A Minor Character Serves as Foil to Major Character in Ehtan Frome by Edith Wharton

In Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome, setting is an important element. The setting greatly influences the characters, transportation, and activities.

Ethan's wife, Zeena, displays another area of the poverty of Ethan's life. Her particular poverty is the lack of feeling. She is a cold, decrepit individual, who is convinced that she is sick, and refuses to be told otherwise. She is very uncaring and unpleasant. She constantly gripes at Ethan, and she can't stand her cousin, Mattie. on page 38, Zeena is trying to get rid of Mattie, by hinting that she should get married quickly. She wants to hire another girl.

The novel Ethan Frome is a short story packed with detail. It takes place in Starkfield and is about a farmer named Ethan Frome. Ethan made poor decisions because he was trapped living with two women; his wife, Zeena, and his wife’s cousin, Mattie. Ethan fell in love with Mattie. When Ethan and Mattie fell in love, they made a horribly rash choice making this novel a tragedy. A tragedy in literature is wherewhen a main character or hero suffers a downfall because of a character flaw, error in judgement, or forces beyond human control. The short novel, Ethan Frome, written by Edith Wharton, is a tragedy because of Ethan Frome’s character flaws, errors in judgement and the forces beyond his control.

Ethan Frome and his wife, Zenobia (Zeena), never really know what true love feels like because they are both very lonely people. They meet when Zeena is caring for Ethan’s mother; due to their loneliness, they mistake the bizarre feeling of companionship for love. Ethan marries Zeena, not because he is in love, but because he does not want to be alone and he feels like he owes it to her for everything she is doing for him. She is aware of this and claims, “...you grudged me the money to get back my health, when I lost it nursing your own mother! And my folks all told me at the time you couldn 't do no less than marry me after—” (Wharton 83). In addition to Zeena saying that Ethan

In the book Ethan Frome, the characters are caught between what is right and wrong. Mattie has a torn desire to be with her sister’s husband and Ethan does not stop her because he feels the same way. The theme for the book is duty and desire. Ethan has a desire towards Mattie because she does not complain and is thought of as

In the story Ethan Frome, it was a love triangle. Ethan was married to a sickly women named Zeena. When Mattie Silver was the maid of the Frome home, Ethan almost instantly fell for her. Ethan got married too quickly because he had a fear of being lonely. Zeena seemed to be the only option for Ethan, and so he married her. Zeena was not a nice women and controlled his own home and said that she was sick and needed a maid. This is the reasoning for Matties arrival.Ethan fell for her and Zeena knew that. She wanted Mattie out by leading her to go somewhere else, but Ethan did not want to let her go. This is what lead to the purposeful sledding incident. There could have been a change to this. At the end of the story Ethan Frome, it

Motifs are interesting literary devices, treasured by many authors, to make up or help support the plotline of each story written. In the novella Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, she uses the motif of parallelism of the setting of Starkfield, Massachusetts, and other characters such as Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver, to help describe the way that Starkfield and other factors entangle each character mentally, emotionally, and physically. The importance of this is evident, as it shows during key periods in the story.

When his mother, too, had fallen ill, Ethan had had no time for “convivial loiterings in the village” (Wharton 61). Once a social and admired man, Ethan now lives in a life of solitude and silence. After his mother fell ill, “the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields” (Wharton 61). His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her illnesses, the sound of her voice was seldom heard. When asked why, her answer would be “because [she was] listening” or “they’re talking so [loud] out there that I can’t hear you” (Wharton 61). Towards the end of her illnesses, Zenobia Pierce came to help Ethan. It was only then that Zeena’s volubility was “music in his ears”, relieving him of the “mortal silence of his long imprisonment” (Wharton 61). After his mother’s death, Ethan married Zeena, hoping to rid him of the loneliness of the farm. However, Zeena, too, eventually fell silent, and Ethan must take of her like he once did for his mother. In addition, irony also takes place during Ethan and Mattie’s first evening together. Zeena, being a hypochondriac claims that her “shooting pains” have gotten more severe and therefore must leave to Bettsbridge to see a new doctor, leaving Ethan and Mattie alone. On what should have been a romantic idyll, the evening is in fact stressful and

Ethan being very needy marries Zeena, and once she turns cold, Ethan suffers. Ethan had been very lonely, living with his sickly mother.

