Essay Summary: "Under the Granite Outcroppings of Ethan Frome"

                In the one hundred years since Edith Wharton wrote the book Ethan Frome, there have been hundreds of essays written on various aspects of the story.  In a particular essay written by Helen Killoran titled, “Under the Granite Outcroppings of Ethan Frome” she manages to take a pretty different look into the morality of the story compared to many previous critics.  Specifically, this essay contrasts with the views of Lionel Trilling’s “The Morality of Inertia” where, in the same distaste as many other critics, he describes how the book is so terribly immoral he could not teach it in his class.  Helen Killoran disputes that Trilling unfairly only looks at Ethan as not making moral decisions and thus dismisses the book.  The backbone of her argument is that Zeena is the true moral compass of the story and so the book cannot be struck with the title of being a “dead book”.  

With some difficulty at first, after reading her essay I soon found myself agreeing with many of Killoran’s conclusions.  Trilling is indeed false in many of his hurried claims that the book is without morals.  It’s not hard to see how he drew this idea since Wharton does a good job of misdirecting the reader away from Zeena for the most part.  There are many complaints against Zeena but none of them have to do with moral flaws.  While hypochondria may be an inconvenient disorder, it is not necessarily immoral.  Perhaps Killoran’s greatest argument for Zenobia having the strongest morals is her relation to the views of stoicism.  Except for her and Ethan’s one larger quarrel, she always acts in a rational manner.  Zeena is wise to everything going on but as she always has, simply endures until she has chosen, with reason, an exact moment to act.  This is seen when she suddenly demands Mattie be sent home and gets her a train ticket which is not really immoral. 

Killoran uses many examples to convince the reader of Zeena’s morals.  Even if a few ideas seem a bit of a stretch, some are very eye-opening with much sense they make.  Besides that, the sheer volume of suggestions she uses has me certain she is right.  Originally, I thought the length of her essay was a bit of an overkill, but now I see that every word brought up a crucial point in her argument.  Trilling had incorrectly focused his critique of morals on Ethan without seeing Zeena’s incredible potential.  A book with as many lively interpretations as Ethan Frome could never be considered the “dead book” Trilling calls it.