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    Ethan Frome
    Ethan Frome
    Ethan Frome
    Audiobook3 hours

    Ethan Frome

    Written by Edith Wharton

    Narrated by Scott Brick

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Ethan Frome, a poor, downtrodden New England farmer, is trapped in a loveless marriage to his invalid wife, Zeena. His ambition and intelligence are oppressed by Zeena's cold, conniving character. When Zeena's young cousin Mattie arrives to help care for her, Ethan is immediately taken by Mattie's warm, vivacious personality. They fall desperately in love as he realizes how much is missing from his life and marriage. Tragically, their love is doomed by Zeena's ever-lurking presence and by the social conventions of the day. Ethan remains torn between his sense of obligation and his urge to satisfy his heart's desire up to the suspenseful and unanticipated conclusion.

    Perhaps reflective of Wharton's own loveless marriage, this sophisticated, star-crossed love story vividly depicts her abhorrence of society's relentless standards of loyalty. Ethan Frome is one of Wharton's most popular and best-known works.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 4, 2008
    ISBN9781400178520
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.

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    Reviews for Ethan Frome

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    142 ratings100 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I don't think I'll be forgetting this book anytime soon- or ever.
    • 5/5
      This is my absolute favorite work of all time. It is so haunting. Wharton's writing skill has such an incredible ability to draw you into the setting, Cold, fultility, and loneliness cause you to feel crisp freezing nights and sense the breathtaking power in nature. Descriptions of the landscapes are incredible. Ethan falls in love with his wife's cousin who comes to help out when the wife is taken ill. The story is very realistically tragic.. It took me awhile to figure out the theme of this novel. Like the characters, I wondered what was going on and why. Wharton writes beautifully, portraying a sadness that is universal. It is Wharton at her best.
    • 4/5
      Digital audio narrated by C M Hebert From the book jacket: Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.My reactions:I love Edith Wharton’s writing. I love the way she explores relationships and unfulfilled desires. The tension is palpable, the yearning almost unendurable. She’s a little heavy-handed with the allegory / metaphor in this case. The setting is Starkfield, Massachusetts, in winter; as if the reader needs a reminder of how depressing and lacking in color Ethan’s life is. Though I was reading in the midst of a summer heat wave, I felt chilled. And then I felt that spark of attraction between Ethan and Mattie. Felt Ethan’s heart soar with the possibilities, only to sink with the realization that he was trapped in a device of his own making. C M Hebert does a fine job narrating the audio book. He reads at a fine pace, and his tone is suitable to the material. After listening, however, I also picked up the text and read through several passages. I think I prefer the text so that I can savor Wharton’s writing.
    • 3/5
      The beginning of the book sucked me in as I read this one Saturday. An engineer spending time in a dead-end New England town learns about Ethans tragic history and what led him to where he is now.
    • 4/5
      Although released in 1911 this story is timeless (just as applicable in 2011 as 1911). A quick read but engrossing from the first page to the last.
    • 4/5
      Ethan Frome is a man trapped in a loveless marriage to a bitter and miserable woman. His wife, Zenobia, always complaining about her imagined illnesses, sends for a poor cousin, Mattie, to help out in the house and care for her. Ethan falls in love with Mattie and is given the difficult choice of finding love and happiness in an immoral relationship with Mattie, or following society's conventions and spending the rest of his life, as a miserable hen-pecked husband.

