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Ethan Frome, House of Mirth & Summer
• TRILOGY - Three of American author Edith Wharton’s books are in this Kindle Ethan Frome, House of Mirth & Summer
Ethan Frome is set in a fictional New England town and involves an engineer who recounts his meeting with Ethan, a man with a history of thwarted dreams. The book was turned into a Hollywood film.
House of Mirth
Lily is born into a wealthy family who raised her to marry in the upper classes of New York society. But she is unmarried, and worse has gambling debts. Can she survive in the society that created her?
Summer (1917)
Summer traces the sexual awakening of Charity Royall, who is badly treated by the father of her child.
About The Author
American author Edith Wharton (1862 –1937) was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her wit and view of America's upper classes made her a popular writer.
Ethan Frome is set in a fictional New England town and involves an engineer who recounts his meeting with Ethan, a man with a history of thwarted dreams. The book was turned into a Hollywood film.
House of Mirth
Lily is born into a wealthy family who raised her to marry in the upper classes of New York society. But she is unmarried, and worse has gambling debts. Can she survive in the society that created her?
Summer (1917)
Summer traces the sexual awakening of Charity Royall, who is badly treated by the father of her child.
About The Author
American author Edith Wharton (1862 –1937) was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her wit and view of America's upper classes made her a popular writer.
- GenresFiction
570 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 10, 2015
8 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Edith Wharton
1,455 books5,277 followersEdith Wharton emerged as one of America’s most insightful novelists, deftly exposing the tensions between societal expectation and personal desire through her vivid portrayals of upper-class life. Drawing from her deep familiarity with New York’s privileged “aristocracy,” she offered readers a keenly observed and piercingly honest vision of Gilded Age society.
Her work reached a milestone when she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for The Age of Innocence. This novel highlights the constraining rituals of 1870s New York society and remains a defining portrait of elegance laced with regret.
Wharton’s literary achievements span a wide canvas. The House of Mirth presents a tragic, vividly drawn character study of Lily Bart, navigating social expectations and the perils of genteel poverty in 1890s New York. In Ethan Frome, she explores rural hardship and emotional repression, contrasting sharply with her urban social dramas.
Her novella collection Old New York revisits the moral terrain of upper-class society, spanning decades and combining character studies with social commentary. Through these stories, she inevitably points back to themes and settings familiar from The Age of Innocence. Continuing her exploration of class and desire, The Glimpses of the Moon addresses marriage and social mobility in early 20th-century America. And in Summer, Wharton challenges societal norms with its rural setting and themes of sexual awakening and social inequality.
Beyond fiction, Wharton contributed compelling nonfiction and travel writing. The Decoration of Houses reflects her eye for design and architecture; Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort presents a compelling account of her wartime observations. As editor of The Book of the Homeless, she curated a moving, international collaboration in support of war refugees.
Wharton’s influence extended beyond writing. She designed her own country estate, The Mount, a testament to her architectural sensibility and aesthetic vision. The Mount now stands as an educational museum celebrating her legacy.
Throughout her career, Wharton maintained friendships and artistic exchanges with luminaries such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Theodore Roosevelt—reflecting her status as a respected and connected cultural figure.
Her literary legacy also includes multiple Nobel Prize nominations, underscoring her international recognition. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
In sum, Edith Wharton remains celebrated for her unflinching, elegant prose, her psychological acuity, and her capacity to illuminate the unspoken constraints of society—from the glittering ballrooms of New York to quieter, more remote settings. Her wide-ranging work—novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, travel writing, essays—offers cultural insight, enduring emotional depth, and a piercing critique of the customs she both inhabited and dissected.
Her work reached a milestone when she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for The Age of Innocence. This novel highlights the constraining rituals of 1870s New York society and remains a defining portrait of elegance laced with regret.
Wharton’s literary achievements span a wide canvas. The House of Mirth presents a tragic, vividly drawn character study of Lily Bart, navigating social expectations and the perils of genteel poverty in 1890s New York. In Ethan Frome, she explores rural hardship and emotional repression, contrasting sharply with her urban social dramas.
