Nothing Doing in Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome: “I Had the Sense That the Deeper Meaning of the Story Was in the Gaps”

“Nothing Doing in Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome: ‘I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps’.”: Each time it is explained to us, this mesmerizing novel, it is a different story, particularly when it comes framed by such insightful critics as Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, and Elizabeth Ammons. Variety of interpretive effects on readers, needless to say, is expected from serious art; nevertheless, if you’ve spent any time with the secondary literature on this particular book, you may have marveled at the deep, standing divides among critical camps (as they almost seem to be). In this chapter I am not aiming to finalize accounts by launching another interpretation of the book. Instead, I want to try to “think the novel” anew, on both textual and meta-critical levels, toward two interlocking issues and aims.