Ethan Frome

Summary

Ethan Frome is a short novel by Edith Wharton, serialized in Scribner's Magazine and published as a book in 1911. Set in the fictional village of Starkfield, Massachusetts, it is framed by the account of an unnamed engineer who spends a winter there and becomes curious about Ethan Frome, a striking, silent farmer whose body is twisted and lamed by what the villagers call 'the smash-up' of twenty-four years before. When a snowstorm forces him to take shelter at Ethan's farmhouse, the narrator imagines the story that follows. As a young man, Ethan had hoped to study engineering, but the illness and death of his parents kept him on the farm, and he married his cousin Zenobia, called Zeena, who had nursed his mother. Zeena has since become a sickly, complaining wife, devoted to doctors and patent medicines. Her young cousin Mattie Silver, left penniless, comes to live with them as a helper, and Ethan and Mattie fall quietly in love. When Zeena spends a night away to consult a new doctor in Bettsbridge, Ethan and Mattie share a supper in which nothing improper happens, but the cat breaks Zeena's prized red pickle dish, a wedding present she never uses. Zeena returns with orders to hire a servant and send Mattie away. Ethan thinks of running west with Mattie, but he has no money and cannot bring himself to deceive neighbors to obtain it. As he drives Mattie to the train, they take a last sled ride down School House Hill, and Mattie begs him to steer them into the great elm at the bottom so that they need never part. He agrees, but both survive. In the epilogue the narrator enters the farmhouse kitchen and finds Zeena caring for Mattie, who has been paralyzed for more than twenty years and has become querulous, while Ethan lives on with both of them. A neighbor, Mrs. Hale, remarks that she sees little difference between the Fromes at the farm and those in the graveyard. Wharton, best known for novels of New York society, drew on her years in the Berkshire hills for the book, and later wrote that she wished to show New England life as it actually was. Its spare style, symbolic winter landscape and irony have made it a frequent school text.

Plot or Argument

• Prologue

  The narrator, delayed in Starkfield by a winter job, is driven daily by Ethan Frome and, sheltering at his farm in a storm, begins to understand his story.

• Chapters I–III: Ethan and Mattie

  Ethan walks Mattie home from a church dance and fears losing her; Zeena announces that she will go to Bettsbridge to see a doctor.

• Chapters IV–VI: The evening alone

  Ethan and Mattie spend an evening together; the cat breaks the red pickle dish, and Ethan plans to mend it.

• Chapters VII–IX: The sled ride

  Zeena returns, discovers the broken dish and insists that Mattie leave; Ethan fails to find money to escape, and the two attempt to end their lives on the sled.

• Epilogue

  The narrator sees the three of them in the farmhouse twenty-four years later, and Mrs. Hale explains how they have lived since.

Characters

• Ethan Frome, protagonist

  Poor, thoughtful farmer bound by duty, poverty and a loveless marriage.

• Zenobia (Zeena) Frome, major

  Ethan's wife, older than he, preoccupied with her illnesses.

• Mattie Silver, major

  Zeena's young cousin, who comes to help in the house and whom Ethan loves.

• The narrator, major

  Engineer spending a winter in Starkfield, who pieces Ethan's story together.

• Mrs. Ned Hale (Ruth Varnum), minor

  The narrator's landlady, who knew the Fromes and visited them after the accident.

• Harmon Gow, minor

  Village stage-driver who first tells the narrator about Ethan.

• Denis Eady, minor

  Prosperous young man who pays attention to Mattie.

Lessons

• Duty and desire

  Ethan stays bound to the farm and to Zeena by poverty and conscience. The novel asks what a person owes to others when duty conflicts with happiness.

  • Why does Ethan not leave with Mattie?
  • Was his refusal to deceive the Hales a moral strength or a missed chance?

• Setting as character

  Wharton's frozen landscape mirrors the lives of the Fromes. Students can examine how weather and place carry meaning.

  • Find two descriptions of winter and explain what they suggest about Ethan.
  • Would the story work in another season?

