April / Wharton Reading: 'Ethan Frome'

[Schokokeks]

I hate hearing people call Ethan a whimp. I don't see it that way.

I am sorry to have brought up your hatred (quite a strong word, I find). I do not think there is any necessity for it if the only cause is your seeing Ethan in another way. But you are free to hate, of course .
Having reread my post, I think I did not get all the connotations of the word wimp. However, I was not saying that Ethan was a wimp, but that compared to Zeena,

Ethan is presented being such a wimp

, in case you are looking at him from the rather macho point of view that I was making fun of by including a "" at the end of the sentence.
I did not in any case want to deny Ethan personality and character, but I guess I failed to express myself properly .
But never mind .

[Janine]

I am sorry to have brought up your hatred (quite a strong word, I find). I do not think there is any necessity for it if the only cause is your seeing Ethan in another way. But you are free to hate, of course .
Having reread my post, I think I did not get all the connotations of the word wimp. However, I was not saying that Ethan was a wimp, but that compared to Zeena,, in case you are looking at him from the rather macho point of view that I was making fun of by including a "" at the end of the sentence.
I did not in any case want to deny Ethan personality and character, but I guess I failed to express myself properly .
But never mind .

Schokokeks, no problem really. I should have said "dislike" and not "hate". I don't and could not hate anyone. Other people besides you have called Ethan so or weak. To me Ethan is in a state of iertia. All the characters are. In fact it is almost as thought Ethan is co-dependent...a person needing to be needed, playing into the whole scheme of things....unable to break away phychologically. My offense to using the word 'whimp' is that it is a stereotype phrase and does not do justice in all fairness to Ethan's complicated personality. Do you see Zeena as strong? She may appear to be stronger than Ethan to you and others, but isn't she weak in her dependence on others and her mind that is trapped full of hypochondriac notions? She certainly is a non-functional human being in any social sense. She bosses and manipulated her husband, it is true. Also, she does so with Matty, but this in my eyes, does not make her strong. Bully's are not strong - they are actually weak. I see Ethan as the only one keeping thing together. It is true that Matty is inefficient, but the book did not say that she did not try to be otherwise. Always Ethan is called to be the strong one and take over. I don't see him as weak, but all are welcome to their opinion. Debating and disagreeing on the topic makes for heathy conversation on here.
No the big deal and your smilie did not make me mad. I would never get mad over a silly thing like that.

[Virgil]

I want to contrast two paragraghs from the Preface that i think highlights this old world versus new world that I keep harping on.

The first is a description of Ethan's house:

I saw then that the unusually forlorn and stunted look of the house was partly due to the loss of what is known in New England as the "L": that long deep-roofed adjunct usually built at right angles to the main house, and connecting it, by way of storerooms and tool-house, with the wood-shed and cow-barn. Whether because of its symbolic sense, the image it presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and nourishment, or whether merely because of the consolatory thought that it enables the dwellers in that harsh climate to get to their morning's work without facing the weather, it is certain that the "L" rather than the house itself seems to be the centre, the actual hearth-stone of the New England farm. Perhaps this connection of ideas, which had often occurred to me in my rambles about Starkfield, caused me to hear a wistful note in Frome's words, and to see in the diminished dwelling the image of his own shrunken body.

What is important is how the "the image it presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and nourishment," a rather old fashion type of life. But then the very next paragragh thrusts modernity right into your face:

"We're kinder side-tracked here now," he added, "but there was considerable passing before the railroad was carried through to the Flats." He roused the lagging bay with another twitch; then, as if the mere sight of the house had let me too deeply into his confidence for any farther pretence of reserve, he went on slowly: "I've always set down the worst of mother's trouble to that. When she got the rheumatism so bad she couldn't move around she used to sit up there and watch the road by the hour; and one year, when they was six months mending the Bettsbridge pike after the floods, and Harmon Gow had to bring his stage round this way, she picked up so that she used to get down to the gate most days to see him. But after the trains begun running nobody ever come by here to speak of, and mother never could get it through her head what had happened, and it preyed on her right along till she died."

The railroad has come in and changed the whole relationship with the outside world, and significantly Ethan's mother cannot adapt. So too I think is the suggestion that Ethan does not adapt.

Why do i keep bringing old versus new world up? Because Ethan only knows a world of being locked into with his wife Zeena and cannot break himself away from that formula, and that ultimately causes his tragedy.

