Two suggestions for Edith Wharton: How to re-write Ethan Frome

OK, I was pretty hard on Edith Wharton for her condescending introduction to "Ethan Frome," but it's only fair to say that Ethan Frome is a really a pretty great novella - and probably a very good choice for book group, as well. I was kind of fooled by the first chapter, in which Ethan surreptitiously watches Mattie Silver dance with the wealthy and smooth Eady (?); I suspected that when she walks home with Ethan she's just being kind and naturally upbeat and flirtatious - that, ultimately, as he develops his huge crush on her, she would disappoint him and be "not that into him," as we say today. In fact, the whole dance episode, and the later recurrance when Ethan sees Eady on a sleigh heading out toward his farm, is just a red herring - Mattie, oddly, shows no interest in an appropriate match and is totally smitten with Ethan - though they're in an impossible position and they both know it. It's a little bit of an early version of Double Indemnity or Brief Encounter, a doomed and tragic love, doomed in part because both Ethan and Mattie are moral and upright - he's not willing to abandon his insufferable, mean wife, Zeena, and Mattie isn't willing to be a home-wrecker. Zeena may be a horrible person, but she's no fool and she sees where this is heading if Mattie stays in the house - early version of Big Love? Everyone knows the dramatic climax, with Ethan driving the sled into the elm tree - it's never made completely clear whether he (or Mattie) made a last-second attempt to avoid the collision. Lots to think about in this short novel: Is Zeena presented fairly, or is her meanness just because we see her through the lens of two male narrators? Would Mattie really fall for Ethan (possibly - easy to forget that he's a healthy, if impoverished, 25-year-old)? Is Mattie as good as she seems - or is there something sneaky in her (her family history might suggest so)? How important is the poverty to this narrative - the subtle cruelty of the seemingly kind builder who blithely withholds payment to the far more needy and desperate Ethan? Let me play god here for a moment and edit this novel: First, I think it would be stronger if Zeena were not so horrible, if we could even slightly sympathize with her plight as well as with the plight of Ethan and Mattie. Second, Wharton misses a great opportunity for drama and surprise (giving the ending away here): The narrator should have seen in Ethan's farm an old, gray, hobbled woman sitting near-immobile by the fire, and we would have assumed that was Zeena, whom Ethan was burdened with thoughout his life. Then, at the end, Zeena appears, stronger and healthier - the strongest of the group - and only then do we realize that the old woman by the fire was Mattie. Don't know why Wharton didn't think of this - a film version probably has.