GajimaruClassics.
Ethan FromeEthan Frome
On a bleak New England farm, a poor, silent man is trapped in a loveless marriage to his sickly wife, until her young cousin comes to stay and a fragile hope of happiness flickers into being. A short, stark tragedy of thwarted lives.
Character notes and context for the chapter you’ve read.
A short, brutal, unforgettable tragedy, as cold and clean as the winter it describes. Wharton compresses a whole wasted life into a hundred devastating pages.
SettingNew England, early 1900s
A dying hill-farm community in wintry New England, where poverty, duty, and isolation grind hope down, and there is no money, no exit, and nowhere warm to go.