Ethan Frome Edith Wharton

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Ethan FromeEdith Wharton
Introduction Background Discussion Starters
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Ethan FromeEdith Wharton

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Ethan FromeEdith Wharton
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Ethan Frome Introduction
What happens if people miss a chance to find
happiness?

Will they get another chance?
What if they dont?
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Ethan Frome Introduction
An unnamed narrator is spending the winter in a
small New England town.
The deep snow keeps people trapped inside and
squashes most signs of life.
There is little to do except to watch the other
people in the townand wonder about them.
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Ethan Frome Introduction
One of the people he observes is Ethan Frome, a
tall man with a dramatic limp and a scar on his
face.
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Ethan Frome Introduction
Ethan lives on a bleak, poor farm.
He seems to have given up all personal interests
and finds no joy in life.
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Ethan Frome Introduction
He lives with his wife, Zeena,
and her cousin, Mattie Silverwho is paralyzed.
Both women seem unhappy and full of complaints
about their situation in life.
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Ethan Frome Introduction
What has happened to destroy these peoples
lives?
Why are they all trapped in misery?
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Ethan Frome Introduction
The unnamed narrator tries to figure it out and
offers his own version of a story.
Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie form a hopeless love
triangle in which attempts to find happiness or
to escape can only end in tragedy.
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Ethan Frome Background
Ethan Frome is a frame story.
Story Two
Story One
Story One
In a frame story, one story introduces another,
and then returns at the conclusion.
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Ethan Frome Background
The narrator begins the story with his own
experiences,
Ethans story
Narrators life
Narrators life
then describes what he thinks happened to Ethan
Frome,
and finally returns to his own perspective at the
end of the novel.
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Ethan Frome Background
Edith Wharton was born into a rich and socially
prominent New York family in 1862.
Her first novel, The House of Mirth, focused on
the same wealthy and sophisticated society that
she knew so well.
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Ethan Frome Background
When Ethan Frome was published in 1911, some
reviewers and readers were skeptical that Wharton
could write realistically about poor farmers.
Wharton responded that she wanted to show life as
it really was in the poor villages of New England.
She felt that many other writers had romanticized
the poverty and toil that people in these towns
faced.
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Ethan Frome Background
In the 1880s, life for New England farmers was
extremely difficult, filled with backbreaking
labor for little reward.
Life was often worse for their wives, who were
extremely isolated, working at home alone with no
television, radio, or telephone.
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Ethan Frome Background
Despite her wealth, Whartons life was also
difficult in many ways.
Her husband did not appreciate her writing,
embezzled money from her to spend on another
woman, and was abusive and mentally unstable.
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Ethan Frome Background
Eventually, Wharton took bold steps for a woman
of her time and background she left and
eventually divorced her husband. She moved to
Paris, where she had an affair of her own.
She continued writing and won the Pulitzer Prize
in 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence.
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Ethan Frome Discussion Starters

• Discuss (1)
• What other stories that you know contain a frame
  story?
• Why do you think an author might choose to tell a
  story in this way?

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Ethan Frome Discussion Starters

• Discuss (2)
• Have you ever made up the life story of someone
  youve observed? Why did you want to do so?
• Even if a story is based on some facts, do you
  think you could ever know what really happened?
  Why or why not?