Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning (with Age of Innocence) American novelist, short story writer and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. She combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes, they say, with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including President Roosevelt. She wrote a stack of novels. I have only read Ethan Frome which I really enjoyed.
A blog featuring whatever I fancy, often on the Christian faith but not exclusively
Showing posts with label Ethan Frome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethan Frome. Show all posts
Ethan Frome
I've been reading Edith Wharton's novella Ethan Frome. It is a well told and powerful tale that reveals a story of passion and sadness in 19th century rural New England. Part of the story teller's art is to book end the piece with references to the then present and these give the main story a strength that it would probably otherwise not have. Only around 99 pages it is quite a work and well deserves the praise it has been given as Wharton's best selling work. Early reviewers though it too cruel but given a little distance one can cope with it easier by hoping nothing so dire would ever happen to me or those I love. It is quite a moral tale in its own way. It is crying out to be filmed. I notice that was done in 1993 with Liam Neeson (director John Madden), how successfully I don't know not having seen it.
Unusual words Special Ethan Frome
In the edition of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome I have just read a number of words are footnoted for comment. I mention two
Carcel lamps are oil lamps that made a bubbling noise, named for a French inventor
(In the "best parlour," with its black horse-hair and mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening ...)
Huckabuck is an inexpensive absorbent cotton fabric
(I know there's a huckabuck towel missing; and I can't take out what you done with that match-safe 't used to stand behind the stuffed owl in the parlour.)
That make the landscape lonelier
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| George Henry Durrie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
"Beyond the orchard lay a field or two, their boundaries lost under drifts; and
above the fields, huddled against the white immensities of land and sky, one of
those lonely New England farm-houses that make the landscape lonelier." (Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome)
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