This is super niche but one of my favorite books of all time is Wharton’s Ethan Frome. In researching her writing process it seems that while she did research the rural Massachusetts poor in writing her novel (she was pretty well-off and most of her other work directly satirized the people around her), there a few sources out there that suggest she most likely did not actually sit down and converse with them personally. The book pulls a lot from her personal experience as someone trapped in an unhappy marriage, but as she and her narrator character were outsiders to poverty, I’ve often wondered how many assumptions were made in its writing.
I’m curious if there any works out there who actually took the time to truly archive the lives and experiences of the people who would have inspired a town like the fictional Starkfield? Not Massachusetts specifically, but certainly in the New England area. I’d love to get a new perspective on the text- how Wharton and her narrator perceived these people, versus how they were personally.
Thanks in advance!
by rwyoho