The Stories of Winter and Summer.pdf

1、大連外國語學院碩士學位論文The Stories of Winter and Summer姓名：Wang Hui申請學位級別：碩士專業(yè)：@指導教師：Wang Rongpei200009011 Abstract Edith Wharton, the first woman to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel was born in the highest

2、 level of society. Wharton's stories are elegant, polished and highly- structured tales centering around upper class New York and European society. They deal primarily with the conflicts between individual freedom an

3、d rule- oriented society and with the related issues of tension which arise between an individual's private and public selves. Social observation is regarded as Wharton's major talent, and she fills her novel wit

4、h the precise account of the decoration of the houses. So she is primarily viewed as a novelist of manners or even an aristocratic lady novelist and the religious and spiritual dimensions of her life and fiction are easi

5、ly overlooked. In fact, Wharton infuses even her most socially minded texts with religious, moral or philosophical reflection. So her intellectual seriousness should not be discounted. In my thesis, I'm

6、 going to bring Ethan Frome and Summer together and make a comparative study of the two. Chapter I is The Stories of Winter and Summer. Open the story of Ethan Frome and you enter a world of w

7、inter and also a stark field (Starkfield). Here you are guided by a language totally unlike that of Edith Wharton's -simple words, short sentences and jagged prose rhythms. Unusual for Wharton is that the s

8、tructure of the novel demands that you take a narrator into account. In the story, everything is up to the narrator's own probing and speculation. He gets the story bits by bits from va

9、rious people, but ultimately gives us his own vision of the past, as he pieces it together from hearsay, experience at the Frome farm, and his own imagination. Many of his remarks about Eth

10、an Frome have a double thrust, carrying the implication that he is one way, but he might be dramatically different. It is, indeed, striking how often the narrator's vision of Ethan manages to conflate

11、 two images -a mutilated small man and the ruin of a hero. The double images of Ethan Frome and the contrast within the man perplex him and even torture him. Finally he concludes that Etha

12、n Frome is not ruined by poverty, starvation or physical torture alone. The profound cold of Starkfield has penetrated into his soul and again reflected on his face. In the story, the narrato

13、r also serves as Ethan's double man and his winter man. Together they show us that what a man might become if the reassuring appurtenances of busy, active, professional, adult mobility were taken away. The shift f

14、rom the world of Ethan Frome to that of Summer is a move from the barren winter to a passionate summer. A girl, a young man and an early June afternoon constitute the beginning. The heroine Charity Royall also begi

15、ns her journey of self- discovery. “She had become absorbingly interesting to herself and everything that had to do with her part was illuminated by this sudden curiosity.“ (Wharton, Summer, 59). The first

16、 thing she has to confront is her mountain heritage- she has been brought down from the Mountain by Lawyer Royall. The other thing she discovers is her own womanhood and that discovery makes the love affair betwee

17、n Charity and Lucius possible. He and she actually share nothing in common except youth, so they can call to each other softly and gently in a sweet unspoken language of eyes and laughter. In the company

18、 of Lucius, she feels that she is free at last, and she spins utterly beyond the care of the world, the degrades and demeans and she floats in an aura of purified rapture. Chapter II is a character analysis. C

19、ool and hot, passive and rebellious, Ethan and Charity are seemingly as different as day and night. While at a closer glance, they are found to have much in common both in characters and in lives. F