Biographie d'Ethan Frome (document en anglais)

Ethan Frome is a novella written by New Yorker Edith Wharton, first published in 1911 when Wharton was in her early fifties. As a writer, Wharton was very prolific and constantly produced and published shorts stories, poems, novels and novellas. The reason Ethan Frome is one of her most famous stories is mainly because of this astonishing portrait of the poverty stricken inhabitants of the fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, and the love triangle between the protagonists Ethan, Mattie and Zeena.

The plot spans 24 years, possibly beginning in the late 1890s or early 1900s. It includes a “frame narrative”, there are two initial situations: the Prologue is narrated in the first person by a nameless engineer, who had just arrived to Starkfield for professional purposes, and introduces the reader to Ethan Frome, a man in his early fifties, who appears to have a strong yet crippled figure, and “something bleak and unapproachable” in his face. Ethan's physical scars lead the narrator to think about the non-physical metamorphosis that might have come along with the physical ones, and how they might connect with the accident. The "smash-up" […] 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 […] (Prologue). The narrator tells us that he learned something that night which allowed him to imagine Ethan's story, therefore bringing us back in time to learn about his life 24 years earlier.

The plot begins with Ethan walking into town to pick up Mattie Silver from a local church dance. Instead of entering the church, he hides in the shadows to watch Mattie as she dances with another young man, Denis Eady, and then switching to other partners. Having fallen in love with Mattie, this dance prompts him to develop feelings of jealousy and recalls the time when he met Mattie for the first time.

Wharton presents Mattie through Ethan’s eyes and we can only hear her thoughts and characteristics according to her oral thoughts or his descriptions. “He had taken to the girl from the first day, when he had driven over to the Flats to meet her, and she had smiled and waved to him from the train, crying out "You must be Ethan!" as she jumped down with her bundles.” She is first identified as Zeena’s cousin who came to Starkfield as a household helper, and is allowed to go into town to attend social activities (e.g. the church dance) According to Ethan's point of view, Mattie is the positive opposite of the cold and complaining Zeena: she is cheerful and enthusiastic experience and doesn’t “look much on housework, but she ain't a fretter”. The last characteristic given “ain’t a fretter” gives us the idea that Mattie isn’t the type to complain and is willing to do her best, no matter how difficult the task is for her. Ethan liked Mattie from the beginning, eventually fell in love with her and wants to spend his time with her. “Mattie Silver had lived under his roof for a year, (…) but no moments in her company were comparable to those when, her arm in his, and her light step flying to keep time with his long stride, they walked back through the night to the farm”.

The tense silent and isolated atmosphere that dominates and oppresses Ethan and Zeena’s marriage is not present in his relationship

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