Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Edith Wharton

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Edith Wharton’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Wharton includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Wharton’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788772099

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an acclaimed American novelist. Known for her use of dramatic irony, she found success early in her career with The House of Mirth, which garnered praise upon its publication. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her tour-de-force novel, The Age of Innocence.

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The Complete Works of

EDITH WHARTON

VOLUME 6 OF 50

Ethan Frome

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2014

Version 4

COPYRIGHT

‘Ethan Frome’

Edith Wharton: Parts Edition (in 50 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 209 9

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

Edith Wharton: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 6 of the Delphi Classics edition of Edith Wharton in 50 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Ethan Frome from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Edith Wharton, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Edith Wharton or the Complete Works of Edith Wharton in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

EDITH WHARTON

IN 50 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Novels

1, Fast and Loose

2, The Valley of Decision

3, Sanctuary

4, The House of Mirth

5, The Fruit of the Tree

6, Ethan Frome

7, The Reef

8, The Custom of the Country

9, Summer

10, The Age of Innocence

11, The Glimpses of the Moon

12, A Son at the Front

13, The Mother’s Recompense

14, Twilight Sleep

15, The Children

16, Hudson River Bracketed

17, The Gods Arrive

18, The Buccaneers

The Novellas

19, The Touchstone

20, Madame de Treymes

21, The Marne

22, Old New York

23, False Dawn

24, The Old Maid

25, The Spark

26, New Year’s Day

The Short Story Collections

27, The Greater Inclination

28, Crucial Instances

29, The Descent of Man and Other Stories

30, The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories

31, Tales of Men and Ghosts

32, Uncollected Early Short Stories

33, Xingu and Other Stories

34, Here and Beyond

35, Certain People

36, Human Nature

37, The World Over

38, Ghosts

The Play

39, The Joy of Living

The Poetry

40, Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

41, Uncollected Poetry

The Non-Fiction

42, The Decoration of Houses

43, Italian Villas and Their Gardens

44, Italian Backgrounds

45, A Motor-Flight Through France

46, France, from Dunkerque to Belfort

47, French Ways and Their Meaning

48, In Morocco

49, The Writing of Fiction

The Autobiography

50, A Backward Glance

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Ethan Frome

This famous short novel was first published in 1911. Ethan Frome is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, New England, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that result in startling events.

The novel is framed by extended flashbacks, where the narrator gradually learns about the life of the mysterious local man Ethan Frome, who was injured in a horrific smash-up twenty-four years before. Frome is described as the most striking figure in Starkfield and a ruin of a man. The narrator fails to get many details from the townspeople and later hires Frome as his driver for a week.

A severe snowstorm forces Frome to take the narrator to his home one night for shelter. Just as the two are entering Frome's house, the first chapter ends. The second chapter then flashes back twenty-four years and the narration switches from the first-person narrator of the first chapter to a limited third-person narrator. Ethan is waiting outside a church dance for Mattie, his wife’s cousin, who lives with Ethan and his wife Zeena to help around the house since Zeena is unwell. Mattie is given the occasional night off to entertain herself in town as partial recompense for taking care of the Frome family without pay and Ethan has fallen into the habit of walking her home. It is made clear that Ethan has deep feelings for Mattie and it is equally clear that Zeena suspects these feelings and does not approve.

The first edition

CONTENTS

ETHAN FROME

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

The 1993 film adaptation

ETHAN FROME

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the natives were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line.

He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s twenty-four years ago come next February, Harmon threw out between reminiscent pauses.

The smash-up it was — I gathered from the same informant — which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window. He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributing hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia — or Mrs. Zeena-Frome, and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his specific. These documents my neighbour would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master.

Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word. When this happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes on the speaker’s face, and answer in so low a tone that his words never reached me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in the direction of his farm.

It was a pretty bad smash-up? I questioned Harmon, looking after Frome’s retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

Wust kind, my informant assented. More’n enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.

Good God! I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box — also with a druggist’s label on it — which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone. That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!

Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.

Why didn’t he?

Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father — then his mother — then his wife.

And then the smash-up?

Harmon chuckled sardonically. That’s so. He had to stay then.

I see. And since then they’ve had to care for him?

Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek. Oh, as to that: I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring.

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.

Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant. Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and Shadd’s Falls, had libraries, theatres and Y. M. C. A. halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a