![]() ![]() Lionel Trilling declares: "It presents no moral issue at all."2 Irving Howe, E. It must be treated as starkly and summarily as life had always presented itself to my protagonists any attempt to elaborate and complicate their sentiments would necessarily have falsified the whole." She admitted: "It was the first subject I had ever approached with full confidence in its value, for my purpose, and a relative faith in my power to render at least a part of what I saw in it."1 Yet Wharton's "purpose" and the tale's "theme" are exactly what perplex critics of Ethan Frome. The theme of my tale was not one on which many variations could be played. She then took the occasion to explain, among other things, that she had known from its inception that Ethan's story was not "the subject for a novel. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ĮDITH WHARTON'S ETHAN FROME AND THE QUESTION OF MEANING Elizabeth Ammons* When asked to write an introduction for Scribner's 1922 edition of Ethan Frome (1911), Edith Wharton-contrary to her usual practice -agreed. ![]()
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