Ethan Frome

Written by Edith Wharton

Narrated by Irene Worth

Ethan Frome is a lonely farmer trying to make a living while also tending to his frigid, demanding and ungrateful wife Zeena. Hope enters Ethan's life of despair when his wife's cousin Mattie arrives to help. His life is transformed as he falls in love Mattie but their fate is doomed by the oppressive principles of that era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Audio Holdings
• Release date: Jan 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781601360724

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

Reviews for Ethan Frome

[addictedtomorphemes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ethan Frome by Edith WhartonBlackstone Audio, narrated by C.M. HebertI think this may have been Wharton's warning to her readers to avoid making a hasty decision on whom you will marry. Avoid the shrews! Ethan Frome was the most handsome man in his little town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. He was a quiet man with dreams of becoming an engineer. He thought running his father's farm would be temporary, but he was devoted to caring for his ailing parents before they died. He received help one winter from a woman named Zeena; and once both parents were gone, Ethan realized he had gotten used to her and asked her to stay. They married and shortly after, she started evidencing what surely must have been hypochondria (and general laziness). Her days were spent lying in bed with her false teeth in a glass, complaining about her symptoms, and working Ethan to the bone to provide for her. When Ethan was 28 and Zeena 35, they took in Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver. She was to help with the household chores and whatever else Zeena desired. She was there for about a year when Ethan started becoming quietly fascinated by her happiness and vibrancy--such a polar opposite from his wife and his life in general. Zeena notices, and we witness what transpires from her jealousy, manipulation, and mean-spiritedness. Ethan has been given one difficulty after another in his life and takes it on the chin. You can't help but wish for him to be pulled from his life's downward spiral and have his brief moments of hope for a different life to be fulfilled.

[moonshineandrosefire · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A farmer in turn-of-the-century New England struggles to survive and to make his farm successful. First he is tethered to the land by his helpless parents; then by his ailing wife. When Ethan's wife's alluring cousin comes to stay, she and Ethan become trapped in a hopelessly passionate love affair. Trapped by fear of public condemnation and the bonds of a loveless marriage, Ethan starts down a path which could eventually lead to tragedy for all involved.I had originally wanted to read this book after seeing the movie with Liam Neeson. Mareena and I caught the last part of the movie and were shocked at how sad it was. I love a sad book and Mareena loves the classics. I give this book an A+!

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My favorite of Edith Wharton's novels are those set in the center of the New York Society of the "Gilded Age". By contrast Ethan Frome is set in the fictional New England town of Starkfield, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm.The novel is framed by an extended flashback. The first chapter opens with an unnamed narrator spending a winter in Starkfield. He attempts to learn about the life of a mysterious local figure named Ethan Frome, a man who had been injured in a horrific “smash-up” twenty-four years before. Frome is described as “the most striking figure in Starkfield”, “the ruin of a man” with a “careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain”. Throughout the novel Ethan Frome makes ample use of symbolism as a literary device. Reminiscent of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (also set in New England), Edith Wharton uses the color red against the snowy white background of her Massachusetts setting to symbolize Ethan's cousin Mattie’s attraction and vitality as opposed to his wife Zeena, as well as her temptation to Ethan in general. Wharton uses the cat and the pickle dish to symbolize the failing marriage of Ethan and Zeena; the cat symbolizes Zeena’s presence when Ethan and Mattie are alone, and when it breaks the pickle dish, this symbolizes the final fracturing of the marriage that is rapidly coming as Mattie and Ethan slide closer and closer to adultery.The story is tragic and very dark in character. Yet Wharton's prose style makes it worth every moment spent reading about Ethan Frome.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. After sampling about a dozen more well-known offerings, I was left to select those with which I was less familiar. That is how I came across Ethan Frome by Edith WhartonThis is essentially a novella that relates the sad life of Ethan Frome, a poor New England farmer who, after enduring an unhappy marriage to a sickly woman eight years his senior, falls in love with his wife’s destitute cousin, twenty year old Mattie, who has come to live with them. If you like stories with happy endings look elsewhere. A look at life on a late 19th century New England farm, coupled with the customs and mores of that society made this an entertaining “read”. The reader in this case was a poor choice, making Ethan sound like an old man when, in fact, he was 28 years old.

