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hottakehoulihan · 8 months

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I'm reading Ethan Frome right now for the first time [SPOILERS] and thus far it's some old guy who loveless-married too young because he met a gal who was good at housework and was afraid to do without her and now she's always sick abed and rightly jealous of the young orphan cute clumsy maid they hired to take care of her because Ethan is crushing on her so hard and it seems the maid likes him back.

To Ethan it seems she likes him back.

And I can't tell if this is the author gonna reveal, later, that she's just being a bit sweet to her employer because she has literally nowhere else to go and no real job skills she's not a good maid, or if she's actually trying to seduce him so she can keep him as a meal ticket, or if she actually likes him, or if she's afraid to not play along with whatever it is he hints he wants because she's alone in the world, or what.

I am going to keep going through this "blind", but I'm not sure I'm up for it if the boss gets the ten-years-younger-orphan-helpless-maid and they are mutually in love and he was right to break off his loveless marriage with his invalid wife and ...but no, we know the book will end in some sort of tragedy.

Honestly I'm kind of hoping for a School Days sort of ending. Ethan isn't completely unlikeable, and he's genuinely blind to the fact that his crush might not be 100% requited and maybe the author is too, but...

Ah, and his reasons for liking her are straightforward; she's young and pretty and kind and she likes looking at stars and flowers just like him and this is odd to him because nobody else in his small town seems to openly care about pretty things or the names of constellations or flowers. He sees her and thinks "she just like me fr fr" and I'm like "is this Lolita lite?"

Didn't have much more to say here. Just leaving this note to myself so I can remember it when I'm much farther in the book and things are utterly different; I like reading people's genuine impressions of stories they're reading for the first time. So here's mine. ==========================================

Edit from later. I've finished the book, so, obviously, more

[SPOILERS]

So wife goes on a road trip to see a doctor. Ethan's giddy to be alone with his crush. Maid is excited and gets down the super good china plate that is technically off limits, and at dinner they almost hold hands in the heat of passion and it's so torrid that the plate breaks well actually that was the cat's fault but anyway. And they talk about the date he'd suggested, taking maid girl sledding with him, but they don't do it yet because time's limited.

Wife returns; turns out she needs months of bedrest and so she's hiring a better housekeeper. Ah, also the orphan maid was wife's moderately distant family and so has nowhere else to go but wasn't hired at all. But wife is hiring someone new and maid will just have to move on and figure something out. Wife is pretty satisfied with this; she's getting her husband back and re-establishing control of her home. ...and that plate that got broken was a wedding present, and so she has even more reason to fire the girl anyway.

So, maid is doomed. There's no other work in the area that she's physically capable of doing (apparently maid was sickly too? In a less-implied-to-be-malingering kind of way.) They're not very close to any area that has work. And she's got no other distant in-laws even.

Ethan wants to save the day and not be defeated and considers eloping and/or divorce, and is as sure as anything that the maid girl would be happy to go with him, but he's so broke he can't do it; even if he sold everything there'd be not enough money to get him anywhere with work either. He actually tries to beg money from people but times are tough everywhere and he's already skint, his pockets are already to let, his credit's no good, and to his credit at least he won't lie to take money to hurt the few people who are kind to him.

So. He's defeated, and his wife is smug, but by damn at least he'll be the one to drive maid-girl to the train station to go to the big city and look futilely for work and lodging. It takes him some unaccustomed straightforward conflict with his wife but they drive off. ...and pass by the sledding place and Ethan's like "well, wanna sled before we get to the train station?" and they do and she has fun and is breathless that the dead-man's-curve at the bottom where you have to dodge a huge tree was scary. ...and then asks him to take her again but this time they can hit the tree and lover's-suicide because she knows what misery awaits her in town and she knows he's super into her.

This book actually didn't start with Ethan's point of view, by the way. It started with some guy slowly getting to know the downtrodden, permanently-injured, and impoverished Ethan from the outside, piecing together his story, and telling us this tale. So, we kinda knew maybe that this foreshadowed impact with the tree is gonna happen. And it does. They do the thing. And, whups, they both live.

Book fades out with Ethan now having two women in his house; the maid is now paralyzed and has a constant whine to her manner, wife has had to start doing housework, and Ethan's unprofitable farm was always too much work for him but now he's far more in need of any ability to earn an extra dollar, and it takes him far longer to do so as he limps and shuffles along. ...so it's been many years since he's had time to learn about stars or flowers. Privately, many people think it would have been better if the sledding accident had been fatal (though nobody knows it was intended to be so except Ethan and the maid).

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I still haven't looked for any analysis of what this story was meant to be to readers. Was it cautionary, or just sensational? We got a warning at the beginning that this was a story that would end up with Ethan sad and damaged at least, so we knew it would be at least partly a tragedy. But I'm sure there's more, in the context of when the story was published and what else was out at the time, that it was intended to accomplish (perhaps a blunting of lazy stories that end in super romantic grand gestures or something?) I'll look that stuff up the next time I wonder about it, but I think there's some value in unseasoned and sincere takes on classic stories, and so, for your degustation, that was mine.

I forgot I said that about "School Days" above, but now I think this story could be very amusingly adapted into a cutesy Higurashi-style anime. It'd be fun to see audiences get all squee about the implied breeding pair and then see how it all works out.

It's kind of awful, though; the wife was written to be read as a terrible person. Wife's infirmity is, according to the doctors and her family, a result of how she helped take care of Ethan's infirm mother and so he OWES her. ...and this is all I think an example of her malingering, playing the implied-as-common Munchausen card for attention and drama, and generally bullying and manipulating her husband into compliance. This is kind of a shitty way to write the wife, and I have no idea if the author (didn't pay attention then, and not at home with book now) is a man or a woman but there's some internalized and unconscious misogyny going on here I think.

The maid being written to, once paralyzed, be an annoyance that brings no joy to anyone and can do almost nothing useful around the house is...probably the point, so it is a little less contempt-of-women in origin. The maid falling in love with Ethan, which didn't feel believable to me, was probably way more believable in context of the sensibilities of the time.

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A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that the author was a Pulitzer-prize winning woman (prize was for a different book) and seems to have been pretty great actually but her family was crap. Awful wife from Ethan Frome was probably the author using her mother as a character. So that's a thing. Author did this a lot; people have said it's a sort of revenge the author was getting on an unpleasant family.

Themes as consensus-of-readers would have it is that this book is duty-vs-desire and also meant to highlight the unfairness of the culture towards women, and that women have no real alternative to becoming bitter pills as they did in the book when constrained in the way culture does.

Oh, and Ethan was apparently quite handsome; I hadn't really remarked on that but it may have been important to getting the maid's interest. Also, the maid was scarred and had her hip badly and permanently broken but not actually paralyzed. Just to correct my misreading.

This "tale", for the author was careful to make it clear it was a tale and not a novel, was intended to have a moral, and if it felt a bit heavy-handed, well, I suspect (nothing about that in the Wikipedia article anyway) that it existed in a field of similar stories where the overwhelming passions of romance and tragedy often ended with a contrived beauty instead of, arguably, a contrived ugliness. Gotta hand credit to Ethan Frome for, at least, not doing the former. It was a good counterpoint, and I do not suspect I'll be tempted to pick this book up again, but I'm not regretting reading it.

Cheers.

#Ethan Frome #Boox

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robotslovedeath · 5 years

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mysterio: yeah, there's a multiverse

miles when he sees mysterio:

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kissedbylove · 4 years

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thank you

i just drooled all over myself.

#tom holland smut #tom holland imagine #tom holland #far from home #avengers x reader #far frome home spoilers #quentin beck #spiderman #ffh cast #mysterio #jake gyllenhaal #marvel

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burnsbabblebooks · 5 years

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Peter Parker: Can you just leave me alone to live a normal life??

Marvel:

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underoosparkerr · 5 years

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So like I realize that Mysterio is a villain people like a lot or whatever, but can we talk about how messed up he is. Like this man was hellbent on destroying Stark Industry after Tony told him what his tech should be used for and then called him unstable, and promptly fired him. Then Beck decides hey i'm going to be the world's favorite superhero by attempting to murder thousands with illusion tech and then pretend save them. And we can't forget the fact that be wanted TO KILL A KID, A FUCKING 16 YEAR OLD. Just because he found out that Quentin was a nut job. So like Mysterio's an insane ass villain

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artbygiseth · 5 years

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<3

#peter parker #michelle jones #spideychelle #spiderman #spiderman far from home #far frome home spoilers #far from home #mcu

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wndamaximov · 5 years

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I died a little bit when Peter thought Back in Black was Led Zeppelin

#spiderman far from home #spiderman: far from home #spiderman #ffh #far from home #far frome home spoilers #peter parker #back in black #acdc #ac/dc #led zeppelin #tony stark #happy hogan

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sogr3en · 5 years

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The greatest showman ( 2017 ) vs. Spiderman: far from home ( 2019 )

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fuglypickles · 5 years

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𝙗𝙞𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙚𝙬 𝙅𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙂𝙮𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙖𝙖𝙡

#jake gyllenhaal #mysterio x spider man #mysterio x you #ffh cast #ffh spoilers #ffh #far frome home spoilers #far from home #spider man #peter parker x tony stark #peter parker #peter x shuri #peter parker x you #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x reader #spiderman #spider man: homecoming #endgame spoilers

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yurkei-cards · 5 years

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Far from home’s credit scene cracks me up

when Quentin shows a picture of peter saying that he’s a killer and the real bad guy is still hilarious to me, he showed a picture of some skinny nerd kid who looks like this:

And expects everyone to believe he’s a murderer,,,,,,like,,I can’t

#spiderman #far from home #far frome home spoilers #peter parker #mysterio #mcu #marvel #tom holland #quentin beck #spiderman far from home

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hufflepufff171 · 4 years

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I know I'm several months late, but I just watched Spiderman Far From Home, and WOAH! It's so good!! Didn't think it was going to be bad, but still. SO GOOD!!

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robotslovedeath · 5 years

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peter: thanks for the drone, mr beck! but why?

mysterio:

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kissedbylove · 5 years

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Y'll have no idea how hard I fell in love with Jake Gyllenhaal.

I mean, LOOK AT THAT SWEET BOY MY GOD

#jake gyllenhaal imagine #jake gyllenhaal #jake gyllenhaal smut #mcu #spiderman #far frome home spoilers #far from home #mysterio #quentin beck #marvel #avengers x reader

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angryteapot · 5 years

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Quentin Beck saying "Yeah, hi honey," does stuff to me.

#quentin beck #mysterio #ffh #ffh spoilers #spider man: far from home #spiderman far from home spoilers #spiderman far from home #far from home #far frome home spoilers #but not really

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metahomo · 5 years

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Peter: wow that sure was scary not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Mysterio even showed me a fake Nick Fury! Thank god you’re real. I don’t think my psyche could handle another blow to my already fragile sense of reality and trust

Talos as Nick Fury: *sweating profusely*

#talos #spiderman ffh #spiderman far from home #spiderman #peter parker #tom holland #nick fury #skrulls #far from home #far frome home spoilers #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #marvel #mine

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destinyannfoxx · 5 years

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The Best and Worst Lines in FFH

Perhaps both the best and worst lines were said by Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio

“Never apologize for being the smartest person in the room”

“Maybe if you were good enough, Tony would still be alive”

#far from home #far frome home spoilers #mysterio #spiderman #jake gyllenhaal #tom holland #WHY #just why #no mysterio no #Tony #WHO WROTE THE WORST LINE #who writes this stuff #tell me and no one gets harmed #die #well you are dead anyway #who's reading this

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