Ethan Frome, a novel by Edith Wharton, explores the life of a struggling farmer in Starkfield, Massachusetts. The story centers on Ethan, his sickly wife Zeena, and her cousin Mattie Silver, who brings a glimmer of hope to Ethan's bleak existence. Themes of isolation, desire, and the harsh realities of rural life are woven throughout the narrative. Set against the backdrop of a harsh New England winter, the novel examines the constraints of duty and the longing for escape. This classic work is essential for fans of American literature and those studying Wharton's poignant storytelling.

Key Points

  • Explores themes of isolation and desire in rural New England
  • Follows Ethan Frome's tragic love for Mattie Silver
  • Examines the impact of Zeena's illness on Ethan's life
  • Set in Starkfield, Massachusetts during a harsh winter
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Edith WARTON.
Ethan Frome (1911)
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally
happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
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 who
he was.
It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and
the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking fig-
ure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so
much his great height that marked him, for the “natives” were easily
singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it
was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking
each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and un-
approachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I
took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not
more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven
the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew
the chronicle of all the families on his line.
“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s
twenty-four years ago come next February,” Harmon threw out be-
tween reminiscent pauses.
The “smash-up” it was–I gathered from the same informant–
which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead,
had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible
effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window.
He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that
was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch
or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributing
hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually,
he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle,
ETHAN FROME
2
which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals,
however, the post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to
Mrs. Zenobia–or Mrs. Zeena–Frome, and usually bearing conspi-
cuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufactur-
er of patent medicine and the name of his specific. These documents
my neighbour would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used
to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn
away with a silent nod to the post-master.
Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tem-
pered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it
was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place de-
tained him for a word. When this happened he would listen quietly,
his blue eyes on the speaker’s face, and answer in so low a tone that his
words never reached me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy,
gather up the reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in the direc-
tion of his farm.
“It was a pretty bad smash-up?” I questioned Harmon, looking af-
ter Frome’s retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean
brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong
shoulders before they were bent out of shape.
“Wust kind,” my informant assented. “More’n enough to kill most
men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.”
“Good God!” I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after
climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security
of a wooden box–also with a druggist’s label on it–which he had
placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably
looked when he thought himself alone. “That man touch a hundred?
He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!”
Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge
and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. “Guess he’s been in
Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever
anybody but Ethan. Fust his father–then his mother–then his wife.”
“And then the smash-up?”
Harmon chuckled sardonically. “That’s so. He had to stay then.”
“I see. And since then they’ve had to care for him?”
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EDITH WHARTON
Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek. “Oh,
as to that: I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring.”
Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and
moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts,
and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the
gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus
about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: “Guess he’s been in
Starkfield too many winters.”
Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that
meant. Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and
rural delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered
mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as
Bettsbridge and Shadd’s Falls, had libraries, theatres and Y. M. C. A.
halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But
when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet
of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what
life there–or rather its negation–must have been in Ethan Frome’s
young manhood.
I had been sent up by my employers on a job connected with the
big power-house at Corbury Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters’
strike had so delayed the work that I found myself anchored at Stark-
field–the nearest habitable spot–for the best part of the winter. I
chafed at first, and then, under the hypnotising effect of routine, grad-
ually began to find a grim satisfaction in the life. During the early part
of my stay I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the
climate and the deadness of the community. Day by day, after the
December snows were over, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents
of light and air on the white landscape, which gave them back in an
intenser glitter. One would have supposed that such an atmosphere
must quicken the emotions as well as the blood; but it seemed to pro-
duce no change except that of retarding still more the sluggish pulse of
Starkfield. When I had been there a little longer, and had seen this
phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold;
when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the
devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down
to their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from
its six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quar-
ETHAN FROME
4
ter. Twenty years earlier the means of resistance must have been far
fewer, and the enemy in command of almost all the lines of access
between the beleaguered villages; and, considering these things, I felt
the sinister force of Harmon’s phrase: “Most of the smart ones get
away.” But if that were the case, how could any combination of ob-
stacles have hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome?
During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a middle-aged widow
colloquially known as Mrs. Ned Hale. Mrs. Hale’s father had been the
village lawyer of the previous generation, and “lawyer Varnum’s
house,” where my landlady still lived with her mother, was the most
considerable mansion in the village. It stood at one end of the main
street, its classic portico and small-paned windows looking down a
flagged path between Norway spruces to the slim white steeple of the
Congregational church. It was clear that the Varnum fortunes were at
the ebb, but the two women did what they could to preserve a decent
dignity; and Mrs. Hale, in particular, had a certain wan refinement not
out of keeping with her pale old-fashioned house.
In the “best parlour,” with its black horse-hair and mahogany
weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening
to another and more delicately shaded version of the Starkfield chroni-
cle. It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superior-
ity to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sen-
sibility and a little more education had put just enough distance be-
tween herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with
detachment. She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty, and I had
great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of Ethan Frome’s
story, or rather such a key to his character as should co-ordinate the
facts I knew. Her mind was a store-house of innocuous anecdote and
any question about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail;
but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unexpectedly reticent.
There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an
insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs, a low “Yes, I
knew them both... it was awful...” seeming to be the utmost concession
that her distress could make to my curiosity.
So marked was the change in her manner, such depths of sad initia-
tion did it imply, that, with some doubts as to my delicacy, I put the
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EDITH WHARTON
case anew to my village oracle, Harmon Gow; but got for my pains
only an uncomprehending grunt.
“Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat; and, come to think
of it, she was the first one to see ’em after they was picked up. It hap-
pened right below lawyer Varnum’s, down at the bend of the Corbury
road, just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale.
The young folks was all friends, and I guess she just can’t bear to talk
about it. She’s had troubles enough of her own.”
All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable communities, had
had troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indiffe-
rent to those of their neighbours; and though all conceded that Ethan
Frome’s had been beyond the common measure, no one gave me an
explanation of the look in his face which, as I persisted in thinking,
neither poverty nor physical suffering could have put there. Neverthe-
less, I might have contented myself with the story pieced together
from these hints had it not been for the provocation of Mrs. Hale’s
silence, and–a little later–for the accident of personal contact with
the man.
On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the rich Irish grocer, who
was the proprietor of Starkfield’s nearest approach to a livery stable,
had entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats,
where I had to pick up my train for the Junction. But about the middle
of the winter Eady’s horses fell ill of a local epidemic. The illness
spread to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to
it to find a means of transport. Then Harmon Gow suggested that
Ethan Frome’s bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be
glad to drive me over.
I stared at the suggestion. “Ethan Frome? But I’ve never even spo-
ken to him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?”
Harmon’s answer surprised me still more. “I don’t know as he
would; but I know he wouldn’t be sorry to earn a dollar.”
I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the
arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household
through the winter; but I had not supposed him to be in such want as
Harmon’s words implied, and I expressed my wonder.
“Well, matters ain’t gone any too well with him,” Harmon said.
“When a man’s been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or
ETHAN FROME
6
more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his
grit. That Frome farm was always ’bout as bare’s a milkpan when the
cat’s been round; and you know what one of them old water-mills is
wuth nowadays. When Ethan could sweat over ’em both from sunup
to dark he kinder choked a living out of ’em; but his folks ate up most
everything, even then, and I don’t see how he makes out now. Fust his
father got a kick, out haying, and went soft in the brain, and gave away
money like Bible texts afore he died. Then his mother got queer and
dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and his wife Zeena, she’s
always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the county. Sickness and
trouble: that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the
very first helping.”
The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the hollow-backed bay
between the Varnum spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his
worn bearskin, made room for me in the sleigh at his side. After that,
for a week, he drove me over every morning to Corbury Flats, and on
my return in the afternoon met me again and carried me back through
the icy night to Starkfield. The distance each way was barely three
miles, but the old bay’s pace was slow, and even with firm snow under
the runners we were nearly an hour on the way. Ethan Frome drove in
silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed pro-
file, under the helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks
of snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to
mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or
such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute
melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that
was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there
was 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 many Starkfield winters.
Only once or twice was the distance between us bridged for a mo-
ment; and the glimpses thus gained confirmed my desire to know
more. Once I happened to speak of an engineering job I had been on
the previous year in Florida, and of the contrast between the winter
landscape about us and that in which I had found myself the year be-
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FAQs

