Ethan Frome

In 1925 Edith Wharton wrote that: “every great novel must first of all be based on a profound sense of moral values, and then constructed with a classical unity and economy of means”. By this quote Wharton meant a great novel should focus on morals, of characters to add depth and reveal more about the characters. By “constructed with a classical unity and economy of means”, Wharton means a story should have characters who’s roles in the novel are well defined, and the story should be simple, not letting the setting or minor details effect the story. Using this blueprint for a great novel, Wharton wrote Ethan Frome,in 1911. The novella uses all three aspects of a great piece of literature, from Ethan’s struggles because of a profound sense or moral values, to the classical unity of the novella’s simple and clearly defined charactors, even using economy of means to allow the story to flow simply with little outside influences from the main characters.
“Every novel great novel must first be based on a profound sense of moral values.” By this Wharton meant that a character’s struggle with their morals is a much better conflict then a conflict between characters, or a conflict of characters against society or the environment. Because much of the story is told from his prospective, the “sense or morals” in the case of Ethan Frome is Ethan himself. Ethan’s morals serve to both guide him toward doing what’s right, while also managing to prevent him from living his dream, and trapping him in the bleakness of his life. The first time this is shown is when Ethan realizes how loveless his marriage was, and how much happier he could be saying:  
“Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena's narrow mindedness and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one pleasure left...