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The Grass is Always Greener

Decent Essays

The Grass is Always Greener
Elizabeth Gilbert, an author, writes, “You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.” Nature, music, and art are all natural sources of this beauty that must be found. Neuroscience, however, indicates that the most beautiful images to men are those of women. Edith Wharton utilizes this concept of beauty in her novel, Ethan Frome. Wharton uses Ethan’s female cohabitants and their contrasting and changing physical appearances to point to the theme that hasty decisions lead to regret.
Ethan’s life exemplifies the well-known idiom stating that “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Zeena, his wife whom he …show more content…

When Zeena attempts to send Mattie away, Ethan even strongly considers eloping with her to start anew elsewhere, nearly righting the wrong caused by his first hasty decision by making another potentially more catastrophic one.
While Ethan opts not to abandon his wife, he still makes a catastrophic mistake which cripples him, both emotionally and physically: the breakneck decision to sled into the elm tree. Mattie, left crippled by the incident, remains with the Fromes, but not in the same state as in her unspoiled youth. The narrator, upon his arrival at the Frome household, notes that Mattie has “hair as grey as [Zeena’s], her face as bloodless and shriveled” (151). Her disability steals from her the youthfulness and spirit which appeal so greatly to Ethan, and reduces her to the dreary dullness so central in the novel. The narrator goes on to note the slight amber tint to her face, the last vestige of Mattie’s symbolic red, suggesting that, while time may have diminished Ethan’s lust, some suppressed fragment yet remains.
It goes without saying that Ethan Frome is a tale of anguish, repressed passions, and heartbreak in the face of desire. All of these afflictions, however, would have been avoided had Ethan not been so impulsive in his decision-making, both in the case of his unhappy marriage and his crippling attempted suicide. By using the physical traits of Mattie and Zeena symbolically to portray the contrast between the reality of Ethan’s life and the fantasy of

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