      Although this story is short, it immediately captivated me. Told as a flashback from a stranger who Ethan helps out in a cold winter storm, there is a constant sense of foreboding. I listened to this as an audiobook, read by George Guidall - excellent narration. Although this story is short, there is one scene from this book that will stay with me always (no spoilers here though...).
    • 3/5
      Not sure why this is considered one of her weaker works. I've read a couple others and this seemed to be the same-o story of failed love.Although a novella, it plodded like an old arthritic sorrel, through the hoary, biting ghostly whisps of evening snow, on an inky country road...
    • 4/5
      Great book, sad, read in one sitting, page turner.
    • 5/5
      Ethan Frome (1911) is a lean, taut story; I love its focus and as in several of her other books, I find that Wharton knows how to end a book. There are several parallels in the book to Wharton's own life (don't read this if you don't want the end given away):- Wharton's own failing marriage .... Ethan being trapped in his.- Wharton's eventual philosophy of "owning" her own existence ..... Ethan/Mattie's decision to die instead of living unhappily, reflecting a desire to control their own fate.- Wharton's common theme of the individual being trapped by fate in her fiction ..... The failure of the suicide.Quote:On finding someone:"It was during their night walks back to the farm that he felt most intensely the sweetness of this communion. He had always been more sensitive than the 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. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. Then he learned that one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder..."On being trapped by fate:"They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where, enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom. 'We never got away - how should you?' seemed to be written on every headstone, and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a shiver: 'I shall just go on living here till I join them.' But now all desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability."On desire, I love the feeling of this one:"As he raised himself he suddenly felt Mattie close to him among the shadows.'Is this where Ned and Ruth kissed each other?' she whispered breathlessly, and flung her arms about him. Her lips, groping for his, swept over his face, and he held her fast in a rapture of surprise."
    • 5/5
      I don't know how Wharton packed so much emotion in 103 pages. While reading it I felt the cold of the severe winters, the quiet of the countryside and the anguish of Ethan Frome. A sad, sad story about people who got together who shouldn't have and how some families just can't get out of a rut.Great read - 5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Most excellent!...her style is unmatched...my second favorite of the three of her books I have read so far....Age of Innocence is No. 1
    • 5/5
      Edith Wharton is at her narrative best in this novel about a young man who falls in love until fate tragically intervenes. Wharton deftly constructs the story by starting a generation after the climax, then weaves her way back to the beginning to unravel the mystery. In doing so, she creates the tension in the novel which keeps the reader obsessively turning the pages.Mattie Silver, a young beauty, serves as a sharp contrast to Ethan's wife, Zeena - a bitter, sickly woman who is perhaps more aware of Ethan's feelings than he is of his own. It is no wonder that the reader will find herself hoping for happiness between Ethan and Mattie who seem to be soul-mates:'And there were other sensations, less definable but more exquisite, which drew them together with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of sunset behind winter hills, the flight of cloud-flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow.' - From Ethan Frome, page 297 -Wharton's firm grasp of setting, her understanding of human vulnerability, and her sense of drama all combine to make Ethan Frome a compelling must read.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Short but beautifully-written: a perfect miniature portrait of the claustrophobic natures of the harsh winters of small communities in North America in the mid-nineteenth century, of poverty and of a loveless relationship.
    • 2/5
      I think there was supposed to be some deeper metaphor in the story, but it didn't do much for me.
    • 5/5
      Ethan Frome is a classic. I don't remember ever reading it though I saw the movie with Liam Neeson and Patricia Arquette a long time ago. Both of my sons love this book and talk about it frequently. The younger one mentioned it recently, and I decided to give it a read. Ethan Frome is married to Zeena, a hypochondriac. They're very poor but have taken in Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver to help Zeena around the house. Mattie is everything Zeena isn't; she's young and a breath of fresh air in Ethan's life.This book is deservedly a classic. The pacing of the plot is excellent with the beginning and end told by a third-party narrator and the main story told as it happened. The setting is western Massachusetts in the small fictional town of Starkfield, and the author captures the scenery and time period well. The dialogue fits, and the ending is a surprise. I'm glad they encouraged me to read this book. It truly is a must-read.
    • 5/5
      How did I miss this until now? Everyone knows the name of this novel but why did I never read it? I picked it up as an audio version and was completely taken by the way Edith Wharton writes. Now I will look forward to reading some of her other works.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was... well, very well-written, and all of that good stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't read it through, I read it in about 3 sections, with a few hectic days of interruption in between.

      However, I can say that my expectations were not disappointed, and that I really like the characters - they are not entirely likeable. Mattie is naive and Ethan is somewhat weak, first for marrying Zeena for all the wrong reasons and then for what happens in the rest of the book. But then, it wouldn't be any good if it was your stereotypical hero...

      And the book ends very well. I was rather impressed with the epilogue-style last chapter.
    • 2/5

      A true classic, written with simple beautiful language, this shows us the romance of the 19th century in its tragic form.