Many people oppose society due to the surroundings that they face and the obstacles that they encounter. Set in the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is the story of a poor, lonely man, his wife Zeena, and her cousin Mattie Silver. Ethan the protagonist in this novel, faces many challenges and fights to be with the one he really loves. Frome was trapped from the beginning ever since Mattie Silver came to live with him and his wife. He soon came to fall in love with her, and out of love with his own wife. He was basically trapped in the instances of his life, society’s affect on the relationship, love, poverty, illness, disability, and life.

Instead of just seeing what Ethan Frome looks like as a result of the incident, he saw how he lives and what his life is like. Having encountered Zeena and Mattie in the home, the narrator got a better idea of how not only Ethan was affected, but also how Zeena and Mattie were, too. He saw how different their life was now compared to the story of their lives from before the incident. Not only did the narrator see, but could also picture how unpleasant their lives are. The Narrator returned to Mrs. Ned Hale, and she told him how he was the first person to enter the Frome household in over twenty years because Ethan was too proud to let anyone see the way he was living.

The novel opens, twenty years later, in Starkfield with The Narrator who develops the desire to know all about Ethan Frome’s past life. His curiosity gets him bits and pieces from the locals, but Ethan Frome remained mysterious. Due to a horrendous blizzard, The Narrator is given the opportunity to live in Ethan’s past and answer all of his questions. The reader starts off with the knowledge of Ethan Frome’s younger life. He desired to become an engineer ,but while pursuing his dreams, his father passes away and his mother becomes very ill. During that winter, Ethan hires Zeena, his cousin, to take care of his mother because he realized that it was too much for him to do on his own. When his mother passes away, he suffers from isolophobia, the fear of isolation, and decides to marry Zeena. The reader is made aware that the environment is cold representing a sense of isolation from the outside world. The Narrator finally learns about the “smash-up”(Wharton 1) according to the locals, that threw away all of Ethan Frome’s chances of escaping prison, also known as life.

However, after Ethan set his eyes on an engineering job in Florida, he learned of “the impossibility of transplanting her [Zeena]” (42). Because Zeena was unwilling to move to a new town, it cost Ethan a shot at a more successful life. The environment also plays a major role in the success that a person achieves. The small town of Starkfield did not help the development of Ethan’s education or career. Ethan wished to move out of Starkfield because it could not support his dream job as an engineer.

Ethan had “taken a year’s course at a technical college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory,” however later ended his schooling because of “his father’s death, and the misfortunes following it” (Wharton 24).His action in giving up his proud studies is an example of what makes Ethan a tragic hero as he feels obligated to pursue his family’s farm instead of following his dreams through college. Not only is he troubled by leaving college for the farm, but Ethan is also unhappy with his relationship with his wife, Zeena. Zeena they were both happy until within a year of their marriage Zeena contracted an alleged illness and she becomes bitter. “He felt a chill of such forebodings,” within Ethan’s diminishing marriage with Zeena as she has become a burden (Wharton 63). Since Ethan is not capable in revealing his feelings about Zeena, it leads to the downfall of Ethan’s miserable relationship with her. than Frome begins to live a life of tragedy that evolves into suffering by the action of unthoughtful

Although Frome can be held responsible for his moral inactivity, he can be considered a morally inadequate man in his present state. His inadequacy, however, was not a constant in life or a sudden occurrence-- it snowballed from his youth and finally solidified through the ‘smash-up’. His earlier experiences in a university and the joy it brought him was quickly interrupted after a year by his sickly parents. The unfortunate circumstance forces Ethan Frome to move back to the depressing Starkfield he had just escaped. His parents’ illnesses bring along Zenobia, who would be another future, unseen oppression along with Starkfield. For years, Ethan lives in depressing conditions that decline as time goes on. The chance to finally leave them behind, however, comes in Mattie, Zenobia’s cousin and maid. Ethan’s inability to act on this chance of escape finally seals his fate when Mattie is paralyzed and he is critically injured. Although jinxed with unfortunate circumstances, Ethan Frome’s life could have been bettered if one small step or action was taken by him for himself with the intention to create personal joy or pleasure.