[Janine]

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

I think so. If you were so detached from society for so long a time you might be as he is. He has been shunned now by the proper folks in town, he has been left all alone in his misery. How can he have a social behavior? He has forgotten how to be sociable. Only with the introduction of the narrator (the engineer) has he found any bit of a small connection back to his past life, which was a social experince, no doubt. The engineer sees but a small window into Nathan and I am sure it is the same with Nathan to the engineer's world.

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

Because of the tragedy and the mimicing of the coldness in the landscape and nature.

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

Oh no - that dangerous word - 'psycho babble' - another stereotyped word. You do mean 'phycohological'? right
My dictionary says:
Doppleganger n. supposed ghostly double or counterpart of a living person.
Yes, it is a literary term. I saw a film once where the person called the Doppleganger - "my other evil self".
alterego 1.a second self. 2.an inseperable friend.
I am sure there are a lot more technical definitions of 'alterego', as well, in phschology books, etc.

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.

Virgil, I think you are taking the critic too literally. She is just saying it hints, with the similarites, that the two men have some things incommon and that there is a lesson in all this tragedy that is learned by the observance of the narrator. Here are presented two lives with with promise. Ethan, as a young man, eager for learning. Now the young man engineer, also eager for knowlege. They could someway end up the same way, if circumstance ever dictated it. How often do we see an unfortunate person and say "well that could be me"? In other words Ethan is a sort of ghost of what the narrator could become if he was in Ethans type situation. They are not identical, or anything the same. I think the narrator, in seeing and feeling what Ethan is feeling is relating to him emotionally, this being the connection. I feel of all the characters he has most of the empathy for Ethan. The similarities bind them together, so that he imagines and tells the story almost as though from Ethan's point of view.
I read the forward the critic wrote last night again...about 4 pgs. First off the novel idea was taken from a documented incident and tragedy involving a sleding accident and a tree - it is documented. Some people question the strange ending.
The critic brings up a good point about the narration. She says 'it is not true' what the narrator says. It can't be since he is making up the story. This is what I said earlier - that no one, but the real characters, can know the real truth of the story.

I had not seen the connection yesterday to "Wuthering Heights". Then it came to me last night - that also was a 'frame' novel, written or told by an outsider. I had forgotten that part of the book. In this way it is very similar, since an more impartial observer is telling the tale. Again what is really 'true' is colored by the eyes and the opinions of the narrator. He becomes the author's standin.

[Virgil]

Oh no - that dangerous word - 'psycho babble' - another stereotyped word. You do mean 'phycohological'? right

I mean psychobabble.

Virgil, I think you are taking the critic too literally. She is just saying it hints, with the similarites, that the two men have some things incommon and that there is a lesson in all this tragedy that is learned by the observance of the narrator. Here are presented two lives with with promise. Ethan, as a young man, eager for learning. Now the young man engineer, also eager for knowlege. They could someway end up the same way, if circumstance ever dictated it. How often do we see an unfortunate person and say "well that could be me"? In other words Ethan is a sort of ghost of what the narrator could become if he was in Ethans type situation.

OK, I'll buy that.

I read the forward the critic wrote last night again...about 4 pgs. First off the novel idea was taken from a documented incident and tragedy involving a sleding accident and a tree - it is documented. Some people question the strange ending.

Wow, thanks. I don't know if that makes it a better novel or not, but certainly good to know.

The critic brings up a good point about the narration. She says 'it is not true' what the narrator says. It can't be since he is making up the story. This is what I said earlier - that no one, but the real characters, can know the real truth of the story.

Yes, I had that thought too, but then doesn't it trivialize the story? What does it wind up saying? For an unreliable narrator to work, say like Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier (a great novel by the way which i've wanted to read again), the narrator has to be integral with the narrative, not just a window to the action. If we found out that the narrator was unreliable, then why should I care? He's making the whole thing up.

[Janine]

I want to contrast two paragraghs from the Preface that i think highlights this old world versus new world that I keep harping on.

The first is a description of Ethan's house:

What is important is how the "the image it presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and nourishment," a rather old fashion type of life. But then the very next paragragh thrusts modernity right into your face:

The railroad has come in and changed the whole relationship with the outside world, and significantly Ethan's mother cannot adapt. So too I think is the suggestion that Ethan does not adapt.

