Ethan FromeC. Scribner's sons, 1922 - 195 стор. This is a tragic 19th century love story. The main characters are Ethan Frome, his wife Zenobia, called Zeena, and her young cousin Mattie Silver. Frome and Zeena marry after she nurses his mother in her last illness. Although Frome seems ambitious and intelligent, Zeena holds him back. When her young cousin Mattie comes to stay on their New England farm, Frome falls in love with her. But the social conventions of the day doom their love and their hopes. The story forcefully conveys Wharton's abhorrence of society's unbending standards of loyalty. Written while Wharton lived in France but before her divorce (1913), Ethan Frome became one of the best known and most popular of her works. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature. |
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ain't alimony Andrew Hale answered asked began Bettsbridge chair cheek church cold Corbury road dark Denis Eady dish doctor door drew drive drove Eady's EDITH WHARTON Ethan felt Ethan Frome eyes face farm feel Flats geraniums gray guess hair Hale's hand Harmon Gow head heard hill hired girl horse hung Jotham Powell ketch kitchen knew lantern larches laughed lids lifted light lips married Matt Mattie Silver Mattie's morning never night Norway spruces old sorrel once paused pickle-dish pushed rose round seat seemed sense Shadd's Falls side silence sled sleigh slope snow sorrel stairs Starkfield step stood stooped stove suddenly supper tell there's things thought tone took trouble trunk turned Varnum spruces village voice wait walked wife window winter wonder wood-lot Worcester words Zeena Zenobia
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Сторінка 9 - Starkfield emerged from its six months' siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter. 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 obstacles have hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome? During...
Сторінка 36 - But it was not only that the coming to his house of a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth. The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had thought her. She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will.
Сторінка 4 - 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....
Сторінка 14 - I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the sawmill 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 more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit. That Frome farm was always 'bout as bare's...
Сторінка 36 - He had always been more sensitive than people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion." Add to these qualities his superior gifts of kindness, generosity, and sociability, and his impressive physical appearance ("Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man"), and it is evident that Edith Wharton...
Сторінка 3 - 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 (joing in reverse.
Сторінка vii - It was the first subject I had ever approached with full confidence in its value, for my own purpose, and a relative faith in my power to render at least a part of what I saw in it." Her faith and confidence were not misplaced. The only significant reader who found it a disappointment was Henry James. It is probable that what disappointed Henry James was the peculiar organization of the novelette, perhaps, too, the fact that it was a novelette rather than a novel. Of her decision...
Сторінка vii - This incompatibility between subject and plan would perhaps have seemed to suggest that my "situation" was after all one to be rejected. Every novelist has been visited by the insinuating wraiths of false "good situations," siren-subjects luring his cockle-shell to the rocks; their voice is oftenest heard, and their mirage-sea beheld, as he traverses the waterless desert which awaits him half-way through whatever work is actually in hand. I knew well enough what song those sirens sang, and had often...
Сторінка 130 - Ethan, there's something wrong! I knew there was!" She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies. "What is it — what is it?" she stammered; but he had found her lips at last and was drinking unconsciousness of everything but the joy they gave him. She lingered a moment, caught in the same strong current; then she slipped from him and drew back a step or two, pale and troubled. Her look smote...
Сторінка 8 - 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 powerhouse at Corbury Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters...