Ethan Frome

Wharton, Edith

ISBN 10: 0486266907 / ISBN 13: 9780486266909

Published by Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1991

About this Item

good clean copy with some light general wear. light edge rubbing. small crease on front cover corner. pages clean and unmarked.

Seller Inventory # 011679

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ethan Frome
• Publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., New York
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0486266907
• ISBN 13: 9780486266909
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction - Short Stories
  • Classic Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Perhaps the best-known and most popular of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome is widely considered her masterpiece. Set against a bleak New England background, the novel tells of Frome, his ailing wife Zeena and her companion Mattie Silver, superbly delineating the characters of each as they are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle.
Burdened by poverty and spiritually dulled by a loveless marriage to an older woman. Frome is emotionally stirred by the arrival of a youthful cousin who is employed as household help. Mattie's presence not only brightens a gloomy house but stirs long-dormant feelings in Ethan. Their growing love for one another, discovered by an embittered wife, presages an ending to this grim tale that is both shocking and savagely ironic.

From the Back Cover

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.