ETHAN FROME
Edith Wharton
Discussion Questions:
1. Literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in his essay, 'The Inertia of Morality', "I had not read Edith Wharton's little novel in a good many years ... I recalled it as not at all the sort of book that deserved to stand in a list which included The Brothers Karamazov and Billy Budd ... when I read it again it turned out to be pretty much as I had recalled it, not a great book or even a fine book, but a factitious book, perhaps even a cruel book."
Did you have a similar reaction? Why or why not?
2. What are the temperaments of the three main characters: Ethan, Mattie and Zeena? Does the author cause you to like or care about any of them? Is Ethan strong or weak, courageous or cowardly? Is he a tragic hero, one whose basic goodness and superiority are marred by a tragic flaw such as pride, ambition, or poor judgment, leading to his downfall?
3. Could Ethan ever have found a way to be happy in his marriage to Zeena, assuming he hadn't met Mattie? Should he have run away with Mattie? Are some marriages too awful? Did he and Mattie deserve their fate? Is that Wharton's point?
4. Ethan Frome was written while Edith Wharton lived in Paris away from her husband, following a passionate but doomed love affair there with a married man. Is this novel a justification for her own actions, a general social critique, or a story that just had to be told, having a life of its own? Does the novel hold together as a novel, or does it seem contrived, even a literary experiment on the part of the author? (Note the author's introduction)
5. The setting is almost a fourth character in the novel. Why does most of the action take place in winter? Any thoughts on why Wharton chose a rural New England setting depicting extreme poverty that is very different than her usual high society type of setting? Is she successful (i.e. believable) in portraying Frome's situation? How does the presence of the narrator contribute (or not) to the novel's success?
6. There is little if any mention of God or religion other than the church at the bottom of the hill, where the only activity is dancing, not worship. Does this absence strike you as odd? Why does Wharton so pointedly leave out this important cultural element of New England village life?
7. Wharton was a devotee of Naturalism, a school of thought that makes individuals victims of forces outside themselves, such as heredity, environment, and conventional culture. Explain how this is played out in Ethan Frome.
8. Some critics have likened this story to an inverted fairly tale. Do you see any resemblance to traditional fairy tales? What fairy tale elements do you see? How is this story different?
9. Trilling also wrote, "There is in Ethan Frome an image of life-in-death, of hell-on-earth, which is not easily forgotten: the crippled Ethan and Zeena, his dreadful wife, and Mattie, the once charming girl he had loved, now bedridden and querulous with pain, all living out their death in the kitchen of the desolate Frome farm - a perpetuity of suffering memorializes a moment of passion. It is terrible to comtemplate, it is unforgettable, but the mind can do nothing with it, can only endure it ... What is more, the novel seemed to me quite unavailable for any moral discourse. In the context of morality, there is nothing to say about Ethan Frome. It presents no moral issue."
Do you agree? If not, what moral issue is considered in the novel? Does the situation of this novel make sense in today's world? Could it happen now? Would a typical young American today even understand the limitations these characters faced?
10. Trilling goes on to state, however, that, "there is in Ethan Frome an idea of considerable importance, which is this: that moral inertia, the not making of moral decisions, constitutes a large part of the moral life of humanity. This isn't an idea that literature likes to deal with. Literature is charmed by energy and dislikes inertia. It characteristically represents morality as positive action ... Yet the dull daily world sees something below this delightful preoccupation of literature and moral philosophy. It is aware of the morality of inertia, and of its function as a social base, as a social cement. It knows that duties are done for no other reason than that they are said to be duties; for no other reason, sometimes, than that the doer has not really been able to conceive of any other course, has, perhaps, been afraid to think of any other course ... This is the morality of habit, or the morality of biology ... This is morality as it is conceived by the great mass of people in the world. And with this conception of morality goes the almost entire negation of any connection between morality and destiny. A superstitious belief in retribution may play its part in the thought of simple people, but essentially they think of catastrophes as fortuitous, without explanation, without reason."
Have you observed this moral inertia? Is it beneficial or detrimental? Is it possible, desirable, or even obligatory to rise above this unthinking approach to morality? What elements in a person's life could make such a higher moral view possible? Do people often live on differing levels of moral awareness depending on the moral issue at hand, thus living in a kind of dualistic way?
Thanks to Nancy for these questions!