Her novella collection Old New York revisits the moral terrain of upper-class society, spanning decades and combining character studies with social commentary. Through these stories, she inevitably points back to themes and settings familiar from The Age of Innocence. Continuing her exploration of class and desire, The Glimpses of the Moon addresses marriage and social mobility in early 20th-century America. And in Summer, Wharton challenges societal norms with its rural setting and themes of sexual awakening and social inequality.
Beyond fiction, Wharton contributed compelling nonfiction and travel writing. The Decoration of Houses reflects her eye for design and architecture; Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort presents a compelling account of her wartime observations. As editor of The Book of the Homeless, she curated a moving, international collaboration in support of war refugees.
Wharton’s influence extended beyond writing. She designed her own country estate, The Mount, a testament to her architectural sensibility and aesthetic vision. The Mount now stands as an educational museum celebrating her legacy.
Throughout her career, Wharton maintained friendships and artistic exchanges with luminaries such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Theodore Roosevelt—reflecting her status as a respected and connected cultural figure.
Her literary legacy also includes multiple Nobel Prize nominations, underscoring her international recognition. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
In sum, Edith Wharton remains celebrated for her unflinching, elegant prose, her psychological acuity, and her capacity to illuminate the unspoken constraints of society—from the glittering ballrooms of New York to quieter, more remote settings. Her wide-ranging work—novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, travel writing, essays—offers cultural insight, enduring emotional depth, and a piercing critique of the customs she both inhabited and dissected.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 21, 2025
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is included on two important reading lists the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100... and the 1,000 novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10
This great book comes with an interesting introduction, which tells readers about the connection the author had with Henry James, a mutual admiration, coupled with an equally baffling critical look at the works the other produced – Henry James had written in appreciation, but also suggested that Edith Wharton writes about New York and apparently helped with the birth of The House of Mirth – however, this instructive preview also gets out a spoiler, without the alert, so let us see…shall we put an alert here, or seeing that it is not my ‘bad’, how about just putting in here and complaining about it…
Let us just say that it made consider a favorite theme of the past few weeks, that of contemplating how Artificial Intelligence would affect writing and therefore reading, in about thirteen years from now, when Singularity will have taken effect and computers will be more intelligent than the whole humankind put together – did I read that it is also past and present, or is this an exaggeration – which is for many terrifying – indeed, many, if not most jobs are threatened, people will prefer to go to see a Super Intelligent doctor, if an artificial one, which makes no mistake, is able to analyze an infinity of possible diagnosis, as opposed to the usual ‘look for a second opinion’ and compute the probabilities all the algorithms, the data from smart watches, phones and all sensors and come up with a near perfect treatment…you can read much more about this in the tremendous Home Deus by Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h... - but it can also offer so many alluring prospects.
Readers seem to have complained about what happens with the main character of The House of mirth, Lily Bart, who is twenty nine and thus her chances of marrying within her own ‘class’ are diminishing, especially seeing that she was born, raised and educated to ‘marry well’, but her position in society is threatened and eventually she falls into disrepute, her parents die and the father had to face bankruptcy, then the heroine is the victim of terrible circumstances and most of all of the norms and rules of a society that expected so much of women, and allowed men free rein and domination in a time, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the next one, when a ‘wrong step’ would assure being ostracized…
The question I pondered was how would the Artificially Intelligent Author of the future operate with The House of Mirth – and other great books for that matter, albeit there are quite a good number where I do not see how the Artificial Being could improve what is already so near perfection that a comma here, an exclamation point there would bring nothing mush to the table, as in the case of stupendous Quarantine by Jim Crace http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/q...
Readers have been hoping for a different fate for Lily Bart and in the future, this may happen, as we have the option of picking books that have been created out of the immense heritage of centuries past by the said Supercomputers, many of them ‘original and new’, using presumably what is called deep learning techniques, but we also opt for some classics to be ‘genetically modified’, to have the Artificial Supreme Writer analyze and change to produce the Ecstasy that we look for and probably move Lily towards an alternative, Best Possible Future, at least for a number of readers that algorithms pick up.
