Ethan Frome: Week 1 - Part I: Introduction & Chapters 1-4

[Linda2]

Adelle wrote: "Rochelle wrote: Post 360.

Rochelle, my apoligies in posting that I was responding to you when I obviously wasn't. You are quite right. The post I was responding to was written by S. Rosem..."

No harm done. It's because we get multiple layers of quotes.

[Everyman]

S. Rosemary wrote: "Nope, just traditional food. I can read symbolism into a lot, but I don't see it here. Pickles used to be standard at any meal, and still are in some houses. Hence needing a dedicated pickle dish "

I'm on the fence here. On the one hand, we should not close our minds to the possibility of some ulterior meaning in the particular foods Wharton puts on the table. On the other hand, sometimes as readers we look for symbolism in almost everything, stretching the search far past what the author intended -- after all, if she's going to have two people sitting at a dining table she has to put some< food on it.

Pre-refrigeration there were only a limited number of ways to preserve food, and pickling was one of them. So you're right, pickles were a fairly staple food (cf. the pickle barrel in almost all general stores a hundred years ago). And doughnuts wee a quick and easy way to prepare something of flour -- much easier and faster than baking bread. So those were pretty basic foods.

Now, of she had chosen to have them eating oysters in the middle of winter!

(BTW, speaking of food and symbolism, Bill Bryson contends that 150 years or so ago lobster was considered a common, almost a throw-away food, fed to workers and the lower classes and basically scorned by the upper classes. So if you read a book from that era where the people are eating lobster, be careful not to read too much into it -- it's not that they're having an expensive delicacy, like today; they're just eating a cheap, common, and easily available food!)

[Traveller]

Thanks for your kind replies, Everyman. :)

Re Paradise Lost: Nooooo... the good people over at The Western Canon have really been opening up Canterbury Tales for me, which I had always found pretty inaccessible in the original Middle English, but I'm enjoying it much more now with a modern translation at hand.

I'll search for the Paradise Lost forums in any case, and have a good read!

Really looking forward to Jude the Obscure!

[MadgeUK]

S. Rosemary wrote:I'm not saying that he'd be right to commit adultery, but I understand his feelings. Further, isn't the worst sin here the rules of society that are preventing his happiness? Isn't that Wharton's point?..."

Yes, I think that it is the point Rosemary and that perhaps Wharton is also arguing a case for adultery since shortly after the book was written it is thought that she entered into adulterous relationship. Religious objections apart, I think there can be a case made for adultery if someone is extremely unhappy and if the adulterous relationship can be conducted secretly. It is surely just as wrong, as you suggest, to have a convention which condemns people to unhappiness. Monogamy becomes a difficult state in some instances and this is recognised in societies which practice polygamy which is, after all, a sanctioned form of adultery. Taking another wife because you are unhappy with another, or if she cannot bear children or, like Zeena, is ill, is legitimate in a polygamous marriage but the husband is required to be fair to all wives.

As it is, in the story, Ethan had no choice but to run away, which would have left his sick wife in an equally unhappy situation. Sticking it out, unhappily, becomes the only eventual solution and it is a very sad one which favours no-one.

[MadgeUK]

Adelle wrote: "Not such a "good" guy or such a "bad" guy...

but he seemed to me in the prologue such a "real" guy.
LOL, yes, even 'though I didn't know much about him, what I did know about him was "true.""

Yes, but a lot happened after the Prologue and we saw various versions of his story which perhaps contradicted the idea of his 'goodness'.

[MadgeUK]

S Rosemary wrote: That was actually one of my primary reflections when reading this- usually today I feel frustrated by the divorce rate, and feel we take both marriage and divorce too lightly. Re-reading EF made me realize why we wanted divorce in the first place- to get out of miserable situations like this.

Well said Rosemary - it is all too easy to forget the terrible things which happened when divorce was impossible. Those of us who read Victorian literature can cite many cases of the great unhappiness and extreme poverty into which women were thrown as a result of being unmarried or being unhappily married. Cases which were often taken from real life by novelists like Hardy and Dickens.


However, I think EF and Zeena could have divorced in 1911, it was just that supporting Zeena as well as Mattie would have been impossible for Ethan - unless he left and got an excellent job which would, in any case, take time. It wasn't until welfare benefits for divorced women and children came into force that unhappy marriages amongst poor people could become a reasonable reality (at least in the UK). Chasing men for maintenance, even if it was legally available, has always been a bit of a dead duck:(.

[[deleted user]]

MadgeUK wrote: "Adelle wrote: "Not such a "good" guy or such a "bad" guy...

but he seemed to me in the prologue such a "real" guy.
LOL, yes, even 'though I didn't know much about him, what I did know about him wa..."

Wink. Yes...but you know I don't believe in the story that takes place after the prologue. LOVED following the discussion, though.

Heading over to background to post some background and some alternative versions.

Ta.