April / Wharton Reading: 'Ethan Frome'

[Virgil]

great... i wrote a reply to Virgil's post and my computer got stuck up and ate the post. now I'd have to write it all again...

That's happened to me too. It really angers me too.

[SleepyWitch]

oops, it is there after all....

yep Wharton commented on the structure. there are some letters by Wharton in the Norton Critical Edition.. but i've pretty much quoted all it says there.

yep, maybe it was her persona shining through the narrator... maybe she didn't take too much effort to efface her own voice in the frame... later on, in the main story, i didn't get that sense (i mean the narrator didn't sound feminine)

[Scheherazade]

Finished reading the book over the weekend and I cannot say I am as impressed with it as I was with Age of Innocence. Even though Wharton's writing style is still wonderful and keeps the reader (or at least me) engaged, I didn't care much about the storyline; too sentimental and tragic for my liking.

Virgil> I was also thinking of Wuthering Heights while reading it.

Sleepy> I think the narrator sounds too 'mild' compared to 'country folks' who dominate the book. He is an outsider, an educated town person, which might explain the 'feminine' vibe you get.

I think Ethan is singled out from the very beginning of the story; in the first chapter, his name is repeated ever so often in full, 'Ethan Frome', that the reader cannot help getting interested in him.

Wondering if anyone else noted the parallel between his relationship with his mother, wife and Mattie... First, he is fond of his mother's company, when she used to be well and chatty. When she falls ill and looked after by Zeena, he develops a fondness for her company. However, she falls ill too (I agree with above posts that she is hypochondriac) and is not a lively person anymore. And finally, Mattie comes to look after Zeena and he develops a fondness for her. It is very ironic, in my opinion, that at the end Mattie also loses her liveliness and turns into a bitter person and Ethan is stuck with them both. I cannot help wondering whether he would have developed a liking for her too had there been another person looking after Mattie at the end...

[Virgil]

Virgil> I was also thinking of Expectations while reading it.

Great Expectations? In what way?

Wondering if anyone else noted the parallel between his relationship with his mother, wife and Mattie... First, he is fond of his mother's company, when she used to be well and chatty. When she falls ill and looked after by Zeena, he develops a fondness for her company. However, she falls ill too (I agree with above posts that she is hypochondriac) and is not a lively person anymore. And finally, Mattie comes to look after Zeena and he develops a fondness for her. It is very ironic, in my opinion, that at the end Mattie also loses her liveliness and turns into a bitter person and Ethan is stuck with them both. .

Yes, his life history is where he is in constant care of the women around him. In the end he strikes me to be that horse that he trugs along.

I cannot help wondering whether he would have developed a liking for her too had there been another person looking after Mattie at the end

Perhaps, but we will never know.

[Scheherazade]

Bah! I wanted to say Wuthering Heights, not Expectations!

I also said Expectations instead of David Copperfield during a discussion tonight... Maybe I should read Expectations again!

[Virgil]

Bah! I wanted to say Wuthering Heights, not Expectations!

I also said Expectations instead of David Copperfield during a discussion tonight... Maybe I should read Expectations again!

And you've gotten into the habit of calling me old and senile.

Yes, I think there are several similarites to Wuthering Heights.

[papayahed]

It doesn't say but I'm wondering if Ethan took a re-liking to Zeena once she started taking care of Mattie??


I kinda want to say "that poor Bastard, he never had a chance", but I just can't seem to find any pity for the guy.

[Janine]

Did she commet on it? I would like to read her thoughts on the structure. I doubt I'll have the time, but I would need to go to a research library and that's an hour a way in Manhatten for me.


I didn't get that sense. When I read it a second time I'll look for it. Perhaps you picked up Wharton's persona in the writing.

I have several comments after reading the posts on the last two pages - wow, this thread got away from me, all of a sudden. First off in the introduction in my own book, Cythnia Griffin Wolfe, in 1922 (granted this is an older book and quote) quotes Wharton as saying:

"It was not until I wrote Ethan Frome that I suddenly felt the artisan's full control of his implements. When Ethan Frome first appeared I was severly criticized by the reviewers for what was considered the clumsy structure of the tale. I had pondered long on the structure.....but could think of no alternative which would serve as well in the given case, [and] I am still sure that its structure is not its weak point."

