"Cliff Notes - Ethan Frome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

story takes place in winter, the Whartons never spent a winter
at The Mount. Wharton never knew firsthand the harrowing cold
and bleak landscape, which weigh so heavily on Ethan and the
other characters.

But Wharton knew much too well the frustration of a failed
marriage--such as Ethan and Zeena's. Teddy Wharton was thirteen
years older than his wife and a totally unsuitable mate for her.
She bored him, and he scoffed at her literary and intellectual
pursuits. Meanwhile, she found Teddy shallow, about as exciting
as a kitchen stool.

When Teddy's health began to fail, the marriage became still
more strained. He crabbed and complained much of the time. In
fits of temper he verbally abused his wife. Twice he suffered
nervous breakdowns. For the record Edith Wharton told the story
of her marriage in various writings, including her literary
autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934). Since Teddy didn't
write, we don't know his side of the story. If Edith's version
is accurate, though, she wins our sympathy as the wronged
partner in the marriage, just as most readers sympathize with
Ethan Frome for being stuck with Zeena, his sickly, ill-tempered
wife. But Ethan's is also a one-sided story. We can only guess
what Zeena thinks about him by reading between the lines.

It seems certain, however, that Ethan Frome is a product of
Edith Wharton's long and serious contemplation of the mutual
obligations of marriage partners. Ethan chose to die rather
than stay with his spouse. That wasn't a satisfactory solution
for Wharton, though. In 1913, two years after Ethan Frome was
published, she filed for divorce.

Ethan Frome surprised Edith Wharton's fans because it differed
from all her previous books. Its heartbreaking story gripped
the reading public, and the book became very popular. However,
some critics didn't like it. Many thought that Wharton
shouldn't have strayed from her themes of New York society.
Ethan, they claimed, was not a New Englander, and Starkfield was
not the New England they knew. Snow in New England is not
somber; it is vibrant and bright and makes your cheeks rosy.
They felt that the forlorn landscape of the novel belonged
somewhere else.

Nevertheless, Ethan's powerful tragedy has attracted readers
from that day to the present. The book continues to be widely
read and reread. It also marked a crossroads in Edith Wharton's
writing career, for she discovered that she could write books
which were different from the novels of manners that had made
her famous.