Wharton Conveys Through Frome By Edith Wharton

Zeena was taking care of Ethan’s mother and he fell “in love” with her while she was taking care of his mother. It is said that “Her efficiency shamed and dazzled him. She seemed to posses by instinct all the household wisdom that his long apprenticeship had not instilled in him” (29). Ethan proposed to Zeena because he didn’t want to be alone, it is said in the novel that “He was seized with an 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” (29). It is unclear whether Zeena possessed a love for Ethan as Ethan claimed to of have for her. In the end of the novel Mattie is looked at as the annoying one, and he starts to care for Zeena because she is not the one inept to do household chores.

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

In Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Ethan, Mattie, and Zeena become caught in a love triangle. This resulted in tragedy instead of Ethan and Mattie living in happiness together. When Ethan was attempting to decide whether to leave Zeena or allow Mattie to leave, he should have figured out a way to leave Zeena fairly well off while leaving with the one he truly loved: Mattie. Maybe he could have persuaded someone wealthy to marry Zeena or her family might have taken her back when Ethan left. Zeena was an awful wife and she should have expected Ethan to leave because she knew he loved Mattie and that she was not kind to him. Zeena was not the only one at fault. Mattie should have handled herself differently. Even though she was taken over

Tom Wingfield and Ethan Frome are both intellectual dreamers who live in stifling, hopeless conditions. Ethan gave up his dreams of becoming an engineer due to his duty to care for his ailing parents, and later Zeena. Similarly, Tom writes poetry, reads literature, follows European politics, and dreams of escaping from his current circumstances. Just as Ethan never fulfills his dream of becoming an engineer, Tom is trapped in his job at a warehouse to support his family. Both of these characters desire a life that is more exciting and fulfilling than the one they currently have. The difference between Tom and Ethan is that while Ethan stays with Zeena in Starkfiled, Tom leaves his family in St. Louis. Ethan is a highly passive character, relying

In //Ethan Frome// Edith Wharton illustrates how Ethan views Zeena versus Mattie through the parallel scenes of when Ethan is greeted by Zeena/Mattie at the door of his farmhouse first coming home from the dance and second coming home from. Although both scenes play out almost identically, Wharton uses the slight differences to emphasize how Ethan sees Mattie as beautiful, submissive, and attractive compared to Zeena who he only sees as an obstacle. As Ethan comes up to the door the first time when Zeena waits for him, he is so infatuated by Mattie that Zeena has become but a hurdle for him to overcome. He even dreams about if a dead vine dangling was a"crape streamer tied to the door for a

In the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, the main character Ethan is heavily influenced by the two women in his life, Mattie and Zeena. Both Mattie and Zeena contribute to Ethan's choices and life. These two women are both very similar and different as they share a common outcome but different traits.

Secondly, Ethan Frome has had many failures within his life such as his marriage to Zeena. One may ask how is Zeena and Ethan’s marriage a failure? Ethan only marries Zeena after she could not nurse his mother back to health and she ends up passing away. When Ethan mother dies, Ethan is in a sullen mood or funk and in turn

“There was no way out- none. He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light to be extinguished”(Wharton 29). Miserable routines caused by terrible occurrences trappes Ethan Frome every single day. Edith Wharton opposes the idea of following any routine. Wharton expresses that routines and cycles prevent a person from expressing their own desires or achieving their personal goals in life. These cycles prohibit a person from seeing changes within their environment and possible opportunities that could improve their life. Even if a person breaks free from a routine, an endless amount of reasons exist to pull them back in. Ethan Frome momentarily escapes from his daily routine to pursue his education, but not far into this break he has to return in order to help his family. Ethan Frome somehow found a way out of his miserable routine, but failed to take that exit; resulting in a life much worse than before. Finding a way out seems like a reasonable solution to escape bad situations, but taking such a great risk to completely change one’s entire life, seems nearly impossible for any citizens of Starkfield. In the novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton exemplifies how routines deny a person from reaching their full potential through the constant pull Ethan and other members of Starkfield receive to follow their normal, average routine and not follow their desires.

Imagine a man held against his will. Ethan Frome thinks of himself as a “prisoner” (Wharton 74). He is detained from a life he has always imagined because of the accident with Mattie Silver. “The inexorable facts closed in on him like a prison-warder handcuffing a convict” (Wharton 74). Ethan Frome has realized he has to face the consequences of being infatuated with Mattie Silver forever. He becomes entwined with two “sickly “controlling women, a “warped right side” and life full of regrets. Edith Wharton shows Ethan “checking each step like the jerk of a chain” (Wharton 1). Every step Ethan takes into getting into the right path, trouble gets in his way. Starkfield being “being in an exhausted receiver” (Wharton 13) makes him feels he will be stuck in the darkness for eternity. For

Ethan marries Zeena out of loneliness and fear, while he yearns for a loving, beautiful

The themes of Edith Wharton's novels usually reflect her own marital unhappiness, and Ethan Frome and Age of Innocence are no exception. Ethan Frome tells the story of Ethan, a resident of cold and drab Starkfield, who is unhappily married to a cruel and cold woman, Zeena. Ethan has feelings for Mattie, Zeena's cousin, and the story tells of how his happiness with Mattie and unhappiness with Zeena leads to his failed suicide attempt. The movie, Age of Innocence, is about Newland Archer, also an engaged man who is in love with another woman. Both of these stories share similar plots, and neither character is able to escape their unhappy marriage due to society's rules about marriage and love, which prevents them from expressing their love for another person. Wharton is saying that people should be free to marry who they love; however,

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.

Ethan Frome also has a sense of duty to stay with his current wife Zeena. Ethan wishes to leave Zeena immediately and to run away with his true love Mattie, but he knows that Zeena could not possibly support herself on her own. Edith Wharton shows this by writing, “…that Ethan drew a meager 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 96). This distinctly explains that Ethan’s sense of duty conquers once again and controls him to stay with his bitter wife Zeena. Most have a universal opinion that Ethan has to stay with his wife Zeena. Another author agrees with the fact that Ethan’s plans to run away with Mattie have become thwarted by saying, “But immediately his plans are set afoot, things begin to close in on him again: farm and mill are mortgaged, he has no credit, and time is against him” (Howe 132). The author states that Ethan’s small estate will not support Zeena, and so Ethan’s sense of duty prevails over him again.

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

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.