On scarves and lawyer games

[sabinetzin]

When I was a junior in high school, we read Ethan Frome. Now, Edith Wharton is one of my favorite writers, but the fact we teach that book because it's Manly and Serious instead of The Age of Innocence is a criminal crime. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the fact that literally no one in any of the AP English classes liked it... except me.

I fucking loved Ethan Frome. Are you fucking kidding me? It was everything an angst-ridden teenager with some real serious repression issues needed. The bleak tension of it, the heavy subtext in every minor detail, it was right up my street. The scarf! The pickle dish! It was custom tailored to 16!Sabine. Adult!Sabine likes Wharton's other work better, but that book was A Moment for me.

You should know that I am still getting shit for my love of Ethan Frome. Whether I deserve it or not, I take it, because I am prepared to defend my love for it. But my depth of feeling for the searing sexual implications of illicit scarf-touching has not changed and is unlikely to.

Basically what I'm saying is that I have always been this extra. And when I say I can't help but ship Simon/Athena because he grabbed the camera and shook it, or that Phoenix and Miles are married because Miles went to a magic show, it is just as hard to explain as scarf-touching, and I am just as into it.

And honestly, I will be this extra forever, and I am no more apologetic at 33 than I was at 16. SCARF-TOUCHING FOR LIFE

Comments

[runpunkrun]

I can't hear Ethan Frome without thinking of John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank, attending his high school reunion, running into his English teacher in the parking lot, and asking her, "Are you still, you know, inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage?"

I somehow got out of all my schooling without being forced to read any Warton. Which means I can now enjoy her all on my own with no baggage.

[sabinetzin]

It's a shame that Ethan Frome poisoned so many people against Edith Wharton, because it really has nothing to do with her other books. The only similar one is The House of Mirth, and that's only because it's also wretchedly depressing.

[runpunkrun]

I'll have to start with Age of Innocence, then!

[sabinetzin]

Highly recced if you like doomed romance in high society! I don't remember which of her books are in the public domain, but I *think* you can get it free on Project Gutenberg.

[exceptinsects]

I never read Ethan Frome, but there is some A+ scarf-touching in Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.