50 Fun Facts About Ethan Frome

In Ethan Frome, why do Ethan and Mattie Silver deliberately steer their sled into a tree?

To die together is Mattie's idea: she begs Ethan to aim for the tree so the two of them need never part. Each of them lives on, and that is the real tragedy.

In Ethan Frome, which wedding gift, never once used by Zeena, does the cat knock off the supper table and break?

A pickle dish was too precious for Zeena to use: it lived on the top shelf of the china closet and came down only for spring cleaning, until Mattie laid it out for Ethan.

In Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver comes to live and work on the farm because she is which relation of Zeena's?

Her cousin, or strictly her cousin's daughter, Mattie was orphaned at twenty, so the family sent her to keep house for Zeena without pay.

Which fictional New England village, where a power-plant job strands the narrator, is the setting of Ethan Frome?

Starkfield lives up to its name: one villager says Ethan has simply spent too many winters there, as though the place itself wore people down.

In Ethan Frome, which kind of tree stands at the bottom of the sledding hill and ends the final run?

An elm had already given the village a scare: an engaged couple nearly hit it on their sled, a near miss Mattie describes to Ethan early in the story.

Ethan Frome began years earlier as an exercise Edith Wharton wrote to practise which foreign language?

French was the language of the first version, a composition she wrote while studying in Paris. She took the story up again several years later and turned it into a novel.

Edith Wharton, the author of Ethan Frome, became the first woman to win which award for fiction?

The Pulitzer Prize went to her a decade after the tale of the snowbound farmer, for a novel about wealthy New Yorkers. The jury had wanted Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, but the board overruled it.

In Ethan Frome, Ethan picks Mattie Silver out of the crowd at a church dance by her scarf of which colour?

Red follows Mattie through the book: a cherry-coloured scarf at the dance, then a crimson ribbon in her hair on the one evening she and Ethan have the house to themselves.

In Ethan Frome, how does the sickly Zeena respond once the sledding crash has crippled Ethan and Mattie?

She nurses both survivors for more than twenty years, though before the crash she thought she could not even care for herself. The invalid of the house turns out to be its strongest member.

Which Irish actor played the title role in the 1993 film of Ethan Frome, opposite Joan Allen and Patricia Arquette?

Liam Neeson starred under director John Madden, who later made Shakespeare in Love, the Best Picture winner. Joan Allen was Zeena and Patricia Arquette was Mattie.

In Ethan Frome, the sledding crash leaves Mattie Silver an invalid after injuring which part of her body?

Her spine is what the narrator notices decades later: Mattie turns only her head to look at him, while her body stays limp in its chair by the stove.

At the end of the prologue to Ethan Frome, what forces the narrator to spend a night inside Ethan's farmhouse?

A blizzard closes the road home, so Ethan takes him in. A villager later tells him he must be the only stranger to set foot in that house for over twenty years.

In Ethan Frome, which career did Ethan hope to follow before his father's death cut short his college studies?

Engineering drew him to towns with lectures, big libraries and people doing things. The narrator who reconstructs his story decades later works in the very field Ethan had to give up.

In Ethan Frome, what first brought Zeena to the Frome farm before she became Ethan's wife?

Tending his dying mother, Zeena filled a silent house with talk, and after the funeral Ethan dreaded being left alone there. He proposed before he knew what he was doing.

In Ethan Frome, whom does Zeena want to drive Mattie Silver to her train, until Ethan insists on going himself?

Jotham Powell, the Fromes' farmhand, was to take her so that Ethan would stay home that afternoon. Ethan said twice that he would drive her himself, and so set up the final sled ride.

In Ethan Frome, a sudden vision of what makes Ethan swerve the sled for an instant just before the crash?

His wife's face, twisted and monstrous, seems to thrust itself between him and the tree. He rights the sled and drives straight on.

In Ethan Frome, what does Ethan hurry to the village to buy so he can secretly mend Zeena's broken wedding gift?

Glue proves hard to find: one shop has none, and a widow who keeps its rival hunts down her single bottle. Zeena comes home and finds the pieces before Ethan can use it.