In my view of this universe, most works will be personalized, though now that I think about it, there should also be books that are offered for couples – so that they can deepen their bond and discuss and enjoy in their own reality a novel that is Just for The Two of Them – and eventually for classes, a group of ten, twenty and more, flexible, people who would join this Book Club and then relate with each other over the same version of some masterpiece…for The House of Mirth, one formula would be to have her succeed and transcend, probably as consort of Seldon, even if the limitations of that society, the reliance upon money, the excruciating importance they have, would make it impossible to change plot credibly…
In Capital in the Twenty First Century by the famous Thomas Piketty it is argued that some novels have an impossible development – actually, if we look at the hard facts, most of them would be in that position – and the example is Jane Austen, where less off Mesdemoiselles would encounter and marry very wealthy gentlemen, handsome no less, which is practically never encounter in the brutal, real life where the rich have been living in a different universe – I am against communism, I will forever suffer the ‘benefits’ brought here by the Soviets, who now have 150k soldiers about to impose some of that again, but there is a huge gap between the wealthy and the rest, look at the Bezos yacht for which they have to dismantle an old bridge – and the inhabitants of the two worlds never met…
I am not sure what path Lily Bart could take in an alternative saga, but this is just the point, Artificial Intelligence already knows us better than we do, with access to sensors, data that looks at heart rate, in some cases oxygen in the blood and so on, and in the future, AI would be able to tell better what would enchant us, bring us to Flow aka Optimum Experience – you can look for the classic, fundamental, life changing Flow by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and you find some videos on YouTube, but better still, read the masterpiece…
A large audience would rather read a more terrifying version of The House of Mirth – and indeed, any other narrative – wherein blood is spilled, characters attack each other physically and the psychological horror that we can observe in the ‘original’ work, would be enhanced by, perhaps replaced with literal bloodbaths for amateurs of the Dracula and vampires genre…as it is, we are appalled at what ‘friends’ and the circle in which Lily is welcome up to a point will do to her, once they label her an outcast…she is also the victim of fate, and the fact that she takes money from a man, thinking it is gained at the stock market from her original investment, only to become entrapped and a victim of the circumstance, wherein her reputation suffers badly, because of the horrendous limitations of the age, horrid hypocrisy and discrimination, they would inflict on the heroine incredible pain…
10 out of 10
This great book comes with an interesting introduction, which tells readers about the connection the author had with Henry James, a mutual admiration, coupled with an equally baffling critical look at the works the other produced – Henry James had written in appreciation, but also suggested that Edith Wharton writes about New York and apparently helped with the birth of The House of Mirth – however, this instructive preview also gets out a spoiler, without the alert, so let us see…shall we put an alert here, or seeing that it is not my ‘bad’, how about just putting in here and complaining about it…
Let us just say that it made consider a favorite theme of the past few weeks, that of contemplating how Artificial Intelligence would affect writing and therefore reading, in about thirteen years from now, when Singularity will have taken effect and computers will be more intelligent than the whole humankind put together – did I read that it is also past and present, or is this an exaggeration – which is for many terrifying – indeed, many, if not most jobs are threatened, people will prefer to go to see a Super Intelligent doctor, if an artificial one, which makes no mistake, is able to analyze an infinity of possible diagnosis, as opposed to the usual ‘look for a second opinion’ and compute the probabilities all the algorithms, the data from smart watches, phones and all sensors and come up with a near perfect treatment…you can read much more about this in the tremendous Home Deus by Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h... - but it can also offer so many alluring prospects.
