Edith Roosevelt

The book titled ‘Age of Innocence’, by Edith Wharton, is set during the late 1800s in New York after the First World War. This era was one of rapid change, which was a good catalyst in shaping the direction of the novel. It was a time of social distinction, emerging rich industrialist, new money and fashion excess. Wharton uses Newland as the limited-omniscient third person as he is the very expression of what the society of the day represents. He is well bred, understands and respects his role…

Changing society in any way takes intellectual curiosity and immense bravery. Sadly, these characteristics were not all too admired during the Gilded Age. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton features characters that contrast with the constricting ideas of this period and embrace the boldness of the heart and the head (up to a point). Although it was a time in American history where a lucky few flourished, this era lacked depth especially where its values were concerned and Wharton’s prose…

Running on Empty Ethan Palmer is a teenager living in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his father and sister. The death of his mother has caused Ethan’s personality to significantly change and resulted in him struggling throughout high school. To cope with his mother’s death, Ethan uses his passion for muscle cars to escape his reality and suppress his feelings of anger. Throughout the story, Ethan has several confrontations with his father regarding the direction of his life, crashes his car and…

Edith Wharton was the author of Ethan Frome and many other celebrated novels. She was born in into a wealthy family in New York on January 24, 1862. The third child and only daughter of George Frederic and Lucretia Rhinelander Jones, the young Edith spent much of her childhood in Europe, mainly France, Germany, Italy. There she spent most of her time developing both her gift for languages as well as a deep appreciation for beauty – in art, architecture and literature. Returning to New York in…

One of Ethan Frome’s centric ideas is that Ethan retreats from life into a vision. He escapes his reality to enjoy a few blissful moments in his dream, but never acts to make that dream come true. Harmon Gow says, “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away”(Wharton 6). While having every reason to leave Starkfield and his querulous wife, the man doesn’t. Ethan’s moral and social values combined with his indecisiveness cause him to retreat from life into a…

In the novel, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton uses the country setting of Starkfield. The name “Starkfield” gives the reader a cold, hard impression of the snowy New England setting. Wharton conveys Starkfield as a place of primitivism and ignorance because of its isolation and bitterly cold climate. Ethan Frome, the protagonist, is a subject to his environment as he lives a cold, cyclic life. However, Ethan isn’t the only one who is affected by his environment, as Zeena and Mattie also live in…

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (New King James Version, Eccl. 7:4). From this wise Biblical proverb stems the title of Edith Wharton’s second novel The House of Mirth. The narrative examines Lily Bart, a seemingly prosperous and confident young New Yorker plagued by self-hatred and debt. The common literary allusions “gilding the lily” and “consider the lilies” better illustrate these negative attributes, which ultimately…

In the novel The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, sight plays a very important role to the overall development of the book. Wharton uses sight in two different ways: to represent the nativity and ignorance of people as well as to show how the main characters chose to reflect upon their experiences. This novel reflects the innocence of Newland’s character although he doesn’t realise it until the end and how his ignorance has impacted the experience of those around him. In this book, sight and…

Stuck on a farm, forced to deal with the eventual death of both his parents and lost in the beauty of the house maid Mattie Silver, Ethan Frome is a victim in Edith Wharton's novel Ethan Frome. Throughout the novel, Wharton highlights the circumstances Frome's faces that lead him to his incident on the sled when Mattie and he crash into a tree. Wharton begins Frome’s journey of poor circumstances when his father dies and he is left in Starkfield to tend for his sick mother while still…

Modeled after Edith Wharton's novella of the same name, the 1993 adaptation of Ethan Frome does a pleasant job in retelling the original story. In the film, as in the novella, Ethan Frome depicts the story of a scandalous love triangle between Ethan (Liam Neeson), a farmer, Zeena (Joan Allen), Ethan’s sickly wife, and Mattie (Patricia Arquette), Zeena’s caretaker set in a dull New England town. These three characters, all with very different in personalities, trapped in a claustrophobic…