Post on 02-Jan-2016
Ethan Fromeby Edith Wharton
Naturalism• Growing concern with social injustice and the gradual
acceptance of realistic subject matter and techniques opened the way for naturalistic fiction.
• The new theories of Darwin, Freud, and Marx were suggesting that biology, psychology, and economics determine each individual’s destiny.
• Naturalistic novelists applied these theories to their presentation and interpretation of human experience. Writers would depict life as grim, the universe as cold and spiritless, and the individual as a hapless victim of heredity, society, and natural forces.
• Naturalism, therefore, was in direct opposition to Romanticism and Transcendentalism which envisioned a holy and mystical presence in nature. Naturalistic novelists exposed poverty, cruelty, corruption, and the futility of war.
Steven Crane’s, “A Man Said to the
Universe”A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!"
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”
Background Notes• American regionalist writers tended to focus on
country life through “rose-colored spectacles” and Wharton wanted to counter that unrealistic portrayal through Ethan Frome.
• Wharton wrote Ethan Frome as a starkly simple novel to probe the ordinary lives of an isolated rural people instead of exposing the lives of the rich as in her previous novels.
• Ethan Frome is considered a tragedy
• Ethan Frome is a dramatic departure from Wharton’s previous novels in that it specifically examines the lethal inclination to passivity that dwells deeply buried in every human heart.
• Wharton resented society’s expectation for girls in that they were supposed to be innately pure, free from sexual desire, and innocent of any specific information concerning sexuality.
• Wharton’s own upbringing and relationship with her parents is reflected in this novel: her father was affectionate but distant, and allowed his wife to dominate the household; her mother was repeatedly characterized as “cold,” and Wharton as a little girl often felt hungry or starved for love.
• As a grown woman, Wharton would experience a fit of anxiety every time she would come home.
• The threshold of her mother’s home triggered fear in her.
• There are three parts to this novel: Prologue, Body, and Epilogue.
• There is a climactic sledding scene in the novel which was based on an actual event that was reported in the newspapers during the winter of 1904.
• The narrator of the novel is not Ethan Frome but an outsider.
• He is a sophisticated engineer who recounts his tale to us-- this storyteller is Ethan’s double: he is what Ethan could have been versus what he is.
• Imagery is one of the novella’s most poignant elements conveying coldness, absence of passion, the desperate need for affection, hence the name of the town Starkfield.
• The setting is a rural town in Massachusetts at the turn of the century, and Wharton portrays a middle class farm that has fallen into difficult times.
Main Conflict
• The inability to communicate freely and honestly. This inability is what causes the tragedy in Ethan Frome.
• We will discuss the reasons for this inability to communicate (think social acceptance, individual personalities, customs of the period, etc.)
Theme
• Conflicts existing between personal inclinations and group obligations (Passion vs. Duty).
Hypothetical Question