    • 5/5
      For more book reviews and other posts of interest to readers and writers, please visit my blog, Voracia: Goddess of Words.Ethan Frome is set in Starkfield, Massachusettes, where everything is very stark indeed. Much of the story also takes place in the winter, when the New England town is covered in snow and bitter cold. At the heart of the story is, of course, Ethan Frome: a farmer living in the early 1900's who has been dealt a bad lot in life. He had been living away from Starkfield, at college, studying to become an engineer, when his father died and he had to return home to the family farm to care for his ailing mother, Zenobia. He ends up marrying Zeena, the nurse who took care of his mother, more out of duty and gratefulness than love or passion. Before long Zeena becomes a hypochondriac, inventing illnesses and perpetually seeking possible cures for them. Into this depressing scene steps Mattie, who is quite the breath of fresh air for Ethan. A distant relative—-she was the daughter of Zenobia’s cousin-—Mattie's father had squandered all of the family’s money, a fact which was only revealed after his death. Mattie’s mother apparently dies of the shock and shame, leaving Mattie a penniless orphan. Zeena’s doctor suggests that Zeena find someone to help with the household chores, so Mattie comes to Starkfield to do just that, and also ends up winning Ethan’s heart.The story is so depressingly tragic that at times I wanted to stop reading it. But it was like watching a scary movie or sitting down on a roller-coaster: you want to stop, kind of, but you also want to keep going. The story starts out by revealing that Ethan was in a freak accident, and then goes back in time, so you know things don’t end up well. The entire feel of the book is incredibly ominous and its pace marches you right on from the sweet tale of a simple and down-on-his-luck farmer who falls in love with a young, care-free girl, to the bad ending you know is coming. The language is simple and no-nonsense, yet it alternatively scares you like Stephen King and pulls on your heart strings like Jane Austen. There’s a scene near the beginning in which Ethan has gone to pick Mattie up from a barn dance that puts you right there in the middle of their budding relationship, which is technically illicit and wrong, but feels so right that you find yourself rooting for them, even though you know it will end horribly. Ethan watches Mattie dancing, yearning for both Mattie herself and the simple innocence and hopefulness of youth, which is long-lost for him. When the dance ends, a young boy flirts with Mattie and offers her a ride home, and Ethan thinks that soon Mattie will get married and leave him. Yet, she is so surprised and happy that he is there to pick her up, and she reassures him that she’s not going anywhere. The tone of the relationship between Ethan and Mattie is light-hearted, casual and happy, in the middle of this otherwise entirely depressing book. Despite its tragic subject matter, Ethan Frome is a gem of a book I plan to re-read again and again. I also want to read more of Wharton’s work. This is the first book I’ve read by her and I know that most of the rest of her works deal with the upper class New York society from which she came. I don’t know how she can write so well about a poor New England farmer, so I can only imagine what she writes about those characters that comprise her own element. I give Ethan Frome four and a half stars and highly recommend it to anyone. For more book reviews and other posts of interest to readers and writers, please visit my blog, Voracia: Goddess of Words.
    • 4/5
      A short, spare novella detailing the doomed relationship between a man and his wife’s cousin. There are plenty of reviews, so I won’t rehash any of it. What I found most compelling was Wharton’s ability to make her reader invest in a story that does little more than detail the bleak landscape of New England and the icy nature of New Englanders’ emotional existence. A total downer, but a beautifully written and evocative one. I listened to this on audio, narrated by Scott Brick, and will return to the story in printed format at some point, as I think I missed some powerful writing.
    • 5/5
      How sad and tragic can one book be? So much so that you think about it for days and days.

      This is also a member of the “finish it and then pick it up again and start at the beginning” book group. It is like the pain that feels good.

      Tragic Ethan Frome; he marries his cousin Zeena just because she is there. I did not like Zeena. She was much too whiny and a dead-weight on the marriage. Zeena eventually developed a strong case of hypochondria, and needed the help of an aide to get along day-to-day. What was interesting was how she made this switch to dependency so rapidly after marrying Ethan. This is where Mattie, Zeena's cousin, comes in. Mattie comes to live with Ethan and Zeena to help out around the house.

      Mattie is a breath of fresh air in Ethan’s life. She is young, innocent and attractive, and of course, very much off limits. She has a complicated past and not a lot of options. Slowly Ethan becomes infatuated and then in love with her.

      Wharton beautifully lets you live their love and difficult decisions. I am not sure if Ethan is really as trapped as he feels himself to be. Wharton explores this through the story and allows each to decide. Was the love of Ethan and Mattie doomed or were there other options there? The story is dark and cold, just like the winter in the Massachusetts town where they live.