Why do i keep bringing old versus new world up? Because Ethan only knows a world of being locked into with his wife Zeena and cannot break himself away from that formula, and that ultimately causes his tragedy.

I just saw this as I was posting mine. It is very good to point out these passages. Last night I read something about the author and the themes she presents in her novels. This exact changing of the times is one of them. She lived when the electric light was invented and she had her house completely wired for it. However, she had a keen interest in progress and the future, the railroad being one very significant symbol of progress,....yet her own life early on was quite sad, she apparently was the third of 3 children born, unexpected and apparently shunned by the cold mother. He father was not much better at nurturing her. Later in life she would actually sicken to cross the threshold of her mother's house. I believe she uses 'threshold' as a sort of symbol, often in ET. Not until she wrote novels did she really write herself into phycological health. In Wharton's world there were two very contrasting worlds - one of the painful past - enertia - and one of going beyond it - action. Back in her day, to work, being a woman, was unheard of. She fought through convention to write her novels, as many woman did.
Therefore her two worlds were very different. In the novel that first paragraph about the L shape of the house being changed is highly significant. The last line is wonderful and sums up the whole idea of the altered house mimicing the altered lives of it's inhabitants and especially the broken body of Frome, himself. Great to point this out, Virgil. The introduction was a very important part of the book and some may overlook it's significance.
I am going to check out other biographies of Wharton on this site and online.

[Virgil]

Just posted another as you posted, Janine, so you may have missed another.

[Janine]

Hi Mr.Psychobabble, or should I call you Pscho for short?

Yes, I had that thought too, but then doesn't it trivialize the story? What does it wind up saying? For an unreliable narrator to work, say like Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier (a great novel by the way which i've wanted to read again), the narrator has to be integral with the narrative, not just a window to the action. If we found out that the narrator was unreliable, then why should I care? He's making the whole thing up.

Virgil, This is not a true story - it is fiction. All fiction could be said to be contrived. Is "Wuthering Heights" any less grand (trivial) since the outsider is telling the tale? That too is fiction and made up. If the author directly tells a tale, it is also from the eyes of the author and thus colored by his or her opinions, ideas, etc. Of course, it does not trivialize the story. Don't lose perspective - all stories if not fact, are ficticious. Even 'fact' is colored by the teller's own opinions, prejudices, ideas, etc.
That book sounds good - "The Good Soldier" - I somehow heard of it. Wasn't Ford Maddox Ford a friend (at least, at one time) to Lawrence?

No, I think I saw them all and answered them now.

[Virgil]

Hi Mr.Psychobabble, or should I call you Pscho for short?

I guess I deserve it. Well, I am mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Virgil, This is not a true story - it is fiction. All fiction could be said to be contrived.

Well, of course all fiction is not true, but internal to the work a work of fiction must hold the illusion that what is passing before the reader is true. That is why so many novels start out with the ruse that they found these notes on a beach or some such thing. To admit that what is happening didn't happen and was made up is to break a bond with the reader. Now certain modern works may play with this notion but it usually has a surreal theme, and that is not here. An unreliable narrator needs to be part of the action, and his unreliability is part of the theme of the novel, like the one I mentioned.

Is "Wuthering Heights" any less grand (trivial) since the outsider is telling the tale?

The reason WH has the frame structure is to ground the novel in reality. Some of the events are supernatural, so the placid down to earth character that frames the narrative serves as an eyewitness. It is to make the supernatural elements more believable, like I mention in the paragraph above.

That too is fiction and made up. If the author directly tells a tale, it is also from the eyes of the author and thus colored by his or her opinions, ideas, etc. Of course, it does not trivialize the story. Don't lose perspective - all stories if not fact, are ficticious. Even 'fact' is colored by the teller's own opinions, prejudices, ideas, etc.

So why would Wharton have the narrator be unreliable? For what purpose?

That book sounds good - "The Good Soldier" - I somehow heard of it. Wasn't Ford Maddox Ford a friend (at least, at one time) to Lawrence?

Yes, I believe Ford gave Lawrence his publishing start. He saw great talent in him. The Good Soldier, which has nothing to do with war, is a great novel. Here's what Wiki says:

The Good Soldier is a 1915 novel by English novelist and editor Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique pioneered by Ford. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life.

The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill.

The novel opens with the famous line, “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Dowell explains that for nine years he, his wife Florence and their friends Captain Edward Ashburnham (the “good soldier” of the book’s title) and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while Edward and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in Nauheim, Germany.

