Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is a novel written by Edith Wharton and published in 1911.
It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, where the narrator sets out to learn about the life of a silent local named Ethan Frome, who was crippled in an accident twenty-four years earlier.
An engineer sent to work near the village is sheltered at the Frome farm one snowbound night. Out of that visit, and out of what the neighbors half tell him, he pieces together the story of Ethan, his sickly wife Zeena, and Mattie Silver, Zeena's cousin, who came to help in the house and whom Ethan came to love.
This book is one of Edith Wharton's most characteristic works and one of the most celebrated examples of her sensibility and style. A true American classic and a true lesson in narrative art.
In 1993 the novel was adapted for the cinema by John Madden, with Liam Neeson and Joan Allen among the cast.
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Public domain (US)·No sign-up·DRM-free·Real text, not scans
Copyright note. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is believed to be in the public domain in the United States only. It may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you are not in the United States, please check your local laws to ensure this eBook is in the public domain in your country before downloading Ethan Frome in PDF or EPUB.
- Pages
- 97
- Reading time
- 2 hours 54 minutes
- Pace
- Slow
- First published
- 1911
- Language
- English
- Downloads
- 7,267
115 years later, still timely
Why Read Ethan Frome in 2026?
A stark New England winter and a love that cannot thaw the world around it. Wharton makes silence thunder.
Today's connection
Short, intense, and perfect for group discussion about duty, desire, and the cost of small decisions over time.
Place as fate
Snow, poverty, and constraint.
Duty and desire
When every option hurts.
Minimalist power
Plain style, deep ache.
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About the author
Edith Wharton
Manners, money, and freedom drawn with surgical clarity and mercy.
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From Ethan Frome
Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man.
I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome
He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.
I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two.
At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal far-reaching intentions, mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicions and resentments impossible to guess.