Then the introduction gives a few pages of biographical background about Edith Wharton which is of much interest, but too long to type. Next in the introduction, of interest, are the following passages:

"Ethan Frome is a dramatic departure from these [the early fiction] in several ways, most notably in that it does not deal with a series of mutilating social prohibitions. Instead, it addresses the lethal inclination to passivity that dwells deeply buried in every human heart. What is more, it deals with this problem from an artist's point of view, for the principal 'character' in Ethan Frome is not the man who gives the novel its title, but the storyteller who recounts his tale to us."

Then this a bit later on in the text:

"Ethan Frome begins with a narrator who has become fascinated with a local 'story' and by the man who seems central to its meaning, Ethan Frome. A sophisticated engineer, busy with his own work, this narrator would appear to have little in common with the taciturn, slow-moving cripple; nonetheless, as the narrator begins to make Ethan Frome's acquaintance, peculiar similarities emerge. Frome studied engineering himself as a young man; most surprising of all, like the narrator, who has spent the previous year on a job in Florida, Frome himself escaped the cold of Starkfield briefly and sojourned in the warmth of Florida once in the long-distant past. In 1910, the year before Ethan Frome appeared, Wharton pulished a book of short stories Tales of Men and Ghosts. In it, there are three stories that deal with the theme of the double --a character who encounters a kind of alter-ego--and in one of these stories, 'The Legend', the alter-ego is named Mr. Winterman. Now in Ethan Frome, Wharton brings her experimentation with doubles to its culmination. Ethan Frome is the narrator's double, his 'Winterman,' the person he might become if he were isolated from the busy world of human vitality and constrained to submit to the force of cold, whatever that might prove to be."

I have more to add but this is good for now.

[Virgil]

"Ethan Frome begins with a narrator who has become fascinated with a local 'story' and by the man who seems central to its meaning, Ethan Frome. A sophisticated engineer, busy with his own work, this narrator would appear to have little in common with the taciturn, slow-moving cripple; nonetheless, as the narrator begins to make Ethan Frome's acquaintance, peculiar similarities emerge. Frome studied engineering himself as a young man; most surprising of all, like the narrator, who has spent the previous year on a job in Florida, Frome himself escaped the cold of Starkfield briefly and sojourned in the warmth of Florida once in the long-distant past. In 1910, the year before Ethan Frome appeared, Wharton pulished a book of short stories Tales of Men and Ghosts. In it, there are three stories that deal with the theme of the double --a character who encounters a kind of alter-ego--and in one of these stories, 'The Legend', the alter-ego is named Mr. Winterman. Now in Ethan Frome, Wharton brings her experimentation with doubles to its culmination. Ethan Frome is the narrator's double, his 'Winterman,' the person he might become if he were isolated from the busy world of human vitality and constrained to submit to the force of cold, whatever that might prove to be."

Thanks Janine. I take it was the critic who wrote that. There is somethng to it, but I'm not completely sold. Yes, there is a bit of a doppelgänger between the two characters, but the narrator's character is rather undeveloped for it to be significant, at least in my book. To me he just serves as a window into Ethan. To be a real doppelgänger the minor character has to learn something of himself by viewing the character under scrutiny, like Joseph Conrad's story, "The Secret Sharer." The narrator could have learned something here about himself, but what?

I just re-read the framing preface, and I was astounded how much more signifcance it carries now. If everyone has fifteen minutes, re-read just that. There is no way to pick up what is being said without having read the entire novel first.

[Janine]

Thanks Janine. I take it was the critic who wrote that. There is somethng to it, but I'm not completely sold. Yes, there is a bit of a doppelgänger between the two characters, but the narrator's character is rather undeveloped for it to be significant, at least in my book. To me he just serves as a window into Ethan. To be a real doppelgänger the minor character has to learn something of himself by viewing the character under scrutiny, like Joseph Conrad's story, "The Secret Sharer." The narrator could have learned something here about himself, but what?

