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Because March is women's history month, I made it a point to only read women authors over the course of the month. As the month winds to a close, I have visited many places and cultures, learning about historical events from a female perspective. Yet, to observe women's history month, it would not be complete with paying homage to classic authors. In this regard, I decided to read Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton's tragic novella. Ethan Frome of Starkfield, Massachusetts has known much tragedy in his
“If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked yourself who he was…”- Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome Famously known as an acute observer of class and society in classics such as The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome strays far from her typical stomping grounds, leavi...
But Mrs. Hale had said, "You've had an awful mean time, Ethan Frome," and he felt less alone with his misery.This is the book with marvelous writing that sets you in a different atmosphere and melancholic emotional state. It is a story about longing, isolation, sorrow, complexity of life, written in long descriptive prose that is surely my favored kind of writing style. A great piece of literature that expands beyond the ethics and morals and shows life is a much more perplexing than a black an
Because Edith Wharton was born in 1862 and this novel was written in 1911, I’ve always resisted reading the story fearing that it might contain florid prose and descriptions, which are often mind-numbing for me. Not only did I love it, I was reminded of one of my all time favorite novels, Stoner. Ethan Frome was a mostly money strapped farmer in a miserable marriage while Stoner was raised by hard-working farm people. Both men were married to wives that were cold hearted, passive-aggressive and
Finally, I have the right word for this predicament: When a capable author uses her prowess to create a work whose sole purpose seems to be to depress the reader, it can be described as Frome. This word can also be used as a verb, noun, adjective (Frome-ish, Frome-ier, etc), adverb (Frome-ly), etc. to similarly describe the effect it has on the reader, (ie, "I was Fromed.") An example used in a sentence may be: "John Steinbeck was clearly suffering from a touch of the Frome when he penned The Pe...
Every review of this contains so many spoilers that I think everyone is beyond being spoiled. Regarding Ethan Frome, you’re all unspoilable.A SONGJust hear those slay-bells jingling, ring ting tingling tooCome on it's lovely weather for a slay-ride together with youOutside the snow is falling and that nasty sick old wife of yours is calling "Yoo hoo!"But I’m going to ignore the old bag for once and go for a slay-ride with youOur cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy and cozy are weWe've snuggled cl...
“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...
They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and gray under the stars.The perfect soundtrack for this novel: "I Need My Girl" by The National.Wow, I'm speechless. It's ten past midnight and I just couldn't go to sleep without finishing this story. Don't let its size fool you, every page of this book is full of raw emotion that will leave you feeling heavy and achy all over. The writing is so elegant and the prose, every word, every phrase was thought...
CAMOUFLAGE There is the stark landscape of the stark field. Starkfield it is. Then slowly, through third party eyes, with all the distance that this implies, we begin to discern a shape that slowly acquires its own entity against its background. No, not even third party eyes, but third parties of the third party. Even further removed. For the book begins thus: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.And thus
* Spoilers follow* ........This is a romantic tragedy that culminates in a sledding accident. I will just say a few brief words about that. First, there is probably a reason that sledding accidents don't figure more prominently in tragedies. Shakespeare wrote like 13 tragedies and to the best of my knowledge none featured a sledding accident (I have not read Titus Andronicus, so I can't be sure). If Shakespeare doesn't need to include a sled wreck, then neither do you.I will also say that I foun...
In the bleak setting of 1880's Starkfield, appropriately named, (Lenox, western Massachusetts) where it always seems like perpetual winter, and its cold, dark, gloomy, ambiance, a poor, uneasy farmer, Ethan Frome, 28, is all alone, his mother has just died, the woman who took good care of her, Zenobia (Zeena) Pierce, is about to leave, though seven years junior to the lady, he purposes, she accepts gladly and the biggest mistake he believes, of his life, occurs. Zeena, not a beauty, likes nursin...
It is a novel to despair of love, pessimistic, where selfishness and conventions are predominant. It is a novel where the silences speak louder than the words.That's a kind of closed-door where Edith Wharton, between the lines, seems to denounce the customs and social conditions of her time with her precise writing.It takes us into literature from another age, where talent was a necessary preamble to writing.
Sparse prose is sexy.Sexy. And that's why I've given it a special shelf on my page, called a buck and change.Guess what else sparse prose is?Rare.That's why I have only seven books on there.Why? Why are these precious books that fall under 200 pages so rare?Because writers tend to overwrite everything.But not Edith Wharton, the queen of sparse prose. And Ms. Wharton, though she may appear stolid in her old black and white portraits, was one sexy lady.She manages in Ethan Frome to take one anti-h...
"Hey Mrs. Kinetta, are you still inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage on your students?" - John Cusack, Grosse Pointe Blank If you're looking for a book with an ever-increasing level of misery, this one is hard to beat. Try this test the next time you're with a group of your friends: just mention "Ethan Frome" out loud, and see how many of them groan audibly.
I had already read most of Edith Wharton's major novels by the time I got around to reading Ethan Frome, and I was surprised by how different it was. Where did this come from? Wharton came from the high society of New York City which she so adeptly portrayed in The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. Ethan Frome was set in a small New England town aptly named Starkville, and concerns the life of a poor farmer and his unhappy marriage. His wife's cousin comes to live with them, Ethan falls i...
Magnificent, spectacular... I somehow always feel I must assign many types of superlatives to the magnificent & spectacular Edith Wharton! Definitely top ten writers of ALL TIME contender. Her best is "Age of Innocence," & her not-as-much (personally, alas) is "House of Mirth", but sandwiched between them is this tense novella about the restrictions of "unconventional" feeling. & it has the type of invigorating force that compels the reader to do his one job and do it good. I adore this slim tom...
I have been on a bit of a four-star roll recently and am beginning to fear that I accidentally pressed against my generous ratings button when I was slumped against the bookcase last week trying to figure out what to read next. It's cold and dreary outside and I was seeking something warm and fuzzy, maybe a bit light hearted or some sort of serial fantasy to see me through the onset of the winter months.... and then my hand brushed by the spine of Ethan Frome...Which is clearly none of the thing...
spoilers?? what spoilers??i have changed my stance on the cover. a) initially, i thought that it was showing an altogether different type of activity, and then b) when ariel called it a spoiler, i reinterpreted it to something else and was still wrong, and then c) everything that may potentially be spoiled is pretty much spelled out in the first ten pages. so is that a spoiler, or is that foreshadowing?? tomato, potato...what is so excellent about this book is that it is not at all a depressing
Just when you think that it's safe to kiss someone you're not married to, just then, disaster lurks barely a sledge ride away!Ethan Frome is remarkable, in probability wrongly, in my mind for its relentless bleakness. This is an American novella, by an American author in which there is no escape. The West is there, but the protagonist can't afford the journey. This an impoverished landscape, the modest hero ploughs an infertile furrow. An ungallant way to refer to a marriage, but there you go, i...
*Spoilers, proceed with caution*. This very sad tale Ethan Frome is an account of the life of Zenobia Frome, ‘Zeena’. She was named after the great Roman queen who led a revolt against the empire - somewhat like Princess Leia. Zeena had sacrificed her life to the man she loved, Ethan Frome. However, he repaid her by having a secret love affair with Zeena’s pennyless and lazy cousin, Matty, to whom Zeena had given a home. She was pretty, and knew when to flutter her eyelashes. But poor Zeena was...