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