It's Never a Good Idea to Run Into a Tree

Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome” is a delight for slow readers who like the feeling of having read “classic literature”. I consider myself one such reader and so the fact that this book is basically a novelette (157 pages) gives it a certain charm.

The structure of this book is a bit unique in that there are really two stories about the same person. The first story is that of the narrator, an engineer who went to Starkfield for business. He took notice of Frome’s “striking figure . . . though he was but a ruin of a man.” From that point the narrator began to piece together bits of information about Ethan Frome and his tragic life. He eventually hires Frome to provide him transportation to a nearby town for work. The narrator learns more about Frome through their travels but when a blizzard forces him to take lodging at Frome’s home he discovered “the clue to Ethan Frome” and what follows is the second story which is the narrator’s “vision” of Ethan’s past.

Wharton wastes no time in communicating the way things were for Frome and the people in his life. Nearly right away the reader finds out that Ethan Frome is in love with his sickly wife’s young cousin, Mattie, who has come to stay with them so that she might help them around the house while Ethan attended to the family farm.

There’s not a lot of action in this book but what action or developments there are develop quickly. We learn that Ethan loves Mattie and that it seems like she might love him in return. Ethan’s wife seems to understand as much and after seeing a new doctor about “her troubles” she decides to get rid of Mattie in favor of a “hired girl”. Faced with the imminent ending of their relationship, Ethan finally rises above his fears and the social conventions of the time and declares his love for Mattie and she does likewise. However, they both recognize that there really isn’t anything they can do about it. That is until Mattie decides it would be a great idea to make like Romeo and Juliet and try to kill themselves by sledding into a tree.

It’s a very bleak story; “stark”, if you will. It is elegantly written as Anita Shreve says in her foreword. But to me, it lacked something for me to get emotionally attached to. Though I was never bored with the story I never really felt invested in it either. It kind of reminded me of the first half of the movie “Swingers” because you just can’t feel that bad for a guy that is so pathetic.

I agree that the circumstances in the story are tragic and that it would suck to be any of the three main characters in this book and I’ve also been told that love can make you do crazy things like smashing yourself into a tree. Furthermore, I believed that these characters would really act and react in the ways that they did. I could even feel some of the tension presented by the conventions of the time and sympathize with Ethan and Mattie and to a lesser extent, Ethan’s wife, Zeena. But really, when I finished the book, I felt more excited that I had finished the book than I was about what the book communicated. Don’t get me wrong, it is a finely written book but it just didn’t hit me that hard. I suppose I related to the book in much the way Ethan seemed to relate to the world around him: stoically but with a hint of curiosity and longing for something more.

Some books will present characters that you’ll never forget and we love them for that. This isn’t one of those books. I hate to say it, because I like that it was short, but I think the story could have been better had it been fleshed out more.