As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems. Florence’s heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with an American thug named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless, imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and Leonora’s attempts to control Edward’s affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead.

You can read more here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier. Finely written prose too.

[Janine]

Virgil, be patient. I have a lot of questions about what you wrote in this last post. I can't do it now - not enough time and my response my get complicated. I hve an appointment and will be on later this evening to respond to your post.

[Scheherazade]

Yes, of course when she goes away for the night and leaves them alone in the house, she tries to set them up so she can catch them at something indescent or irregular.

I am not sure if Zeena's aim was to 'set them up' when she left them alone for the night. I agree with you that she was aware that Ethan and Mattie had feelings for each other but her trip was mainly to get the support of her family and get rid of Mattie by hiring a new maid, in my opinion. Even before she found out about the broken dish, she had made up her mind to send Mattie away and hired the girl.

if he could shake off his traditional views (the husband has to provide for the wife etc) and free himself from these obligations he'd be able to leave Zeena.
also, if he were less realistic/materialistic he and Mattie could go West anyway. they'd be destitute tramps but at least they'd be together.
the only way of living he knows is to live as a married man and hard-working farmer.

I am not even sure if Ethan means to elope with Mattie at all. He strikes me more of a Walter Mitty-like character; he, probably owing to his monotonous and frustrating life with Zeena, simply 'daydreams' about having a life with Mattie as an 'outlet'. If Zeena had not actively sought a way to send Mattie away, I wonder if he would ever seriously consider the elopment. He would have been happy living with those two women as they were had Zeena not changed the things.

To me Ethan is in a state of iertia.

I do agree with this statement; however, my interpretation of it is somewhat different. Ethan is never willing to do anything to upset the status quo. Come crunch time, both Zeena and Mattie take action; Zeena goes to seek the help of her relatives to find a maid/send Mattie away and fight for her husband and marriage. Mattie is the one who proposes to the deadly slide down the hill. Ethan, on the other hand, simply goes along with these suggestions whether he agrees or really wants them or not. Despite his complaints about Zeena, he never really puts up a fight. Despite his claims of affection towards Mattie, he does not think of what would happen to her; he simply hopes that Mattie would live with them forever, denying her the chance to have a family etc. Whether we like them or agree with their actions is a different story but both women in Ethan life are strong enough to do what they believe is right.

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.

Ditto!

[Janine]

I am not sure if Zeena's aim was to 'set them up' when she left them alone for the night. I agree with you that she was aware that Ethan and Mattie had feelings for each other but her trip was mainly to get the support of her family and get rid of Mattie by hiring a new maid, in my opinion. Even before she found out about the broken dish, she had made up her mind to send Mattie away and hired the girl.

Scher, thanks for reading my post. I agree that it is true that Zeena had her mind made up to send Mattie away. It just was rather odd that she would deliberately leave them alone in the house together. It makes me suspicious that she was conniving to get them caught so her excuse to dismiss Mattie would be even stronger and more justified. I don't imagine she pictured any real impropiety but maybe it worked out just as she planned with something going amiss so she had full justification to condemn the girl. The pickle dish was just that device to show how awful she felt Mattie was - didn't she lash out at her saying she was evil or no good, like the broken dish was evidence of it. Zeena had a mind that did not work as a normal mind would - twisted I would call it. Who knows why a woman would leave a young girl alone with her husband all night - almost like she invited tragedy or a downfall.

I am not even sure if Ethan means to elope with Mattie at all. He strikes me more of a Walter Mitty-like character; he, probably owing to his monotonous and frustrating life with Zeena, simply 'daydreams' about having a life with Mattie as an 'outlet'. If Zeena had not actively sought a way to send Mattie away, I wonder if he would ever seriously consider the elopment. He would have been happy living with those two women as they were had Zeena not changed the things.

Good points here, Scher, I agree - he daydreams a lot and seems satisfied in the comfort of those daydreams requiring no action at all on his part.

I do agree with this statement; however, my interpretation of it is somewhat different. Ethan is never willing to do anything to upset the status quo. Come crunch time, both Zeena and Mattie take action; Zeena goes to seek the help of her relatives to find a maid/send Mattie away and fight for her husband and marriage. Mattie is the one who proposes to the deadly slide down the hill. Ethan, on the other hand, simply goes along with these suggestions whether he agrees or really wants them or not. Despite his complaints about Zeena, he never really puts up a fight. Despite his claims of affection towards Mattie, he does not think of what would happen to her; he simply hopes that Mattie would live with them forever, denying her the chance to have a family etc. Whether we like them or agree with their actions is a different story but both women in Ethan life are strong enough to do what they believe is right. Ditto!