I just re-read the framing preface, and I was astounded how much more signifcance it carries now. If everyone has fifteen minutes, re-read just that. There is no way to pick up what is being said without having read the entire novel first.

Virgil, Thanks for seeing my post and answering it. Took awhile to type all that. I don't think that the critic is saying doppelganger - not sure it is the same exact thought. Just that the character can relate to Ethan in a similiar way such as people sharing like interests, etc. I agree that the idea or connection is under-developed, but then again it just may be subtle.

Good, I was waiting for someone to answer my post so I could post this, which will relate to the whole introduction (framing preface) to the book:

Excerpt from Introduction, which greatly explains Wharton’s choice as to the narration and structure of the book. This passage written by Edith Wharton herself:

“The real merit of my construction seems to me to lie in a minor detail. I had to find means to bring my tragedy, in a way at once natural and picture-making, to the knowledge of its narrator. I might have sat him down before a village gossip who would have poured out the whole affair to him in a breath, but in doing this I should have been false to two essential elements of my picture: first, the deep-rooted reticence and inarticulateness of the people I was trying to draw, and secondly the effect of ‘roundness’(in the plastic sense) produced by letting their case be seen through eyes as different as those of Harmon Gow and Mrs. Ned Hale. Each of my chroniclers contributes to the narrative just so much as he or she is capable of understanding of what, to them, is a complicated and mysterious case; and only the narrator of the tale has scope enough to see it all, to resolve it back into simplicity, and to put it in its rightful place among his larger categories.”

Virgil, good idea - I am going to re-read the first part tonight.

[Virgil]

Virgil, Thanks for seeing my post and answering it. Took awhile to type all that. I don't think that the critic is saying doppelganger - not sure it is the same exact thought. Just that the character can relate to Ethan in a similiar way such as people sharing like interests, etc. I agree that the idea or connection is under-developed, but then again it just may be subtle.

Yes, her use of "double" is the same.

doppelganger: in German, this word means “double-goer,” the ghostly shadow that haunts and follows its earthly counterpart; the negative or evil manifestation of what is actually on the “inside” of the haunted character. The Creature is Victor Frankenstein’s doppelganger.

http://www.studyguide.org/lit_terms.htm
We just don't get enough of the narrator to see if there is a part of him that is like Ethan. At least I don't think so.

“The real merit of my construction seems to me to lie in a minor detail. I had to find means to bring my tragedy, in a way at once natural and picture-making, to the knowledge of its narrator. I might have sat him down before a village gossip who would have poured out the whole affair to him in a breath, but in doing this I should have been false to two essential elements of my picture: first, the deep-rooted reticence and inarticulateness of the people I was trying to draw, and secondly the effect of ‘roundness’(in the plastic sense) produced by letting their case be seen through eyes as different as those of Harmon Gow and Mrs. Ned Hale. Each of my chroniclers contributes to the narrative just so much as he or she is capable of understanding of what, to them, is a complicated and mysterious case; and only the narrator of the tale has scope enough to see it all, to resolve it back into simplicity, and to put it in its rightful place among his larger categories.”

Well, the very first sentence of the novel is, "I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." Do you think Wharton is saying that she does not get part of the story from Ethan? If not, how could she know his internal feelings?

[Janine]

Yes, her use of "double" is the same.

http://www.studyguide.org/lit_terms.htm
We just don't get enough of the narrator to see if there is a part of him that is like Ethan. At least I don't think so.


Well, the very first sentence of the novel is, "I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." Do you think Wharton is saying that she does not get part of the story from Ethan? If not, how could she know his internal feelings?