Readers seem to have complained about what happens with the main character of The House of mirth, Lily Bart, who is twenty nine and thus her chances of marrying within her own ‘class’ are diminishing, especially seeing that she was born, raised and educated to ‘marry well’, but her position in society is threatened and eventually she falls into disrepute, her parents die and the father had to face bankruptcy, then the heroine is the victim of terrible circumstances and most of all of the norms and rules of a society that expected so much of women, and allowed men free rein and domination in a time, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the next one, when a ‘wrong step’ would assure being ostracized…
The question I pondered was how would the Artificially Intelligent Author of the future operate with The House of Mirth – and other great books for that matter, albeit there are quite a good number where I do not see how the Artificial Being could improve what is already so near perfection that a comma here, an exclamation point there would bring nothing mush to the table, as in the case of stupendous Quarantine by Jim Crace http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/q...
Readers have been hoping for a different fate for Lily Bart and in the future, this may happen, as we have the option of picking books that have been created out of the immense heritage of centuries past by the said Supercomputers, many of them ‘original and new’, using presumably what is called deep learning techniques, but we also opt for some classics to be ‘genetically modified’, to have the Artificial Supreme Writer analyze and change to produce the Ecstasy that we look for and probably move Lily towards an alternative, Best Possible Future, at least for a number of readers that algorithms pick up.
In my view of this universe, most works will be personalized, though now that I think about it, there should also be books that are offered for couples – so that they can deepen their bond and discuss and enjoy in their own reality a novel that is Just for The Two of Them – and eventually for classes, a group of ten, twenty and more, flexible, people who would join this Book Club and then relate with each other over the same version of some masterpiece…for The House of Mirth, one formula would be to have her succeed and transcend, probably as consort of Seldon, even if the limitations of that society, the reliance upon money, the excruciating importance they have, would make it impossible to change plot credibly…
In Capital in the Twenty First Century by the famous Thomas Piketty it is argued that some novels have an impossible development – actually, if we look at the hard facts, most of them would be in that position – and the example is Jane Austen, where less off Mesdemoiselles would encounter and marry very wealthy gentlemen, handsome no less, which is practically never encounter in the brutal, real life where the rich have been living in a different universe – I am against communism, I will forever suffer the ‘benefits’ brought here by the Soviets, who now have 150k soldiers about to impose some of that again, but there is a huge gap between the wealthy and the rest, look at the Bezos yacht for which they have to dismantle an old bridge – and the inhabitants of the two worlds never met…
I am not sure what path Lily Bart could take in an alternative saga, but this is just the point, Artificial Intelligence already knows us better than we do, with access to sensors, data that looks at heart rate, in some cases oxygen in the blood and so on, and in the future, AI would be able to tell better what would enchant us, bring us to Flow aka Optimum Experience – you can look for the classic, fundamental, life changing Flow by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and you find some videos on YouTube, but better still, read the masterpiece…
A large audience would rather read a more terrifying version of The House of Mirth – and indeed, any other narrative – wherein blood is spilled, characters attack each other physically and the psychological horror that we can observe in the ‘original’ work, would be enhanced by, perhaps replaced with literal bloodbaths for amateurs of the Dracula and vampires genre…as it is, we are appalled at what ‘friends’ and the circle in which Lily is welcome up to a point will do to her, once they label her an outcast…she is also the victim of fate, and the fact that she takes money from a man, thinking it is gained at the stock market from her original investment, only to become entrapped and a victim of the circumstance, wherein her reputation suffers badly, because of the horrendous limitations of the age, horrid hypocrisy and discrimination, they would inflict on the heroine incredible pain…
May 25, 2022
This novella is such a page-turner but it's also quite slow. I can't describe it. You're desperate to reach the end because you want to know what happens to Ethan and Mattie. Is Mattie going to die? Is Ethan going to just leave her there? You're eager to read on, but also there's filling and repetition. I also kept thinking of how much this is The Scarlet Letter meets Jane Eyre meets Wuthering Heights; not much for the details but for the scenery, the isolation, the general mood and the recurring themes. Overall it was a good read I managed to easily finish it in one sitting.
October 26, 2022
What a book! It's no wonder that it's still a much read and appreciated book- even after 111 years of publication (1911).
