Spatializing A Melancholy Allusion To American Society In Ethan Frome

Though included as a must-read of Edith Wharton and generally applauded forits innovative and compact narrative structure, her New England sad story of EthanFrome is still claimed as too contrived and lacking moral significance. By analyzingits narrative construction with the help of spatial images in Edith Wharton·s EthanFrome, this thesis intends to unveil the author·s perception of the deep-buried socialproblems such as spiritual immaturity and moral deprivation, as well as deterministprinciples dominating American life at the turn of the20thcentury, and to illustrate theclose connection between her thematic expression and the spatial narrative of thisnovel, thus to protest against the simple label of a novelist of mannersμ on Wharton.Born into an aristocratic family in New York and brought up to be awell-behaved leisure-class lady, Edith Wharton surprised the literary world with hermellifluous and incisive novels and short stories sparkling with social andpsychological insight. Up to now, she has been recognized as a chronicler of theupper-class manners and individual problems bred in that social ambiance, while herserious exploration of timeless issues are obscured or even blotted out. With factors ofindividual experience and interest, the author·s long neglected ambition to reveal theessential problem underlying American society and her philosophical meditations on the very truth of human existence are more clearly demonstrated through her writingsbackgrounded by the unique space of New England rural areas, the short but highlyallusive Ethan Frome as a dazzling evidence.This thesis makes a textual analysis of Ethan Frome by focusing on its spatialnarrative construction. On the premise of a general introduction, including thesignificance of New England for Edith Wharton·s literary career different from herurban topic, it firstly investigates why and how the author constructs this space fornarration. The snow-bound isolated town is a perfect space for fabricating a fabulousstory due to its unique natural and cultural background. In this overall environment,Wharton selects and endows spaces inside the town with distinct features, andstrengthens the spatial sense of the novel by overshadowing time. Then this researchexplores how the spatial narrative is established through the painful interactionbetween characters and the imprisoning space enveloping them. With spaces andpeople actively involved in the narrative construction, the thesis furthermore pushesthe whole narrative into the realm of meaning by borrowing Bakhtin·s concept ofchronotopeμ and epitomizing Wharton·s thematic concerns into the provincialtownμ. The conclusion part reiterates the arguments proposed in previous chapters,thereby concluding that Wharton·s worries about the problem of spiritual immaturityand Puritan ghosts haunting the rapidly changing American society at the turn of20thcentury, and to some extent her naturalist attitude toward human beings facing theirenvironment, and her aesthetic affinity with melancholic style and tragic beauty, arefully flared through the spatial narrative of the novel.