      The ending is very Twilight Zonish. The most impossible and long-lasting punishment I have ever read.
    • 2/5
      Not a favorite.
    • 1/5
      He whines too much. >__<'
    • 4/5
      Okay, so once I got over my temper tatrum at my professor's effrontery to make me read for class, I actually liked this book! Now, that's saying something, because usually I grade classics just like I would any other book - none of this: "Ohhh, gee, Author Person! You're book is all kinds of wonderful just because IT'S OLD and lots of people have to write term papers over it!" Nope. The funny thing that I can't get over is that I absolutely HATE books like this one: not a whole lot of action, really indecisive characters, circumstances that are not overcome, etc. And yet Ethan Frome really got to me. I read the whole thing kicking and screaming, saying "No! I WILL NOT like this book! You can't make me!" but it was no use. Here's the scoop (and it's a pretty easy scoop): A poor farmer with an ultra-whiny hypochondriac wife (or at least that's my professor's interpretation) live with the ultra-whiny wife's pretty and vivacious cousin, and the poor downtrodden farmer falls in love with the enchanting cousin (Mattie) but can't seem to escape his circumstances. That's it. And yet, there's so much more. I don't like Ethan, I certainly don't like Zeena...Mattie's really the only character I truly liked...and yet I cared about them all and was rooting for Ethan even though he's such a dadgum loser! Maybe my parents were a little too into the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kids!!!" growing up but I really felt like circumstances weren't near as bleak as Ethan made them out to be. We talked about that a lot in class today: psychological realism novels are really big into the whole "appearances vs. reality" scenario, and I just found that so intriguing. I hate to admit it, but I found myself wishing Ethan and Mattie would just elope and get it over with, and a pox on that scurvy Zeena! Maybe that's why this book is a classic: it's so incredibly simple, and yet by the time you're finished, you feel emotionally exhausted. This book doesn't make you feel better about yourself or life (unless you thank God you're not operating a sawmill in Starkfield, MA in the winter!) and I'm still not entirely sure what message (if any) Edith Wharton was trying to send, but the story just captivated me. Now granted, this is NOT the type of thing I look for in outside fun-reading, but I'm glad I had the experience. It's like when you're in a bookstore or a library and you pass a classic, you can beam with pride and point and declare, "I READ THAT!" So thank you, Dr. Bruce, and thank you to my mom who is an English teacher/principal who let me use her teaching copy - the one with all the notes and unlined passages. :D - Definitely recommended to Classics Lovers. And if you're a student and you find Ethan Frome on your "Required Reading" syllabus, don't fret, for this is an easy read. It could be a heck of a lot worse. *thinks of T.S. Eliot and shivers*
    • 5/5
      Deceptively short, deceptively simple. Don't miss this fantastic novella, that shows how one bad decision can affect a lifetime. "Marry in haste, repent at leisure" is best personified in this book.It's a perfect cold weather read, and take your time to enjoy the characters. Ethan Frome is a strong man, and despite his disability, you see strength. But as you read more you see that a tremendous weakness on his part, far in the past, affected his entire life.Don't give up on this, because the story has one of the greatest twists in modern English literature. Don't assume too much as you read, as you will be wrong. I made both my sons read this...I think any young man should.
    • 5/5
      Hauntingly sad and beautifully written describes Root #89, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. This reminds me of the works of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. It is the story of Ethan Frome and his icecube of a wife, Zeena, who is also a hypchondriac. Zeena's cousin, Mattie, comes to live in and help and of course she is verbally abused by Zeena. This abuse and neglect draw Ethan and Mattie together. Zeena notices the attraction and sends Mattie off. ""The inexorable facts closed in on him like a prison-warder handcuffing a convict. There was no way out—none. He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished." The story is told as a flashback, 24 years in the past and takes place in the brutal northeast of Massachusetts. This may be the best book I've read thus far in 2017!
    • 3/5
      So sad, though it can be so hopeful. Excellent study of hu;man nature in such a short book.
    • 5/5
      Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a haunting tragedy told in a quiet subdued manner that nevertheless I found emotional and moving. The author wastes not a single word in this short bleak novel that speaks so eloquently. I was totally taken up by this story which I read by internet installments through the Daily Lit program. Originally published in 1911, it is set in a fictitious New England village and tells the sad story of Ethan Frome, his wife Zeena, and Mattie a young relative of Zeena’s who has come to live with the Fromes’ in order to help the sickly Zeena. Ethan develops feelings for Mattie, and we learn that she returns these feelings. Of course Zeena picks up on this and makes arrangements for a serving girl to be hired and for Mattie to leave. At different points in the story I was sympathetic to all three of these characters. They were caught up in something that could never end well but Edith Wharton’s ending left me speechless. This was a story that pointed out exactly how trapped people were by the rules of society, and in particular how difficult it was for a woman to chose any path that was not strictly what was required of her. This beautifully written novella evokes feelings of pain, isolation, desperation and, of course, regret. The cold, sparse setting was perfect for this sad morality tale, but a word of warning, this book is not for people who are looking for a happy ending. For me, Ethan Frome was a story to savour and will long be a story that I remember as just about perfect.
    • 4/5
      I read this because so many people had told me how horribly depressing it was. True, this is not a happy story, but if you can get beyond that and look at it for literary merit it is beautiful. Every emotion is perfectly and miserably described. It is a perfect depiction of a heart-breaking situation.
    • 4/5
      "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-back 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 figure 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 unapproachable 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 no more than fifty-two."The narrator goes on to tell us the story of Ethan Frome, who had great aspirations as a young man, with hopes of having a brilliant career and moving to a big city. But first with his sick parents, and then Zenobia, the woman who helped him care for them—whom he was trapped into marrying and who then went on to become a self-pitying and difficult invalid who sought expensive cures—Ethan had little hope of escaping the ancestral home and the poverty that his doomed farm and marriage constrained him to. When Zeena's cheerful first cousin Mattie comes to the farm to help with the household chores in the heart of a bitterly cold winter, Ethan can't help but bask in her warmth. He starts dreaming of a better life again, and together they share a brief and chaste romance which, in this puritanical place, is bound to spell disaster. This is great writing by Wharton, and though the story might be glum, the characters and their opposing motivations form an unforgettable love triangle in a human drama which I found almost comical for the extreme state of hopelessness into which the protagonists are plunged, seemingly for all eternity (but that's just me). The introduction by Elizabeth Ammons in the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition, which I read after taking in the novel, goes on to explain how it drew on Wharton's personal experiences, even though based on first impressions, one might think Ethan Frome was a complete departure from her writing about the cosseted upper classes she belonged to. For example, the mysterious ailments Zenobia suffers from appear to be derived directly from the author's own struggles with depression for which Wharton sought treatment in the mid-1890s: "She suffered from nausea, weight loss, extreme fatigue, headaches, and profound despondency. At the time, the standard diagnosis for such symptoms was neurasthenia, sometimes called hysteria, and the treatment, as Wharton's contemporary Charlotte Perkins Gilman chronicled in her famous 1892 story, [The Yellow Wallpaper], was known as the rest cure. The prescribe therapy involved total bed rest, preferably in a hospital, hotel, or sanitarium, where the patient was fed, bathed, given douches and enemas, massaged, and in every other way kept dependent and completely immobile for weeks or, if necessary, months. This program of rest required removal from all exciting or upsetting stimuli such as newspapers, magazines, books, letters, visitors, or any other activity requiring mental of physical exertions, no matter how mild, including writing, sewing, and drawing. The rest cure aimed to create a healing calm so that the patient could regain mental health. For Gilman, as her short story records, it was a recipe for insanity [and no wonder!]. But for Wharton, the regimen she experienced as an outpatient had a beneficial effect. In large part she recovered because he physician, unlike Gilman's, encouraged her to pursue her writing, which she avidly did." It seems that the notion of infidelity was also drawn from personal experiences. As Wharton and her husband Teddy's unhappy marriage fell apart, each struggling with depression and with Teddy having several affairs, Edith Wharton also broke her marriage vows and "had a secret and passionate love affair with a slightly younger man, Morton Fullerton, from about 1907 to 1910. As she related it [in documents she explicitly left in a sealed packed labeled, in her own hand "For My Biographer], the affair exposed her for the first and only time in her life to intense, fulfilling, erotic passion, a realitiy that respectable late-era Victorian women such as Wharton, brought up to believe sex a necessary and unspeakable evil, where not supposed to experience. The affair ended in 1910. A year later she wrote Ethan Frome and in 1913 filed for divorce."