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Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome is a classic of American naturalism. Published in 1911, the novel details the stifling conventions of the rural New England society of its time and the titular character’s unsuccessful attempt to escape them. Ethan Frome has long been a staple in the English classroom, but we’ll sum up the key points for you if you haven’t read this classic just yet!
By analyzing questions, you can see patterns emerge, patterns that will help you answer questions. Qwiz5 is all about those patterns. In each installment of Qwiz5, we take an answer line and look at its five most common clues. Here we explore five clues that will help you answer a tossup on Ethan Frome.
STARKFIELD
Ethan Frome is set in the fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel is constructed as a frame narrative, beginning with an unnamed narrator arriving in Starkfield and noticing Frome limping through town. Other residents of the town include the wealthy Denis Eady and the gossip Harmon Gow. Most of the citizens of Starkfield give the unnamed narrator few details about Ethan Frome’s past or how he received his injury.
ETHAN FROME
Shortly into the novel the narrator switches from the first-person perspective of the unnamed narrator to a third-person perspective following Frome. We learn that Frome is a cash-strapped farmer who feels trapped by his obligations to maintain his farm and care for his sickly wife Zenobia (known as Zeena).
ZEENA
Frome’s wife Zeena appears to suffer from a variety of unspecified maladies. She is presented as a bitter and stingy hypochondriac. She guards her possessions jealously, and when Ethan’s cat breaks her favorite pickle dish she becomes enraged.
MATTIE SILVER
Mattie is Zeena’s younger cousin who is forced to come to Starkfield to help care for Zeena as she has no other economic prospects. Ethan first sees her dancing wearing a red scarf. In contrast to Zeena, Mattie is beautiful and full of life, and Ethan soon falls in love with her. Ethan hopes to run away with Mattie, even going so far as to attempt to borrow cash from Andrew Hale to finance their escape. However, Ethan loses his nerve when Hale’s wife unexpectedly shows him compassion. Zeena senses the true nature of the relationship between Mattie and Ethan and resolves to dismiss Mattie from Starkfield.
THE SMASH-UP
After she is dismissed from the Fromes’ home, Mattie is taken to the train station by Ethan. On the way there, Mattie proposes a suicide pact. She tells Ethan that they should ride down a hill on a sled and deliberately collide with an elm tree, dying together. Ethan, full of despair at the thought of losing Mattie, agrees. Just before hitting the tree Ethan sees a vision of Zeena’s face and attempts to steer away, but it’s too late. The resulting smash-up leaves Ethan with a permanent limp and Mattie paralyzed from the neck down. Zeena comes into her own after this tragedy, taking care of Ethan and the embittered Mattie.
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Quizbowl is about learning, not rote memorization, so we encourage you to use this as a springboard for further reading rather than as an endpoint. Here are a few things to check out:
Wharton was not just a writer, but a designer as well. Read more about her here.
A real-life tragedy that likely inspired the climactic smash-up in Ethan Frome. Read more about it here.
There’s a darker history of Wharton’s sanctuary in the Berkshires. Watch this video for more:
There’s a more obscure work of Wharton’s that is set in New England, but in a very different kind of New England than the one featured in Ethan Frome. Read more about it here.
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