• Framing and point of view

  The story is reconstructed by a stranger from fragments. Readers can consider how the frame shapes the tale's reliability.

  • What does the narrator know for certain, and what does he imagine?
  • Why might Wharton tell the story this way?

Context

By the late nineteenth century, many hill farms in western Massachusetts and New England were declining as young people moved west or to cities. Wharton observed these communities from The Mount, her house in Lenox, in the Berkshires.

Composition

Wharton later recalled that the story began as an exercise in French written in Paris around 1907. She developed it in English, and it was serialized in Scribner's Magazine from August to October 1911 before Scribner's published it as a book that year.

Reception

Reviewers admired its compression and power, though some found it too grim. It became one of Wharton's most widely read works and a staple of American high school reading, and it was adapted for the stage in 1936 and for film in 1993.

Comparisons

• Anna Karenina

  Tolstoy's novel also treats a passion outside an unhappy marriage, but in a grand social world rather than a poor farm.

• The Scarlet Letter

  Hawthorne's New England tale likewise studies love, duty and community judgment in a severe setting.

• My Ántonia

  Cather's novel is another story of rural hardship, narrated by an outsider who reconstructs another person's life.

• Early Poems: A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval

  Frost's early poems portray the same northern New England of isolated farms, hard winters and reticent people.

• Washington Square

  Henry James, Wharton's friend, also wrote a compact tragedy of thwarted love and duty.

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich

  Tolstoy's novella, like Wharton's, examines a life narrowed by circumstance and the meaning of suffering.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The narrator's frame at the beginning and end.
• Images of cold, silence and enclosure.
• The red pickle dish.
• Ethan's moral choices about money and honesty.

Key terms and names

Frame narrative

A story told within another story, here the narrator's winter in Starkfield.

Flashback

A scene from an earlier time inserted into the narrative.

Symbol

An object or image that stands for something beyond itself.

Irony

A contrast between what is expected and what happens.

Patent medicine

A branded remedy sold without prescription, often of doubtful value.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why did Ethan never leave Starkfield as a young man?
2. Comprehension Why does Zeena decide that Mattie must leave?
3. Interpretation What does the broken pickle dish represent?
4. Interpretation How does the epilogue change the meaning of the sled ride?
5. Big Question When should duty to others outweigh personal happiness?
6. Big Question Can people escape the circumstances into which they are born?

Faith Connections

• Galatians 6:2 (Scripture)

  'Bear ye one another's burdens': the epilogue shows the three characters bound to bear one another, raising questions about what such burdens mean.

• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Great Conversation)

  Tolstoy's very different treatment of love outside marriage offers a useful contrast in scale and outcome.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Through a man trapped by poverty, conscience and a harsh landscape, the novel suggests that circumstance and character together can make escape impossible, and that an act meant to end suffering may prolong it.

Rhetorical device: irony. The sled ride meant to unite Ethan and Mattie in death instead binds them, with Zeena, to decades of shared life.

Debate: Resolved: Ethan Frome is more a victim of circumstance than of his own choices.

Memory Work

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Wharton uses the winter landscape to express Ethan's situation.

Comparison with The Scarlet Letter: Compare how Hawthorne and Wharton portray forbidden love and its consequences in New England.

Medical Lens

Zeena's chronic complaints and reliance on patent medicines and a new doctor, the attempted double suicide and the long aftermath of disability and caregiving are central to the plot.

• Chapter II

  Zeena's ailments and her habit of sending for patent medicines.

  Hypochondria Quackery Charlatans
• Chapter IX

  The sled ride toward the elm.

  Suicide
• Epilogue

  Mattie's paralysis and Zeena's role as her caregiver.

  Disability Deformity Nursing Caregiving

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write a scene from Zeena's point of view on the day she returns from Bettsbridge.

• Essay

  Discuss how the red pickle dish functions as a symbol in the novel.

• Classroom

  Map the characters' movements across Starkfield and the farm, and discuss how distance and weather limit their choices.

Further Reading

• Summer, Edith Wharton

• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

• A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton

• Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee