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Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome tells the story of a young farmer from New England who is trapped in a grim, loveless marriage to the difficult Zeena. Life is bleak until Mattie Silver, Zeena’s destitute cousin, arrives on the farm. Ethan and Mattie fall desperately in love, even though they know there’s no way they’ll ever be able to be together.

But enough of all that. The really striking thing about Ethan Frome is that Zeena – who is made out to be a dried-up old crone wearing false teeth - was actually only thirty-four years old. Thirty-four! As in, my age! Maybe I’m not in the first flush of youth, but – RoC retinal eye-cream willing – I’m still quite a ways off from having a “puckered throat” or a face full of “hollows and prominences.”

(Which reminds me of being in CVS a few months ago. The older woman standing behind me in line was fretting over finding a good anti-wrinkle cream.

“RoC makes a great eye cream,” I told her.

“You don’t look old enough to need wrinkle cream,” she said, studying my face.

“Well, the eye cream is effective. I’m really fifty,” I joked.

“Really?” she asked. Believing me.

“No! I was joking!” I said, horrified.)

I enjoyed Ethan Frome, even though it did make me a wee bit paranoid that maybe I was turning into an old crone and just in denial about it, and even though it has a depressing ending.

I’ve started to notice that all literary fiction has depressing endings. In fact, maybe that's how you tell the difference between commercial and literary fiction. Happy ending = commercial. Misery, death and despair = literary.

Ethan Frome gets a B+.

More on The Reading Project here.

Posted 01 May 2006 at 08:11 AM