is Lucius Harney, a fervent young architect from the city. The novel is as brief, but the plot wends and turns more, like the landscape around its small-town setting. The characters, too, are more substantial, especially the ostensible antagonist. This creates an even more wretched conflict among them, even though the atmosphere is all sun-warmed pastures and autumnal sparkle. Summer gives us seasonal imagery at its best.

Because I didn’t know anything about the novel, its ending surprised me and felt abrupt at first. But now that I think about it, Charity’s story not only complements Ethan’s but ultimately completes it. Reading both offers a thrilling study in contrasts and a rare glimpse of how an author continues to grow, sharpening her powers of perception and honing her craft.

Endurance dwelled in acute loneliness, isolated and a prisoner of a sickly wife reminds me of what my mother always says, "A family is a dictatorship ruled by the sickest member."
Both of these stories are all about hopelessness striving in hopeful hearts. Wharton describes beautifully the painful hearts, the drops of rain, the sound of the wind. She was a fabulous writer.

I quite enjoyed Ethan Frome—he is despicable and vile, and I could not put my book down waiting to see what would push him over the edge to betray poor Zeena in the physical realm. Summer on the other hand made me quite sick to my stomach. It was a fine tragedy of a young romance but Mr. Royall made me very ill to the point where my skin would crawl seeing him on the page. I believe Charity should have remained on the mountain and raised her child with her kin instead of resigning to a fate of being pressured to marry her adoptive FATHER, who she hates due to him being constantly coming onto her.

I know Wharton is quite pessimistic—I loved House of Mirth and Age of Innocence, and I agree with her these two stories go together not only for their setting, but for their common thread of disturbed older men preying on young girls with no home, no family, and no place to go. I think women should read these novellas to get a reality check about the nature of men, but the incest factor in Summer turned my stomach a bit too much, despite loving the Ethan Frome novella and its bleak, deserved ending.

So sad, so good, so they belong together.

Ethan Frome - 5 stars
Summer - 3 stars

Liam Neeson is FANTASTIC in the movie