Ethan Frome (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Edith Wharton
- First Published: 1911
- Type of Work: Novella
- Type of Plot: Tragedy
- Time of Work: The early 1900’s
- Setting: Starkfield, a fictional New England village
- Principal Characters: Ethan Frome, Zenobia (Zeena) Frome, Mattie Silver, The narrator, Mrs. Hale (Ruth Varnum)
- Genres: Long fiction, Domestic realism, Frame story
- Subjects: Love or romance, Suicide, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Villages, New England, Poverty or poor people, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, Farms, farmers, or farming, Adultery, Accidents, Sick persons, Fate or fatalism, Happiness, Sleds or sledding
- Locales: New England, Starkfield, MA
Form and Content
Ethan Frome is unique among Edith Wharton’s works in that it tells the tale of an isolated drama, far from the urban and societal concerns of her longer novels. It is also distinctive in that it is a “framework story,” that is, a story within a story. Wharton’s “frame” takes the form of a narrator who introduces the end of the story (Ethan is seen in the present, at age fifty-two) and then provides a “vision” of prior events that becomes the story proper. Although some framework stories never return to the frame, such as Henry James’s...
[The entire page is 2422 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
See Also
Related Topics