Wharton deftly etches the characters, their interpersonal relationships and tensions, and the "choices" poverty and circumstances push on them. Ethan is married to Zeena- a chronic hypochondriac. Mattie is Zeena's impoverished relative living with them after her father's death leaves her out on the street.
Narrative is taut- not a word superfluous or wanting. Everything I write seems trite unless I go into the story- a mistake as the book has to be read to see its sheer helpless beauty. The ending is subtle, but hits with a slow brutal force you never see coming. It took me 10 minutes to take a long breath. Read the book, if you prefer great literature!
Wharton deftly etches the characters, their interpersonal relationships and tensions, and the "choices" poverty and circumstances push on them. Ethan is married to Zeena- a chronic hypochondriac. Mattie is Zeena's impoverished relative living with them after her father's death leaves her out on the street.
Narrative is taut- not a word superfluous or wanting. Everything I write seems trite unless I go into the story- a mistake as the book has to be read to see its sheer helpless beauty. The ending is subtle, but hits with a slow brutal force you never see coming. It took me 10 minutes to take a long breath. Read the book, if you prefer great literature!
December 31, 2022
I can see why they assign this book to junior high students. It's short, Wharton's deceptively brilliant writing is crystal clear, and the book has a great warning to young people to avoid negative unimaginative people. As we get older, we learn some people are determined to be miserable and hope only to drag down others along with them, but impressionable kids might find envious Ethan, hopeless Matty, and hypochondriac Zeena useful examples.
I was not assigned this book in junior high but reading it now reminds me how grateful I am to have had my dear friends Koethi and Elizabeth in my life at that time. The book's lesson for me now is not to give up and tear down what I have but to make the most of every asset and opportunity.
I was not assigned this book in junior high but reading it now reminds me how grateful I am to have had my dear friends Koethi and Elizabeth in my life at that time. The book's lesson for me now is not to give up and tear down what I have but to make the most of every asset and opportunity.
October 15, 2023
Started a GG reading challenge, and thought, let me start with something short.
Sooooo boring (I was bored out of my mind)! The most exciting parts were whenever Ethan would call Mattie, Mat. You've got two crushes, romanticism with a healthy dose of infidelity (way to go Zeena for calling it out), and then a final tragic note - which felt 🙄 (I get the desperation part, but come on!) Also, why the hell does Ethan get to have his cake and eat it too, all the while Mattie - oh no, she's supposed to never marry, never get a real chance at love. As long as Mattie's stagnant inside his home, Ethan is happy.
I can say that I liked the initial Ethan Frome chapter and some of the imagery. Looking back, you feel sorry for all three parties.
Sooooo boring (I was bored out of my mind)! The most exciting parts were whenever Ethan would call Mattie, Mat. You've got two crushes, romanticism with a healthy dose of infidelity (way to go Zeena for calling it out), and then a final tragic note - which felt 🙄 (I get the desperation part, but come on!) Also, why the hell does Ethan get to have his cake and eat it too, all the while Mattie - oh no, she's supposed to never marry, never get a real chance at love. As long as Mattie's stagnant inside his home, Ethan is happy.
I can say that I liked the initial Ethan Frome chapter and some of the imagery. Looking back, you feel sorry for all three parties.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2022
Edith Wharton can write a doomed romance like nobody’s business! You knew from the very beginning that this book was going to end in tragedy, yet the brilliance of Edith is that even though you knew this, you still kept reading because how the tragedy unfolded was so beautifully written. I have loved Edith Wharton since reading The Age of Innocence over 15 years ago, and my love for her is still as strong as ever after reading Edith Frome!
April 9, 2016
Great book! Edith Wharton is great at the ending. Love her!
July 25, 2021
In a way similar to the great gatsby, but with more poverty. I'm not really a fan of stories with tragic endings, and this also felt a bit too moralistic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2024
Bella e coinvolgente questa storia d'amore sullo sfondo irritante di una moglie che sa giocare bene le sue carte. Peccato per il finale che avrei voluto più coraggioso.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews