Ethan Frome
By: With an introd. by Mrs. Wharton
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Published: 1939
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 181
Copyright date: 1939
Description: Probably the most famous of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome contrasts sharply with the rest of her work. She usually wrote of the New York society to which she herself belonged and whose strengths and weaknesses she understood so well, but in Ethan Frome she moves to another world, what Percy Lubbock calls "American life of a tougher substance than that of Fifth Avenue, life as tightly wedged in its snow-piled mountain valleys as the other drifts aimlessly."

Ethan, the gaunt, patient New Englander, imprisoned by bitter futilities, makes one desperate attempt to escape from his bondage, if not in life, at least in death. His failure produces only a long anticlimax of pain and despair, with his implacable wife presiding over the deterioration of the bright passion which had once warmed Ethan and her cousin Mattie. His story, with its tragic implications of what might have been has had an irresistible fascination for readers over the last half century.
(front flap)
Notes: L-5.68[Col]