In Ethan Frome, what does Zeena say her new doctor has ordered, giving her grounds to send Mattie Silver away?

A hired girl was already engaged and due the next afternoon, which left no place for Mattie, who worked for nothing. Ethan asked bitterly how he was meant to pay the wages.

In Ethan Frome, to which town does Zeena travel overnight to see a new doctor, leaving Ethan and Mattie alone?

Bettsbridge is where she stays the night with a relative, and the trip gives Ethan and Mattie their only evening alone. It also costs them dearly, since what she brings back from the doctor ends Mattie's stay.

Which grocer's son, seen by Ethan Frome as a rival, leads Mattie Silver in the last dance at the church?

Denis Eady then offers Mattie a ride home in his father's cutter, and Ethan, watching from the dark, is thrilled when she turns him down. By the prologue he is the rich village grocer.

Which Edith Wharton novel of New York society, filmed by Martin Scorsese, followed Ethan Frome by nine years?

The Age of Innocence reached cinemas in 1993, the very year Ethan's story was filmed too. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder led Scorsese's cast.

Besides his barren farm, which other struggling business does Ethan Frome own in Edith Wharton's novel?

A sawmill stands idle, its wheel still, when the narrator is driven past it. Farm and mill were mortgaged to the limit, which is one reason Ethan could never afford to run off.

Which former stagecoach driver gives the narrator of Ethan Frome his first account of Ethan's accident?

Harmon Gow knew every family on his old route, yet his tale had gaps, and the narrator felt the real story lay inside them.

In the prologue to Ethan Frome, which labour dispute delays the narrator's work and strands him in the village?

A carpenters' strike held up work at the power-house down the line, leaving him anchored for months in the nearest habitable spot, with time to grow curious about Ethan.

In Ethan Frome, which diagnosis does Zeena bring home from her doctor, a step worse than ordinary 'troubles'?

Complications set a patient apart in the village: almost everybody had 'troubles' and lived with them for years, but complications were treated as close to a death warrant.

In Ethan Frome, what stops Ethan from tricking Andrew Hale into a loan on the morning Mattie Silver must leave?

A neighbour's kindness undoes him: the builder's wife stops her sleigh to say what a hard time he has had, and Ethan finds he cannot lie to the only people who pity him.

In Ethan Frome, which excuse does Ethan invent to avoid driving Zeena to her train?

Collecting cash for lumber was untrue, since the buyer paid only every three months, and Zeena remembered it. When she came home with new expenses in mind, she asked where the fifty dollars was.

In Ethan Frome, at which picnic spot did Ethan once find Mattie Silver's lost gold locket in the moss?

Shadow Pond is where the two stop on their last drive, going the long way round to the station, and Mattie names it as where it all began for her.

In Ethan Frome, Zeena is short for which grander first name, seen on envelopes from patent-medicine makers?

Zenobia was also a third-century queen of Palmyra who seized much of Rome's eastern empire, a grand echo for a farm wife whose campaigns are fought with pills and silence.

In the prologue to Ethan Frome, Mrs. Ned Hale, who knows the Fromes' story best, is the narrator's what?

His landlady was born Ruth Varnum, a friend of Ethan and Mattie's youth and the first person to see them after the crash. One villager thinks that is why she cannot bear to talk about it.

In the prologue to Ethan Frome, which warm state does Ethan reveal he once visited, to the narrator's surprise?

Florida stayed with him for years: he says he could call up the sight of it in the cold months, until it was all snowed under. It is one of the few things he ever volunteers.

In Ethan Frome's prologue, what lays up the village's livery horses, so that Ethan drives the narrator?

A local epidemic spread from stable to stable, but Ethan's old bay stayed on its legs. A villager guessed he would not be sorry to earn a dollar, and the daily drives began.

In the prologue to Ethan Frome, the narrator leaves a popular science book on which subject in Ethan's sleigh?

Biochemistry had moved on since his student days: Ethan admits the book holds things he doesn't know the first word about, and the narrator offers to leave it with him.