Virgil,
No, I think she gets information from Ethan through the engineer. He is befriending him or having some contact with him and some bits of conversation must come out and reveal something to him about Ethan. Mostly though I think the story is surmised. No one can know all the truth or all the true feelings of Ethan or the other characters involved in this tragedy...note Wharton uses the word "tragedy". Some people are questioning that ending. This is a tragedy just like Shakespeare's plays are sometimes tragedies. In SH there is death at the end but in this novel the death is emotional death. It is a story, just like the bible - put together from different accounts and different people, colored by their ideas and beliefs. One sifts through all that to find the truth or the essense of the truth. Yes, that first sentence is highly significant.

[Virgil]

I keep seeing the contrast between the modern world and Ethan's old world. Notice this passage from the Preface:

Another day, on getting into my train at the Flats, I missed a volume of popular science- I think it was on some recent discoveries in bio-chemistry- which I had carried with me to read on the way. I thought no more about it till I got into the sleigh again that evening, and saw the book in Frome's hand.

"I found it after you were gone," he said.

I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped back into our usual silence; but as we began to crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to the Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk that he had turned his face to mine.

"There are things in that book that I didn't know the first word about," he said.

I wondered less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in his voice. He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own ignorance.

"Does that sort of thing interest you?" I asked.

"It used to."

"There are one or two rather new things in the book: there have been some big strides lately in that particular line of research." I waited a moment for an answer that did not come; then I said: "If you'd like to look the book through I'd be glad to leave it with you."

He hesitated, and I had the impression that he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then, "Thank you- I'll take it," he answered shortly.

"There have been some big strides lately..." sums it up. Also the word "inertia" is so significant in describing Ethan.

[Janine]

I keep seeing the contrast between the modern world and Ethan's old world. Notice this passage from the Preface:



"There have been some big strides lately..." sums it up. Also the word "inertia" is so significant in describing Ethan.

Good observation. It does sun it up. This incident now gives the narrator a little window into the true nature of Ethan. The contrast is the old younger Ethan, eager for knowledge and learning and the resigned one now who is well described by the word "inertia". This is the point that Wharton is saying to begin with, or maybe it was the critic. Oh, definite contrasts in many aspects of the book. And there are similarities as well - the cold landscape and the cold people, even the town folk - so distant and cold. What, the one woman visits the house once or twice a year? Not really too friendly. The town folk are like the "parting of the waters" when Ethan arrives in town. They shy away from him completely and he they. The man is in total alienation in any social form of life.

Yes, I agree on your earlier post about comparing to L. I sort of just meant the tone of the story, but not the ending at all. Just some similarities to me - the relationship to the landscape, but also Hardy-like and a dozen other authors - just the devise they use to set mood, in this case cold and snowy.

Ok, does "alter-ego" mean the exact same thing as "doppleganger"? I was about to look those words up in my big dictionary and compare. She said "alter-ego" and pointed out the coincidental likenesses, not that they were exact replicas of each other. It was coincidental. I will get back to you on the definitions of the two words later on.

[Virgil]

The man is in total alienation in any social form of life.

Yes, that may be the overarching theme of the enitre novel. Very good point.

Yes, I agree on your earlier post about comparing to L. I sort of just meant the tone of the story, but not the ending at all. Just some similarities to me - the relationship to the landscape, but also Hardy-like and a dozen other authors - just the devise they use to set mood, in this case cold and snowy.

Actually this does have the feel of a Hardy novel. The climax does seem Hardy-esk.

Ok, does "alter-ego" mean the exact same thing as "doppleganger"? I was about to look those words up in my big dictionary and compare. She said "alter-ego" and pointed out the coincidental likenesses, not that they were exact replicas of each other. It was coincidental. I will get back to you on the definitions of the two words later on.

I guess they mean similar. Doppleganger is a literary term while alter ego is a psycho babble term.

Alter ego
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

An alter ego (Latin, "the other I") is a second self, a second personality or persona within a person. The term is commonly used in literature analysis and comparison to describe characters who are psychologically identical.

This is my problem with that critic. Yes, the two characters both have that egineering common detail, but what else? I don't see anything. All we know is that the narrator is fascinated with Ethan. So would almost anyone. All I see is curiosity, not a psychological double. But I could be wrong. Maybe I'm making too much of this.