Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome: Style 1 key example

Style
Explanation and Analysis:

Although Ethan Frome is most accurately classified as a work of Naturalist literature, the novel’s poetic and mournful style bears a strong resemblance to the Romantic and Gothic novels that inspired it. 

The narrative form of Ethan Frome is similar to that of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a Gothic novel that also uses a frame story to introduce the main narrative and deals with themes of madness and illicit desire. Wharton’s lush descriptions of nature and extensive use of figurative language in Ethan Frome, meanwhile, are reminiscent of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a pillar of the Romantic movement.