Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Susan Kingsley.
Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health.
Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the housework. Her bright smile and laughing voice bring light and hope into the Fromes’ house – and into Ethan’s lonely life.
But poverty is a prison from which few people escape…
Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome
ETHAN FROME
In the early years of the 20th century, life on a farm in Massachusetts is not easy. The New England winters are hard; snow and ice cover the fields for months, and the nights are long and cold. For a poor farmer like Ethan Frome, life has few bright moments.
Ethan is a slow, quiet man, but he feels things strongly. He feels the beauty of the world around him – stars shining in a moonless sky, the blue shadows of trees on sunlit snow. He feels the sad loneliness of his life, locked in a loveless marriage to Zeena, a cold, silent woman, whose only interest is her own ill health. Then Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to live in the farmhouse, and as the months pass, Ethan feels a new happiness stealing into his life. He loves to watch Mattie’s face across the dinner table, to see her sweet smile and hear her soft voice, to walk arm in arm with her across the snowy fields.
His wife Zeena says very little, but her cold, watchful eyes see everything …
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ISBN 978 0 19 479115 1
A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of Ethan Frome is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479297 4
Illustrated by: Paul Fisher Johnson
Word count (main text): 10,700 words
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e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478670 6
e-Book first published 2012
1
Beginnings
If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post office there. If you know the post office, you have probably seen Ethan Frome driving up to it in his buggy; and you have probably wondered who he was.
It was ther