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I read this last night in an insomniac fit. It was cold and dark and rainy, and I was alone. I can't think of a more fitting setting for reading this, unless you were in an old farmhouse with drafty windows, sitting by a stove in your rocking chair. Throw in a batty old lady, and you could be in Starkfield itself! I love creepy stories - ones that slowly start to overwhelm you with that sense that something just ain't right. "Oh dear, this isn't going to go well." The build-up of foreshadowing, imagery and the character's emotional state leads to a bit of fear and a bit of panic. At first I thought Ethan Frome felt like a modern gothic - it reminds me a lot of Shirley Jackson's short stories, or the desperation of Daphne du Maurier. But then folks smarter than me pointed out that Wharton is considered to be part of the U.S. Literary Naturalism movement. Ethan Frome is certainly dripping with pessimism. Supposedly Wharton wrote ghost stories as well, so maybe she was a genre straddler? At any rate, if you like modern gothic, make sure you read Ethan Frome. I loved Wharton's use of color throughout the book. In such a bleak place as the isolated farm in winter, the little village of Starkfield, and the struggling characters that inhabit the story, everything feels so drab. Then Wharton throws in the bursts of color: the red streak in Mattie's hair, the red pickle dish, a red flushed face and the red sun at the end of a winter day. Blue appeared as the sky, the shadows on the snow and a blue haze. Wharton seemed to know how to put just the right amount of vivid imagery and objects to set the scene. "The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ. Mattie sat perfectly still, but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill, where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow, he fancied that she shrank a little closer." Finally a note about Wharton herself. She had an unhappy marriage. So much so, that her doctor recommended she spend more time writing stories as an outlet for her stress and anxieties. She ended up having a love affair the same time as she was getting a divorce. This is a woman who understood the temptation and passion of illicit love, as well as the misery of being bound by life's choices. Also, look at Edith's doggies. Just look at em! (Not one of them looks very happy, do they?)

2022-12-08 14:10