Resumo de Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

Having recently moved to Starkfield, Massachusetts,The narrator recountsthe story of Ethan Frome, thehunched, frail man whose facial expression is unforgettable He also noticesthat the town?s people all respect Ethan's reserve and solitude.Ethan Frome at the beginning of the 20th centurywas a farmer. But Edith Wharton's extraordinary craft makes the story breakaway from the contingencies of the frame and it comes to moving life for thereader. A superb novel, one of the finest and most intense narratives in thehistory of American literature.The short story of an illicit love affairbetween the introspective Ethan Frome and the bright and vivacious, MattieSilver, is beautifully told and thoroughly absorbing. The setting is soromantically and evocatively described by Wharton that we almost feel part ofthe doomed romance. The is romance in the air and the husband and wife have avery stressful marriage. First there is the title male figure, Ethan Frome, whois married to Zenobia(Zeena) Frome. But she hold the power in the household andthe couple takes in Mattie Silver, a distant cousin of Zeena's. The beautiful,wintery imagery surrounds a love story that is out of the ordinary. As thestory progresses, the reader notices the heightened contrast between the young,warm-hearted Mattie and the old, crotechty Zeena. Symbolism plays an activerole in the story and allows the reader to understand the emotions throughtangible objects. This novel expresses the power of love and what love will doto one's actions. The actions of the two main characters, Ethan Frome andMattie Silver may appear shocking and foolish to the reader, but eventually thereader can acknowledge the fact that love makes one desperate; desperate enoughto what ever it takes to attain love. Her husband, without stopping tohear the end of the phrase, had left the kitchen and sprung up the stairs. Thedoor of Mattie's room was shut, and he wavered a moment on the landing. In themiddle of the floor stood her trunk, and on the trunk she sat in her Sundaydress, her back turned to the door and her face in her hands. "Now let go," he repeated;then he shouldered the trunk and carried it down the stairs and across thepassage to the kitchen. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him tolift the trunk into the back of the sleigh. He saw the rise of the colour inMattie's averted cheek, and the quick lifting of Zeena's head. As he passed thebridle over the horse's head, and wound the traces around the shafts, heremembered the day when he had made the same preparations in order to driveover and meet his wife's cousin at the Flats. He flung the bearskin into thesleigh, climbed to the seat, and drove up to the house. He went to the foot ofthe stairs and listened. At the gate, instead of making forStarkfield, he turned the sorrel to the right, up the Bettsbridge road. She sat down on the tree-trunk inthe sun and he sat down beside her. Even in the failing light he saw it was theletter to his wife that he had begun the night before and forgotten to destroy.They had reached the crest of theCorbury road, and between the indistinct white glimmer of the church and theblack curtain of the Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them withouta sled on its length. Come along! His one desire now was to postpone themoment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats. But the girl, shefaltered. The girl'll be waiting at the station. They mounted slowly to the top ofthe hill. But his cheek touched hers, and it was cold and full of weeping, andhe saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the trainup the line. He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passedfrom the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open. We'llfollow the track. Just as they started he heard thesorrel's whinny again, and the familiar wistful call, and all the confusedimages it brought with it, went with him down the first reach of the road. Hetried in vain to roll direction of the sound, and stretched hisleft arm out across the snow.

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