Edith Grossman

“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

Love and tragedy has been a tale as old as time and is definitely not going anywhere. No matter what year it is, people are always searching for happiness and sometimes go about their motives the wrong way and ends up in a disastrous fate. In Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" it is apparent that the goal was money and fame with loose morals. Wharton's "Ethan Frome" was before World War 1 and when America was still kept to the classic standards of house, family, and farm. Both main characters lived

Edith Wharton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer is markedly unique, insisting on order, form, standards and disciplines which curb the romantic individualism. In addition to her fifteen novels, she has to her credit, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, poems, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir. Her writing is classical and it reveals the instability of human nature, the impossibility of perfection of human beings and

The House of Mirth is a novel that condemns the elitist world of women and promotes the idea that money can't buy happiness. Wharton wanted to present American aristocracy when that aristocracy was doing so well. The novel highlights each aspect of a person's social behavior because each detail can have implications. Wharton wanted to mock the society, but also to show the tragedies in it. Wharton considered New York society to be arrogant, trivial, and ridiculous. The burden of tragedy to her often

Ethan Frome is a novel published in 1911 written by Edith Wharton. In this novel a man named Ethan Frome, married to Zenobia Frome, falls in love with another woman named Mattie Silver. Mattie is the bright light in Ethan’s dark life. Wharton utilizes symbolism to create emotion and meaning throughout the story. She uses objects, numbers, and the setting to shed light on the various elements of the story that she deems important. The objects around the Frome’s home are very symbolic. The missing

Chaos 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

their lifespan on earth. However, not all of the dreams can be fulfilled. The dreams and desires of a person can be hindered by interfering forces which might be external, social and environmental factors, or internal like lack of will. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton demonstrates how social factors, including rules and expectations, and environmental factors such as weather and landscape, hindered the protagonist from accomplishing his dreams. These factors together with his lack of will, played a major

The Effects of an Unbalanced Subconscious Humans by nature are constantly thinking and acting based on different parts of their subconcious. This is true for people in real life, as well as characters in books. In the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, the three main characters have particularly specific parts of their subconscious controlling them, and a psychoanalytic breakdown of each character will determine what section of the brain is influencing each character. Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver,

Fate is an all powerful and unavoidable development of events that leads you to what you deserve based on how you life your life. In the novel “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton the three main characters; Ethan, Mattie, and Zeena, all suffered a torturous fate due to many wrong doings, primarily, all the secrets they kept for their own individual benefit. Ethan’s lie was being in love with Mattie, Mattie’s lie was being in love with Ethan, and Zeena’s lie was being deathly ill, however, these lies resulted

Do we make our own fate, or is it predetermined? Do our actions matter, or are we simply following a track? In the book, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, the main character's life is a continuous series of tragic events. Is this his own fault, or has his fate always been set towards pain? In this essay I will be explaining why Ethan's troubles are his own, why his actions caused his fate. Ethan, the main character, continuously fails to express himself, no matter how strongly he desires to. “He took