Published in 1911 and set in that time period in a rural New England community, Ethan Frome, a short novel by Edith Wharton (and one of those books that tend to be high school English class reading assignments), tells the story a man beset by a feeling of entrapment as he struggles between his true feelings and his strongly held sense of duty and pride. Ethan Frome is a relatively poor farmer, intelligent and talented but duty-bound to care for his ailing parents instead of pursuing education and a career in engineering, his true calling. After the death of his father, he hires a nurse, Zeena, to care for his mother until her death...after which he marries Zeena, who in turn takes on the role of an invalid (albeit a hypochondriac invalid). Kattie, a young cousin of Zeena's, comes to stay with them at their farm and helps with chores while Zeena retreats further and further into her self-absorption with her own imagined illnesses. Ethan's feelings for Kattie grow stronger and stronger, which of course causes great internal turmoil as he wrestles with jealousy over how other men treat her and his own guilty feelings about betraying his wife. These three people are the focus of the story, and their interrelationship develops to drive the narrative to its climax...which produces a surprise ending.
I got several different impressions while reading Ethan Frome. The story begins from the viewpoint of an outside character who is visiting the area on a work assignment. He sees and meets Frome, and then discovers the reason for his terrible limp: a terrible accident he suffered 24 years earlier when he was 28. That accident, its causes, and its ramifications are the climax of the tale...although throughout the story the reader knows it is coming as part of an extended flashback narrative dominating the body of the novel. But aside from getting a good sense of what life was like in rural New England in wintertime just before the advent of the automotive age and becoming thoroughly depressed with the dismal lives of the characters, the main thing I got out of Ethan Frome, intended or not, is that some families seem to have the need within them for someone to play the role of "invalid"...even when no one is ill or incapacitated. Frome's mother is the invalid first and Zeena, the nurse, cares for her. After the mother's death, the "invalid" role becomes vacant, so to speak, but then Zeena rushes in to fill it with her hypochondria. And to confirm this, the surprise ending to the story, which I won't reveal (in case you decide to read it), further affirms this curious phenomenon in another way. Did the author mean to express this idea with this tale of a very dysfunctional family or not? Who knows, but it made a big impression on me...