[ravingraven_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I do not recommend this book. If you want to read an Edith Wharton novel, read the Age of Innocence. If you already have read the Age of Innocence and want to read Ethan Frome, read the Age of Innocence again. Ethan Frome was difficult to finish. Although considered a classic, this is a book I would not read again. Honestly, I wish I could forget Ethan Frome.

[sbsolter · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think there was supposed to be some deeper metaphor in the story, but it didn't do much for me.

[booklover3258 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's Tiny Book Tuesday! This gem is part of the 1001 books to read before you die list. I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. It's about a married couple whose wife's cousin comes to live with them. The husband falls madly in love with the cousin but keeps it secret from everyone. I did not see the ending coming and was shocked! Very sad indeed.

[bderby_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Edith Wharton explores a love triangle not only within a small town, but within a small house. Passion ignites, burns, and dies quickly in this tale of Ethan Frome and his wife's cousin, Mattie. In the end, after a failed (intentionally?) joint-suicide attempt, Ethan, his wife Zenobia, and Mattie live together in misery.

[n.w.moors-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[k6gst · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Louis Auchincloss, a favorite of mine, thought very highly of Edith Wharton, and wrote a short biography. They were from the same world, though separated by a couple of generations. I found this charmer about doomed, wasted lives, forbidden passion, and deathwish tobogganing in the bleakest patch of late 19th century New England to be more fun when I read the dialogue aloud in an old-timey Yankee accent. The ending is a bang-up twist. I enjoyed it, but I’m ready to read about rich people’s problems again.

[gbev2008 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wharton is a very good writer and most of the book was pretty compelling, but all the melodrama at the end was a little hard to swallow.Well written, but certainly not the classic I was led to believe.

[carolynschroeder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wow, this one sure had to be an oddity in its day. I had been looking for a love story and my friend sent me this one. I'm not entirely sure I agree with him that it's a love story, but it's hard to review this without giving the ending away. In any event, it's probably a look at what love means to some, especially in those times, e.g., themes of caring for each other, tolerating each other and depending on each other. It is a very grey and bleak book, sad, depressing and dark and a very disquieting topic for me, choosing to live a life you have absolutely no desire to live, sucking it up and making the best of it. Wharton was a wonderful writer though, the hard, cold times of rural Massachusetts are captured well and so are the inhabitants of the story, Ethan, Mattie and Zeena. I can see why many high schoolers are assigned this novella. Much fodder for discussion. Recommended, but more for the little oddity it is in that era in literature.

[charbutton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While not set in her usual milieu of the New York upper class, Ethan Frome is a familiar Wharton story of love frustrated by the strictures of society. Farmer Ethan Frome falls for his wife's cousin who lives with them in rural New England. Mattie is young and fresh and lovely; his wife Zeena is constantly ill and demanding; Ethan is lonely, unloved and unappreciated. In this novella we join their story as this situation reaches it's sad conclusion.I think the novella format didn't really work for me. I needed to follow the development of Ethan and Mattie's relationship over a longer period to buy into the idea of them throwing away everything on what felt to me like a whim. I guess I'm just not a romantic!

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to review such a book as this without giving away its ending, and its secrets. It should be enough to say that this is one of the most movingly sad, tragic little books I have ever had the pleasure to come across, and as depressed as I became by the end I'm still exceptionally glad to have read it.

[jmaloney17 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good thing this book is short. I might have had to slit my wrists if it got any more depressing.That being said, the story was very good. The imagery of the cold, harsh, bitter land of a northeastern winter was excellent. There were characters to hate, pity and root for.The only thing I did not care for was the device of using another character to find out the story and tell it for the characters. It just was not necessary. It only took up about 10 pages of the 130-something page book, so it was easily forgiven.This book is a quick, easy read. It is good for a Monday, when you are waiting for a new book to come out on Tuesday that you must start right away. Do read Ethan Frome if you get a chance (even if it isn't a Monday). It is very good.

