In this essay written by Alfred Kazin, the main idea is on the issues of class and morality. It starts off by providing a small background of Edith Wharton and the different symbols of the book. Kazin describes how Ethan is chained to his controlling wife from having to "owe" her for helping him take care of his sick mother. He doesn't truly love her, he is in love with her cousin Mattie Silver. The author then goes off by explaining how no reader can get away from the emotional symbolism of the heartbreak that Ethan Frome suffers. This leads to the questioning of Ethan Frome's morals and beliefs. Is it really ever okay to cheat on your spouse if it is considered to be a "loveless" relationship? In an attempt to show some background on Edith Wharton, Kazin also looks into her past and the reasons why she writes the way she does.
Edith Wharton has a certain style that she wrote with Ethan Frome. Her used of showing the illicit affair Ethan wishes to have actually goes back to her past. She was in a marriage that was believed to be unsuccessful with Edward "Teddy" Wharton. She became more intellectual and wanted to continue furthering her education (though it was frowned upon for most women) to which Teddy was jealous. He didn't share the same intellectual and literary interests that she did and they often disagreed when it came to those matters. Teddy was also said to be jealous of his wife's success, so he demanded they split her abundant income. He also even confessed to cheating on her. Wharton struggled to label herself as an established author, being a woman, but also struggled with her husband's jealousy, leading to a loveless relationship. These hardships caused Wharton to become rather bitter. Aside from these difficulties in Wharton's life, she planted new ideas into Ethan Frome that most people questioned. With society and class, others questioned of how Wharton could possibly even know how a tiny town like Starkfield would operate considering she was raised in a higher style of life. What amount did she know about economic struggles, poverty, and a lower class standard? She makes the town out to be a low standard of life, having all of the people in it lower on the class scale in society. The weather also plays into this, with it being winter and gray all the time. Ethan especially thinks and reflects a lot about the weather, nature, animals, basically all symbols of what he believes could connect to his own feelings. Kazin explains that Ethan Frome isn't so much social as it is moving. Wharton displays one of her favorite subjects, which is illicit love. The way she writes makes it seem as though love is supposed to be forbidden, hard, and most of the time love is supposed to be a failure. An example would be the attempted suicide of Mattie and Ethan. It would have gone as planned had Ethan not swerved, but it had to fail, crippling Ethan and Mattie's love forever.
I think the author provides a fair fight in their argument. The one point made was that love must taint one's morals and beliefs. Though the reason for not running away with Mattie that Ethan provided was lack of money, it is purely Wharton's writing style that displays love having to change the way one thinks. Kazin also states that though Ethan Frome has a wonderful setting and plot, it is at times too dramatic. It tries to persuade readers that the only way Ethan and Mattie could ever be happy together would be in death. Obviously there were a lot of other options that could have been considered, yet Wharton writes for us to believe that love corrupts our minds so much that those options were never even thought of. Maybe Ethan truly believed that there was no other way, because as Wharton once said, "Life is the saddest thing next to death."
While it's true that love corrupts the mind and our morals, I truly agree with the statement that this book is quite dramatic at times. Especially since we are inside of Ethan's head for most of the time. Seeing the thoughts he has about Mattie, Zeena, and himself, I feel like he overthinks a lot of things. He's undoubtedly hard on himself, making it seem as though he is responsible for other's happiness. The one night he had alone with Mattie was built up with so much suspense and was expected to be a huge milestone in their relationship. Yet it was in reality nothing. Ethan lived in a dream world, he was an idealist, that's what killed him. He spent too much time dreaming and not enough time speaking up, taking action. It was almost as if he waited for those things to happen to him. Like he wanted a more dramatic and eventful ending for himself. I just think that even if love corrupted his and Mattie's minds that much to the point of suicide, other options would have been at least discussed along with the option of death. That's the part to me that is most dramatic, I feel like just because they couldn't physically "be together," without having to face Zeena, they could have done a numerous amount of other things than killing themselves. So while Ethan Frome is a classic novella in the literary world, it at times can be too dramatic to believe.
I feel that the class and morality presented in this novella are as Kazin stated in his essay. I feel that by providing us with a background of how hard it was for Wharton to establish herself in the literary world, it showed that while she may not have known what it was like to be in poverty, struggling with money, she knew what it was like to struggle at achieving something. As for morality, again I feel that Kazin providing us with the loveless marriage that Wharton suffered, it gives a better background of how Wharton can actually relate to how love could corrupt one's mind to doing things beyond their beliefs.
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