As is usually the case here in Atlanta, we’re
not expecting a white Christmas. This is kind of a bummer for an old mountain
boy like myself, but I know I’m not alone. If your present location is
lattitudinally or altitudinally challenged, you might just have to turn to
literature to get a taste of the white stuff this year. And what book could fit the bill
any better than Edith Wharton’s wintry, New England classic, Ethan Frome ?
I’d
never read Wharton before this year, but my pleasant surprise with George Eliot's Silas Marner - another boring, character-name
title that does a poor job of advertising its contents- inspired me to give Ethan Frome a go. And hey- if Silas Marner can bring the world of the anti-social, cataleptic weaver to life, who am I to
judge the sleep-inducing title of Ethan
Frome ? Maybe it can surprise and delight in the same way.
One
thing’s for sure: the last thing on earth I would have guessed to be hidden
between the covers was the story of a somber sledding tragedy. But that’s
exactly what made it three kinds of awesome. From the very start Wharton makes us
feel sorry for Ethan Frome- sorry for his family situation, sorry for his
missed career and financial troubles, sorry for his being stuck with an
overbearing hypochondriac for a wife, and sorry for having true happiness
dangled temptingly in front of him when he finally meets his unobtainable
soulmate, Mattie.
But
it’s all a heart-wrenching tease. Propriety’s too powerful for these
star-crossed lovers, and they’re forced to go their separate ways. Or are they?
There are hints of a happy resolution, if they’ve only got the guts to make it
happen.
And
it could just be that I’m a pretty daft processor of foreshadowing, but I was
hoping for and predicting the two of them running off together to close out the
story- a happy ending a la Silas Marner. I did not see the "super sledding
suicide pact" coming. That one hit me like the Elm tree that paralyzed Mattie
and disfigured poor old Ethan.
But there you have it. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young hadn't yet sung their famous diddy, so all Frome had to go on was Mattie's warped toboggan deathwish: If you can't be with the
one you love, mangle their spinal chord so you can at least have them always nearby.