| Summary: | When choreographer Cathy Marston sought to translate Ethan Frome into dance, it was the “elemental feel” of the novella that inspired her quest for finding ways of dancing “New Englandly,” to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, and to choreograph what literature feels like. The very title of her piece, “Snowblind,” recalls the anthropomorphic (or rather, animalized) vision of the “outcroppings of slate” “nuzzl[ing] up through the snow like animals pushing out their noses to breathe” (Wharton, 1911 19): a face of stone half-buried in snow, whose orifices—eyes, ears, mouth—are covered by the falling snow that muffles their expression and their senses. Less than the story of a love triangle, Ethan Frome and Snowblind are both about thwarted emotions, affect trapped in stone, a stream of magma whose burning passions can only be expressed in stony, impenetrable silence—beneath verbal language, through sensations. This article retraces the presence of dance and somatic expression in Edith Wharton’s writing, in order to show how Ethan Frome could organically lend itself to a choreographic translation. After examining how American Delsartism and dance might have shaped Edith Wharton’s understanding of the physical expression of affect through non-verbal gestures of air and stone and influenced the composition of Ethan Frome, this article explores how Cathy Marston drew on the affective and sensory elements in the novella to propose her own somatic and choreographic reading, therefore offering readers and ballet audiences alike a reflection on what literature feels like.
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