In the prologue to Ethan Frome, which part of his farmhouse has Ethan had to pull down, leaving it stunted?

The L wing, in New England speech simply the 'L', joined the house to its storerooms, woodshed and barn. The narrator calls it the true hearth of a farm, so its loss says a good deal.

In Ethan Frome, in which Massachusetts city did Ethan spend his one year as a college student?

Worcester gave Ethan his only taste of a wider world: a year of study, friends who clapped him on the back, even a nickname, Old Stiff.

In Ethan Frome, in which Connecticut city did Mattie Silver live before her parents' deaths sent her to the farm?

Stamford was where her father ran a thriving drug business with money relatives had trusted to him. His accounts, opened after the funeral, showed how badly he had used it.

In Ethan Frome, the sale of which possession gave the orphaned Mattie Silver the only money she had?

Her piano fetched fifty dollars, and her accomplishments were no more use: she could trim a hat, make molasses candy and recite a poem, none of which paid.

In Ethan Frome, an old family gravestone names an earlier Ethan Frome and a wife with which virtue for a name?

Endurance and her Ethan lived in peace for fifty years, the stone says, and Ethan wonders with a dart of irony whether the same epitaph will be written over him and Zeena.

In Ethan Frome, which constellation does Ethan show Mattie, along with the star Aldebaran and the Pleiades?

Orion was part of what Ethan had kept from his year of study, and Mattie's wonder at the stars was the first time anyone on the farm had shared his pleasure in such things.

In Ethan Frome, lying injured after the crash, Ethan hears the sorrel whinny and thinks he should be doing what?

Giving him his feed is the last thought of the story proper: with Mattie hurt beside him in the snow, Ethan's mind goes straight back to the farm chores.

In Ethan Frome, which dance does Ethan watch Mattie whirl through from outside the church window?

A Virginia reel is called as the evening's final dance, and Ethan, standing out in the cold, sees Mattie's scarf fly off as she is swung down the line.

In Ethan Frome, which dead plant on the porch reminds Ethan of the crape hung on a door after a death?

A cucumber vine dangling from the porch sets off a guilty thought: Ethan catches himself wishing the streamer were there for Zeena.

In Ethan Frome, which gadget did Zeena once buy for twenty dollars and never learn how to use?

An electric battery was the trophy of her previous trip, which is why Ethan had come to dread her journeys for their cost. She always came back laden with expensive remedies.

On Mattie's last morning in Ethan Frome, Zeena sits reading a mail-order book about troubles of which organ?

The kidneys were her newest study: the book, 'Kidney Troubles and Their Cure', had cost Ethan extra postage days earlier, and she never looks up from it as he carries out Mattie's trunk.

In Ethan Frome, what did Ethan's father do with his money after a kick while haying damaged his mind?

Gave it away 'like Bible texts', in one old villager's phrase. By his telling, Ethan's family had eaten up almost everything the land earned before the farm ever came to him.

In Ethan Frome, whose wedding present to Zeena stays unused on a high closet shelf?

Aunt Philura Maple had married a minister, and her present was the thing Zeena valued above all she owned. Finding it in pieces, she wept and told Mattie she had taken the one thing she cared for most.

Edith Wharton drew Ethan Frome's New England from her years at The Mount, her estate in which Massachusetts town?

Lenox, in the Berkshires, was her home from 1902 to 1911, in a house she designed herself. She left it in the year the book came out, and it is now a museum open to the public.

The real 1904 sledding accident that inspired Ethan Frome ended when the sled struck what at the foot of a hill?

A lamppost at the bottom of Courthouse Hill killed one of the five young people on the sled. Wharton later came to know one of the injured girls, Kate Spencer, through the town library.

Ethan Frome's sense that a harsh environment shapes its characters' fate ties it to which literary movement?

Naturalism treats people as shaped by their surroundings, and the book dwells again and again on the cruelty of the long New England winter.

Ethan Frome opens and closes with an outsider reconstructing the tale years later; what is that structure called?

A frame story lets a nameless narrator gather Ethan's history from several villagers, each of whom tells it differently, before the main tale begins.