Ethan Frome Setting Analysis

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome: Winter as a Stifling Force to Happiness

Emphasized by romanticism of the 18th century, the changing of the seasons has been associated with a shift in mood, emotion, and even perspective. Spring blooms and summer warmth can be resembled by life, flowers, and joy while cool autumn and stark winter symbolize slowing down, isolation, and bleakness. Setting can often affect how one perceives the world around them, so an eternal winter can have negative impacts on his awareness. In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the stagnation of Starkfield’s landscape suggests that those who have been in the town for “too many winters” are not uncommon, as the location acts as a prison for its inhabitants (Wharton 5). Ethan’s warped emotional

While Mattie seems new and exciting at first, Ethan romanticizes the fulfillment she adds to his life and fails to see that she is basically the woman his wife once was. In present day, it is apparent that Ethan Frome’s fate has been frozen in time by the wintry power of Starkfield, Massachusetts when it is discovered that Mattie has become directly similar to Zeena with her “high, thin,” whiny voice and disability (Wharton 128). Ethan married Zeena because of Starkfield’s inherent loneliness, and from that same feeling desired a relationship with Mattie. In reality, “Mattie’s ostensible love for him is nothing more than her desire to exploit him refracted through his starved imagination”, suggesting that Ethan’s lack of stimulus from his environment led to a toxic relationship (Scharnhorst). His view of Mattie is so idealized that he does not understand the extent to which she is manipulating him. She puts a great deal of housework on Ethan, because she is too inadequate to do it herself and “Ethan is attracted by her deficiencies, for her weakness makes him feel strong” (Eggenschwiler 239). To maintain her position in the Frome household, she sees the vulnerability that Starkfield has on its inhabitants and uses Ethan’s emotional blindness to make him think that she loves him. Coming into Zeena and Ethan’s situation, Mattie could have seen through Ethan as easily as any other townsperson, Ethan being a man who’s simply “been in Starkfield [for] too many winters” (Wharton 5). Without any valuable skills or assets, Mattie needs Ethan for