Scher, basically we agree on all of this or the general idea of it. That is good enough for me. I like the way you have put it in writing and expression. The only part I disagree about is if the woman are actually strong characters. I don't see them such but maybe they are. I see Zeena as lost in her world of imaginary illnesses and weak in the mind and I see Mattie as desperate in her situation and having no other way out. I suppose you are correct in one way - they are both able to act whereas Ethan is as frozen as the landscape around him. But that "action" does not convince me of their strength.

[Virgil]

I do agree with this statement; however, my interpretation of it is somewhat different. Ethan is never willing to do anything to upset the status quo. Come crunch time, both Zeena and Mattie take action; Zeena goes to seek the help of her relatives to find a maid/send Mattie away and fight for her husband and marriage. Mattie is the one who proposes to the deadly slide down the hill. Ethan, on the other hand, simply goes along with these suggestions whether he agrees or really wants them or not. Despite his complaints about Zeena, he never really puts up a fight. Despite his claims of affection towards Mattie, he does not think of what would happen to her; he simply hopes that Mattie would live with them forever, denying her the chance to have a family etc. Whether we like them or agree with their actions is a different story but both women in Ethan life are strong enough to do what they believe is right.Ditto!

I agree that it was within Ethan to break out of his condition, but you know I feel for him. To leave one's wife was not something to do lightly. He was finacially strapped and he would have condemned his wife to destitution. He was torn between duty and passion. He was trapped. He was living in a code of provincial farm life, an old world construct.

Perhaps this is the place to ask this. This novel was written by a female novelist, and so one needs to ask, does this present feminist themes? Woman writers of this period present female characters also trapped in their social condition as Ethan. I'm thinking of Kate Chopin, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. But Wharton has almost the inverse, a male trapped by social convention, unexpressible passion, and domestic drudgery. So is Wharton being anti-feminist? If we have sympathy for those female characters of the other women writers, why shouldn't we have sympathy for Ethan?

[Janine]

I agree that it was within Ethan to break out of his condition, but you know I feel for him. To leave one's wife was not something to do lightly. He was finacially strapped and he would have condemned his wife to destitution. He was torn between duty and passion. He was trapped. He was living in a code of provincial farm life, an old world construct.

Perhaps this is the place to ask this. This novel was written by a female novelist, and so one needs to ask, does this present feminist themes? Woman writers of this period present female characters also trapped in their social condition as Ethan. I'm thinking of Kate Chopin, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. But Wharton has almost the inverse, a male trapped by social convention, unexpressible passion, and domestic drudgery. So is Wharton being anti-feminist? If we have sympathy for those female characters of the other women writers, why shouldn't we have sympathy for Ethan?

Virgil, for some reason I woke up from my drowsy feeling and decided to answer this post of yours.

First paragraph - I also feel much empathy for Ethan. I feel as you do that he was trapped, especially in the time he lived. I could not have expressed it so well, but it is exactly how I feel about his situation and why he did not act. You said it so well.

Second paragraph - I think that most of Wharton's work would be considered sympathetic to the female. If you look at the novel "Age of Innocense" you certainly feel badly for the female involved in the complicated plots. In this case, society has trapped the female in conventions and situations that lead to her downfall or unhappiness. In "The House of Mirth" it is the somewhat the same. But Edith Wharton herself said that "Ethan Frome" was a departure from those novels. Perhaps in this EF she relates, not so much to the female characters, as to the male protaganist, Ethan. So I do not know if it is a true feminist issue here. Hope others give their opinions on this idea.

[Schokokeks]

Do you see Zeena as strong?

No. As with Ethan, I was talking about appearances. That, after all, is one of the reasons why, instead of studying and observing a hypochondriac in a clinic, I am reading a fictional work, where somebody presents her in a certain way and encourages me to set her in relation to the other characters. In my eyes, the story would be far less interesting if Ethan was presented as bossy as his wife, or Zeena presented as inert as Ethan.


Very interesting how opinions in the poll above are distributed almost equally between the last three choices. Not a black-and-white piece of literature at all .