[1owlette · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favourite novels, this beautifully written, spare tale of wasted lives and lost dreams has stayed with me for many years. The character of Ethan, an imperfect man with longings for something larger that he can sometimes glimpse, is one of the most moving in fiction.

[gracez-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[missboyer3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 Tragic story of wasted lives, set against a bleak New England background. A poverty-stricken New England farmer, his ailing wife and a youthful housekeeper are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle in this hauntingly grim tale of thwarted love.

[djupstrom · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

BORING! I just kept waiting for something...anything to happen. I don't care if this is classic...don't read it.

[ricefun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A short but powerful story. Wharton is a master of soft-footed suspense. Her tales are delicate, and her language is gentile, so it is always a gut-wrenching surprise at the end when a powerful, life-suspending event occurs. I don't read Wharton to feel happy, but I do read her to feel elevated and immersed in my senses as her stories unfold. This particular story has three strong but broken characters. Told in flashback after learning early that some tragic, body-mangling event has occurred in the past, I was compelled to keep reading because I so wanted these characters to have some moments of wholeness and grace. Those moments exist, but through a glass dimly. I can only hope that some easing of heavy burdens happens for Ethan and his two women in some unwritten future.

[lkernagh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my first Wharton read, which was recommended by a couple of other readers here on LT as something I could easily fit into my October reading plans. One of the things I really liked about this one is Wharton's ability to paint a realistic picture of a northern winter in a small farming community where life can be a hard scrabble and everyone knows - or thinks they know - everyone else's business. Wharton has the ability to tell a story in straightforward language, almost with a meagerness of descriptive prose, as if she was writing in a manner to reflect the bleak the New England winter landscape of its setting. The book is described as being "a powerful tale with compelling characters trapped in circumstances they seem unable to escape." From a strictly character analysis perspective, I am not quite sure I wholly agree with that statement. For me, Mattie is nothing more than a vehicle - and a bit of an air-headed one at that - to drive the story forward. Ethan has his interesting aspects but I found him to be limited, and not just by his circumstances. It is really Zeena who I found to be the most compelling of these three characters and I found myself pondering over her character more than the other two. Overall, a great introduction for me to Wharton's writing style and I will be adding more of her books to my future reading list.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A poor rural farmer in Starkfield, Massachusetts is involved in a love triangle with a poor relation of his older, ailing wife who has come to live with them. It was a marriage which probably should have never occurred in the first place. Readers see how this affects his relationship with his wife. Wharton is a master at painting a picture with words. While I'm not convinced this story would have played out this way in real life, the author's descriptions make the book worth reading. I'm not sure that I really liked Ethan or his wife that much, but I did like Mattie. It is her story that made me sad.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic tragedy - a man who pays too dearly for his impulses and who has the best of himself stamped out by the unkindness of those who should have loved him best.

[melumebelle-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

He whines too much. >__<'

[gogglemiss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was such a bleak, sad tale, that I kept wishing that Ethan could escape his loveless marriage and run off with Mattie, but there was no real happiy ending. Simplle story, beautifully written.

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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!

[schmerguls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't seem to have mentioned this book in my diary when Iread it in September of 1948, but I know that i was blown away by it, and I still look on it as Wahrton's greatest work.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So, yeah...I can safely say I have no idea why anyone likes this. Not a damn thing of any interest happened. It's about an "affair" (though not much more beyond affectionate feelings happen). As a former high school English language arts teacher, I can easily see how "classics" like this can kill a student's potential enjoyment of literature. It was just ridiculously mediocre.

[gabarito-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I adored this book as a teenager, I remember it extremely vividly. I wonder what I would think of it 20 years later, I want to re-read this soon.

[shesinplainview · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Had always wanted to read the book after watching the movie years ago. Liked it, I'm such a sucker for a sad love story. Such sad creatures, wasted lives, the whole time you know that doom is looming ahead. Lesson: never settle.