Ethan Frome |
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Author:
| Wharton, Edith |
ISBN: | 978-1-9731-1592-2 |
Publication Date: | Oct 2017 |
Publisher: | Independently Published
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $7.99 |
Book Description:
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ETHAN FROMEEthan Frome is a novella published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield, a fictional town in New England, while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the...
More DescriptionETHAN FROMEEthan Frome is a novella published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield, a fictional town in New England, while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his demeanor and carriage. Curious, the narrator sets out to learn about him, learning the man's name as Ethan Frome. He learns that Frome's limp arose from having been injured in a "smash-up" twenty-four years before, but further details are not forthcoming. Chance circumstances arise that allow the narrator to hire Frome as his driver for a week. A severe snowstorm during one of their journeys forces Frome to allow the narrator to shelter at his home one night. Just as the two are entering Frome's house, the prologue ends. We then embark on the "first" chapter (Chapter I), which takes place twenty-four years prior. The narration switches from the first-person narrator of the prologue to a limited third-person narrator. In Chapter I, Ethan is waiting outside a church dance to walk home Mattie, his wife's cousin, who has for a year lived with Ethan and his sickly wife, Zeena (Zenobia), in order to help out around the house and farm. It is quickly clear that Ethan has feelings for Mattie. It also becomes clear that Zeena has observed enough to understand that he has these feelings and resents them.EDITH WHARTONEdith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones, January 24, 1862 - August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. Wharton combined an insider's view of American aristocracy with a powerful prose style. Her novels and short stories realistically portrayed the lives and morals of the late nineteenth century, an era of decline and faded wealth. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921, and was the first woman to receive this honor. Wharton was acquainted with many of the well-known people of her day, both in America and in Europe, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander, who was sixteen, and Henry Edward, who was eleven. She was baptize d'April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church. To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones." The saying "keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family. She was also related to the Rensselaers, the most prestigious of the old patroon families, who had received land grants from the former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. She had a lifelong friendship with her niece, the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand of Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine.