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I really enjoyed this story which shouldn't come as a great surprise as I'm sure Bleak is one of my middle names.
Wharton can certainly write. This is the first of her works I have read and I was mesmerised. The claustrophobia of Ethan's relationship with his wife, the smouldering desire for Mattie, the disaster brought about by the inevitable slip into recklessness for them both and the final position reversal at the end.
The most interesting thing I found about the story was the contrast of Mattie and the wife. While Zeena was tending to Ethan's sick parent (can't remember if it was mother or father now), she came into her own, displaying a selflessness and strength. She was like an anchor for Ethan. However, when married and stuck with no real purpose, she is reduced to a harping hypochondriac. At the end though, she has come into her own again with Mattie to tend to - a picture of patience.
Mattie is the great hope of a life of sentimental romance for Ethan; the grass-is-always-greener proposition that he battled against until he finally succumbed to a tidal wave of rather silly passion that ends - well - badly. But the dream becomes a nightmare once Mattie is crippled and becomes a whining, criticising invalid.
I got the feeling that Ethan was doomed. Too sentimental to live with the guilt of abandoning his wife, romantic enough to attempt to attempt a foolish lovers' suicide. He was never going to be happy with his wife as she was only bearable when there was someone to look after. Having Mattie as an invalid might have made his wife more bearable, but Mattie was not a gracious boarder once crippled.
All this and a bleak landscape too.
I'm interested in what other people thought about this story.
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