A sign inside Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts,
says:
Edith Wharton did not
write happy endings. Her stories feature the lost chance; her characters yearn
for someone to join them in that innermost room of the soul.
Having recently visited Wharton’s home, I wanted to read
more of her writing. I began with Ethan
Frome, which she wrote in 1911 while still living in the Berkshires. Those
mountains and their harsh winters set a stark tone for the story of Ethan
Frome. Even the town is named Starkfield. Consider one of the narrator’s first
impressions of Ethan Frome: “There was something bleak and unapproachable in
his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man …”
A longtime resident described Frome’s off-putting appearance this way: “Guess
he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.” The snows in this rural small town
were formidable as “white waves massed against the garden-fence.” As Ethan
Frome transports the narrator in his horse-drawn buggy, the narrator notes: “…
We came to an orchard of starved apple trees writhing over a hillside among
outcroppings of slate that nuzzled up through the snow like animals pushing out
their noses to breathe.”
Many such descriptions symbolize the suffocation of Ethan Frome’s
love and dreams. Although I admire Wharton’s masterful telling, I find the story
she tells to be depressing. Ethan marries Zenobia out of gratefulness rather
than love, falls in love with Mattie, and ends up despairing of being loved by
either of them. I won’t reveal how that actually happens. I suppose because
Ethan sacrifices for decades to support the two women and care for their
ailments, this could be called a love story. However, although committed to
Zenobia and Mattie, Ethan finds no joy in his service to them. Compared with
Wharton’s soaring descriptions of Mattie’s and Ethan’s rosy hopes and
orange-flamed desire to escape together, what they are left with feels like gray
ash—not even smoldering embers.
The sign in Wharton’s home proves true for this novel.
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