The Common Archetypes In Ethan Frome, By Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a book that has implications of falling in love with someone else after you are married. Wharton uses many instances of irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism to reveal the feelings of Ethan Frome towards his ideal love, Mattie Silver. The book gives rise to many questions about love, marriage, divorce, and even death. Falling in love with someone else after you are married leads to detrimental consequences.

Elizabeth Ammons compares Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome to the fairy tale Snow-White by the Grimm Brothers. In her comparison, Ethan Frome is the “honest woodcutter”, Zeena Frome is the “witch”, and Mattie Silver is the “silvery maiden”. Ammons also notes that the novel is full of fairy tale elements, however, does not have a typical happy ending.

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

Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is vividly real to its readers, its issues continually relevant to society, but through its structure and moral lessons, it is intended to be read as a 'fairy tale'.

In the novel Ethan Frome, written by Edith Wharton, there is a large amount of symbolism. The symbolism allows the characters to express themselves clearly and help the reader understand who they are and how they feel. The red pickle dish, silence, and the color red are all symbols that do not have literal meaning, but represent other important themes or ideas in the novel.

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize winning female author whose writing style was mainly affected by her aristocratic upbringing. Growing up Edith Wharton was friends with former President Theodore Roosevelt. The two were often compared and both were said to have been self-made ‘men’. Edith Wharton’s novels were often critically acclaimed until Ethan Frome was published. The novel was said to be cruel and violent by critics and casual readers. In my opinion, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a great book that reveals the harsh realities of failed relationships hanging on by a thread combined with the struggle of being poverty stricken. For my original piece, I will write a poem about Edith Wharton’s failed marriage that lasted 28 years, as if I were Edith Wharton after her divorce from Edward Wharton. I chose to do a report on Edith Wharton because she was a female writer that believed women were just as capable as men during a time when men were seen as superior in every aspect to women, and also because she achieved much more than most male writers of her time. I believe Edith Wharton’s aristocratic upbringing had the main effect on her writing style.

Throughout the years, fairytales have had a crucial role in perpetuating stereotypes regarding gender roles in society that portray women as dependent and distressed, also that being an attractive,young woman is the cause of most predicaments, and how women are entitled to specific jobs in the house while a man is supposed to go out and do all the hard work. In most cases, a beautiful young woman is put in a serious situation by a villain and/or monster who needs a hero, more specifically, a male, to come to her rescue. This is typically classified as using the literary device “Damsel in Distress”.

Ethan Frome, a story written by Edith Wharton is a story about the sad life about Ethan Frome. He is a man who has a life filled with problems and shows a man pursuing happiness. Isolation is something that affects Ethan’s life drastically. In Ethan Frome, Wharton shows Ethan being negatively affected physically and mentally by his isolation in Starkfield.

As Snow White grew older she became more beautiful than anyone else in the entire kingdom. That did not settle well with the Queens’ vain personality, so she ordered her huntsman to kill Snow White. With her son; the Prince away at Boarding School, no one else would ever realize her beauty.

While there are many varieties of “Snow-White,” there are two variations that were done that acknowledge the question of how can one modification of a story can be comparable to another? These variations include “ Little Snow-White” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and the second story is “Nourie Hadig,” an Armenian folktale. In the Grimm version of the famous story, “Snow-White,” an evil queen is after the life of her daughter, Snow-White. This is because when she calls for her magical mirror “Who in this land is fairest of all?” the evil queen is replied with her daughter, Snow-White, being the “fairest of all” (Grimm 1). The second story, “Nourie Hdig,” is similar to the first story in which it adheres to a familiar storyline. An evil mother

To begin with, this essay will discuss the depiction of the female protagonist in fairy tales as being in the image of the ‘maid’ who is meant to be the stereotypical ideal female that all girls should strive to be like. In addition, the essay will look at the role of the ‘mother’ who is often given to stepmothers in fairy tales. This highlights their wicked behaviour and shows them to be unnatural mothers and witches straying from societal norms. Lastly, this essay will view elderly women in fairy tales and analyze how they are often created in the image of the

Fairy tales are one of the most well-read genres, including classic fairy tales such as the Disney version of “Snow White” One of the identifying features of this genre is the use of gender roles and the way it endorses certain values in regards to male and female. However, throughout the years fairy tales have undergone great changes, towards the view of woman representation and gender roles. In the contemporary “Snow White” the values of classical fairy tales have changed offering a new perspective of gender roles and how women are represented.

Edith Wharton presents two memorable characters in her novel, Ethan Frome. The reader is presented with Mattie Silver who is young, and good-natured, and Zeena Frome, who is a bitter hypochondriac seven years her husband’s senior. Upon a first inspection, Zeena Frome and Mattie Silver of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome seem to be extreme opposites in every respect, but upon closer scrutiny, one finds though they are indeed different in character, though they eventually share great similarities. Zeena and Mattie’s differences in appearance and character, but similarity of fate, all contribute to the theme of the novel which is that one cannot escape the social class one is born in.

If we are told from our adolescence that women can only be beautiful and good, or ugly and evil, it comes as no surprise that people’s perception of reality becomes desensitized over time. Instead of being consider as equals, women are forced into the same old gender roles as their whimsical counterparts. Neil Gaiman reinterpreted these roles in his literate fairy tale “Snow, Glass, Apples.” Gaiman challenged these fundamentals by shining light on the Queen’s inherently moral qualities contrasted with Snow White’s rather malicious actions. Upon switching the roles of these characters, the tone of the story heavily differed from the Grimm Brothers’ “Snow-White”, however the structure had to remain identical. To contrast between fictional personalities,

“Once, a good shepherd, who had lost all his wealth and possessions, and whose very last belongings were about to be repossessed for debts, was tending his flock near the castle of Boyne. He turned his glance to the castle and there, sitting in front of the entrance, was a young maiden, white as snow…” I found this passage thrilling because it was the first time I read about Snow White in a book. I remember as a child watching the movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, but reading it gives you many differences and similarities. As do many other stories.