What is the main conflict in Ethan Frome?
The main conflict in Ethan Frome revolves around Ethan's struggle between his sense of duty to his sickly wife, Zeena, and his deep love for her cousin, Mattie Silver. As Ethan becomes increasingly unhappy in his marriage, he finds solace in his feelings for Mattie, which leads to a profound internal conflict. The story culminates in a tragic decision that reflects the harsh realities of their lives and the societal expectations that bind them. This conflict is emblematic of Wharton's exploration of the constraints placed on individuals by their circumstances.
How does the setting influence the story of Ethan Frome?
The setting of Starkfield, Massachusetts, plays a crucial role in shaping the narrative of Ethan Frome. The harsh New England winters symbolize the emotional and physical isolation experienced by the characters. The oppressive cold and snow create a backdrop that mirrors Ethan's internal struggles and sense of entrapment. Wharton uses the bleak landscape to enhance the themes of despair and longing, making the setting almost a character in its own right. The stark contrasts between the beauty of nature and the characters' grim realities highlight the novel's exploration of human suffering.
What role does Mattie Silver play in Ethan's life?
Mattie Silver serves as a catalyst for change in Ethan Frome's life, representing hope and the possibility of love. Her presence brings warmth and joy to Ethan's otherwise bleak existence, contrasting sharply with Zeena's coldness and illness. As Ethan's feelings for Mattie deepen, she becomes the embodiment of his desires and dreams for a better life. However, their relationship is fraught with tension due to the societal and familial obligations that bind Ethan to Zeena. Ultimately, Mattie's role underscores the theme of unattainable happiness, as their love is doomed by the circumstances surrounding them.
What are the consequences of Ethan's choices in the novel?
Ethan Frome's choices lead to devastating consequences for himself and those around him. His decision to pursue a relationship with Mattie, despite his obligations to Zeena, sets off a chain of events that culminates in tragedy. The climax of the story reveals the extent of Ethan's despair and the lengths he will go to escape his oppressive life. Ultimately, his choices result in a life of continued suffering and regret, illustrating Wharton's themes of entrapment and the harsh realities of human existence. The consequences of Ethan's actions serve as a poignant commentary on the limitations placed on individuals by their circumstances.

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