In Wharton’s classic tale of winter New England, an engineer brought in to work at a nearby power-house is fascinated by “the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man”: Ethan Frome. Gradually he learns Frome’s story, how twenty-four years ago Ethan Frome, then a young farmer, was torn between his duty to his sickly wife, Zenobia, and his desire for Zenobia’s poor cousin Mattie Silver, who was brought in to aid Zenobia, and the bleak disaster that ensued.
Originally begun as a French exercise and titled Hiver (French for “winter”), Ethan Frome draws upon Wharton’s time in the Berkshires. According to her memoir, A Backward Glance, “It was not until I wrote Ethan Frome that I suddenly felt the artisan’s full control of his implements.”
Published in September 1911