Orakel Classics

Ethan Frome

By Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, prepared as a public-domain Orakel edition with 10 chapter-aware companion links.

Ask the bookChapter guideText-grounded classic

Start reading Back to library

Chapters

Choose where to begin

10 sections

ETHAN FROME

ETHAN FROME from Ethan Frome. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different

Open2

I from Ethan Frome. The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night was so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray against the snow, clumps of bushes made black stains on it, and the basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across the

Open3

II

II from Ethan Frome. As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back behind the projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the grotesquely muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers, being afoot, were the first to climb the slope to the main street, while the country neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the

Open4

III

III from Ethan Frome. There was some hauling to be done at the lower end of the wood-lot, and Ethan was out early the next

Open5

IV

IV from Ethan Frome. As soon as his wife had driven off Ethan took his coat and cap from the peg. Mattie was washing up the dishes, humming one of the dance tunes of the night before. He said “So long, Matt,” and she answered gaily “So long, Ethan”; and that was

Open6

V

V from Ethan Frome. They finished supper, and while Mattie cleared the table Ethan went to look at the cows and then took a last turn about the house. The earth lay dark under a muffled sky and the air was so still that now and then he heard a lump of snow come thumping down from a tree far off on the edge of the

Open7

VI

VI from Ethan Frome. The next morning at breakfast Jotham Powell was between them, and Ethan tried to hide his joy under an air of exaggerated indifference, lounging back in his chair to throw scraps to the cat, growling at the weather, and not so much as offering to help Mattie when she rose to clear away the

Open8

VII

VII from Ethan Frome. Ethan went out into the passage to hang up his wet garments. He listened for Zeena’s step and, not hearing it, called her name up the stairs. She did not answer, and after a moment’s hesitation he went up and opened her door. The room was almost dark, but in the obscurity he saw her sitting by the window, bolt upright, and knew by the rigidity of the outline projected against the pane that she had not taken off her

Open9

VIII

VIII from Ethan Frome. When Ethan was called back to the farm by his father’s illness his mother gave him, for his own use, a small room behind the untenanted “best parlour.” Here he had nailed up shelves for his books, built himself a box-sofa out of boards and a mattress, laid out his papers on a kitchen-table, hung on the rough plaster wall an engraving of Abraham Lincoln and a calendar with “Thoughts from the Poets,” and tried, with

Open10

IX

IX from Ethan Frome. At the kitchen door Daniel Byrne sat in his sleigh behind a big-boned grey who pawed the snow and swung his long head restlessly from side to

Open