Ethan Frome Tragic Hero Essay

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.

Frome’s suffering brought about by forces beyond his control. Included in these forces are the weather and time of year, leaving for college and having to come back, and falling in love. The winter weather influnces Ethan to marry Zeena.Due to the seasonal weather, Ethan makes a poor choice in marrying Zeena. “After the funeral, when he saw her [Zeena] preparing to go away, he was seized with unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter” (44). This quote substantiates Ethan’s regret in marrying Zeena. He believes he wouldn’t have made that same decision had it been spring time. Another force beyond Ethan’s control is seen in the introduction, it is about Ethan being forced to come home on page 5 ““Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father – then his mother.””(25). This quote relates to when Ethan was forced from college and back to the

The Novella of Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, is a tragedy. Ethan Frome suffered tragedy because of his character flaws, errors in his judgment, and forces beyond his control. Ethan Frome married a woman, Zeena, he was lonely and not truly in love with her. When her cousin, Maddie comes to live with them Ethan becomes infatuated with her. When Maddie has to leave, Ethan and Maddie decide to kill themselves so they never would have to leave one another. In the novella of Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Ethan is a unique character who suffers a downfall due to character flaws, and errors in judgment, and most important forces beyond human control to in which he gains wisdom.

Isolation can be the determining factor in changing one’s mindset. In Ethan Frome, Ethan faces many disappointments throughout the novel. In the novel, Ethan is an orphan since both parents have passed. His wife Zeena who is also his cousin has become the dominant one in the relationship taking over full control. While living in Starkfield, Zeena has suddenly become “sick” and is forced to bring in her cousin Mattie for help around the house. Zeena is depicted as a bitter prematurely old woman who is always “sick” while Mattie is the picture of health as well as the sweetest woman alive. When Mattie comes into the picture, she becomes the speck of happiness in which Ethan longs for but Zeena keeps taking away. This brings up a theme of failure throughout the novel.

She is a young, flirtatious, outgoing cousin of Zeena, who also loved nature just like Ethan. She was a vibrant woman who brought life to the house. Ethan ends up falling in love

Since Zeena is so bitter and mean, Ethan is suffering

Ethan Frome meets Zeena because his mother is sick, so she has a relative look after her. Eventually, Zeena becomes sick and has a relative of her own watch over her and care for her. Ethan suffers in silence while staying with his wife because although he wants to leave, he cannot due to her health.

They go to sled and as they are at the top of the hill they kiss. Mattie requests Ethan steers the sled into the tree where they can die together. They both get on the sled and as they are about to hit the tree he imagines Zeena's face and swerves but still hits the tree. They had to move Mattie and Ethan back to the house where Zeena took care of

All through the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Ethan has several excuses to why he can not run away with Mattie, those being, public moral standards, Ethan’s own morals, and finical reasons. These reasons are stopping him from being with Mattie, his true love. One of the reasons Ethan will not run away with Mattie is because of the public’s moral standards. The time period in which this book was written it was looked down upon to have a divorce. And on top of that Zeena , Ethan’s wife, was sick at the time.

After marrying his cousin, Zeena, who helped take care of his sickly mother, they made plans to sell the farm and move away, but, as time quickly passed, Zeena fell ill as well, leaving Frome to take care of her as well. He grew tired of taking care of his sickly wife, and even considered leaving with her cousin, Mattie, before realizing how “it was only by incessant labour and personal supervision that Ethan drew a meagre living from his land, and his wife, even if she were in better health than she imagined, could never carry such a burden alone” (Wharton 68). Ethan had abandoned his dreams of becoming an engineer to care for his sickly mother, and after her death, he was making plans for his now brighter future before he was forced to abandon those dreams to yet again to care for another sickly person. His desire to leave his wife is evident that he’s unhappy and tired of caring for her, but his realization about her inability to survive without him, due to her ill state, caused him to second doubt his idea about abandoning her and making him return to his responsibility of caring for

Many people do not really think that his wife didn’t have to do with anything about his poverty but she played a major role in why he is in poverty. For examples she says “How she has been sickly”(Wharton56). The reason that Zeena is one of the causes of Ethan’s poverty is that she is never having a conversation with him and never talks to him. This is one of the reasons because during this time of his life. He needs someone to talk to, because there are things that he keeps trying to keep inside that he needs to share with someone but Zeena does not want to communicate with him unless it has to deal with her health. She is also causing Ethan’s poverty because she is becoming sick and Ethan is trying to take care of her, sometimes she do not want the help which makes Ethan feel left out. She also causes his poverty because towards the end of the story, She boots Mattie out of the house which causes Ethan to go on the trip to take Mattie to the train station and when he decides to go to a different location instead of the train station, he talks about moving West with Mattie, but the poorness of Ethan kicks in. He does not even have the money to go out west with her. Overall Zeena was one of the reasons that Ethan has been going through poverty throughout his

It was not necessary for Ethan to throw away the education he worked so hard for, but he felt that it was his duty to care of his mother like a responsible son. Additionally, several years into their marriage Ethan no longer had strong feelings of love towards his wife, but he felt the obligation to uphold

Ethan, despite knowing the hardships he would have to handle all alone, he chose to help his family, instead of following his dream. Ethan’s morals clearly focus on doing what is right and what is better for his family, not just himself. In his despair, and lonely life, he met Zeena who resurrected his passion for living and was soon faced with another decision that will be affected by his

The main struggle for Ethan is his thoughts for both Zeena and her sister. He fell in love

She respected his knowledge and authoritative figure unlike his wife, Zeena. Yet Ethan’s masculine pride and feelings of guilt (as he was a married man) stopped him from relaying his feelings to anyone which caused him to become obsessive. This same pride had caused his emotional separation with Zeena in the years of their marriage as his nature of keeping to himself had prompted Zeena to become self-absorbed which again triggered her hypochondriacal nature. This explains why Ethan’s focus on Mattie had angered Zeena as she caught on to Ethan’s feelings for Mattie (Wharton 26). After this discovery, Zeena and Mattie had a difficult relationship which caused Ethan to dislike his wife. Henceforth, the main conflict of the book was resolved when Ethan secretly revealed his feelings to Mattie after the thought of her forced departure upset