Length: 1986 words (5.7 double-spaced pages)
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The Underlying Themes of The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome


Two of Edith Wharton’s greatest novels, The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome can be seen to have similarities in the situations the characters go through and themes that are used.  Each of these novels has it’s own themes and traits that makes it great, but after examining each novel it is evident thatthere are underlying themes that link the two stories together.  Perhaps the most obvious  is the weakness that both Ethan Frome and Newland Archer seem to have in there lives.  The feeling of being trapped, and wanting that sense of freedom is also an important part of both novels.  Of course there are themes and symbolisms within each that contribute to the great differences between the two.  In The Age of Innocence, mortality and immortality is one of the greatest aspects or themes; and in Ethan Frome the weakness of Ethan’s character can be seen as one of the main focus’.

      To understand the background on either of these novels, it is best to understand a little of Wharton’s biographical background (this helps to see why similar situations are portrayed in both novels).   Wharton lived in New York city and was raised to be a "daughter of society", always putting forth her best manners and showing  respect to the rituals of society.  This attributed greatly to The Age of Innocence which has been described as "a masterful portrait of desire and betrayal set in New York City of her youth."

  Her marriage  to Teddy Wharton is said to be where the basis of thought came from for the novel Ethan Frome.   She discovered that her husband had been cheating on her and supporting a mistress living in Boston, and she soon met and fell in love with someone else too.  In Ethan Frome  the book is viewed by many people as a novel about an affair and the love that Ethan finds in another woman, not his wife.

    Ethan Frome takes place in the small New England village of Starkfield Massachusetts and the scenery and natural surroundings are great aspects of the book.   It is just a boring cold farm town, and often enough the harsh winters cause the people there to become very ill.  The eerie cold helped to create the solemn and tragic mood of this novel, and was a part of the symbolism.  The best example of symbolism through the natural aspects of the town can be seen through the narrator saying: "...when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down o their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter." (Wharton, 1911, pg 7)  This showed the just how harsh the winters were and the extreme effect that it had on the towns people.  The cold and frigid air was a symbol of the feelings that were floating in the air within Ethan’s household. 

    Another truly symbolic point through nature is the Elm tree.  The Elm tree symbolizes the end and the escape of two lives.  Even though Mattie and Ethan were not killed by the sled crash, that was their purpose.  The Elm tree symbolizes strength and courage, something that Ethan‘s character obviously had little of.  After the crash, the Elm tree was still standing, while the two on the sled were terribly injured.  If Ethan was a stronger person her would not have crashed into the tree with Mattie.   He would have had the strength to say "no" in the first place.  Zeena, who was once a hypochondriac, has now recovered and is the one who is showing that strength and courage by taking care of Mattie and Ethan.  "It was a miracle, considering how sick she was-but she seemed to be raised right up when the call came to her." (131)

    The Age of Innocence takes place in a setting just the opposite from that in Ethan Frome.  It occurs in a more cultural, ritualistic time in New York.  Contrasting is an important literary tool used throughout the novel that is first noticeable in the opening chapter.  This book is obviously about the conventions of  "Old New York" New York City in the 1870’s, and Wharton contrast this place between the old and new ages.  She begins doing this is the very first paragraph.  Here she describes the new opera theater that is going to be erected in the "remote" forties. (Wharton, 1920, pg 1)  She knows that the book will be read and interpreted by those with views based in the 1920’s, so she tries to compare many aspects and areas of social classes that were prominent in the 1870’s.  Contrasting is also seen in chapter two.  The old brownstone architecture is contrasted against the new cream-colored stones of the new inductees of the society.  Ellen Olenska’s dark hair and red clothing are often contrasted against May’s blonde and white hair.

    Perhaps the biggest theme or constant motif of The Age of Innocence is mortality and immortality.  When Wharton first describes the characters of New York Society, they are always conceived of as immortal in some way.  By saying this meaning that she portrays them as being like the mythological Greek antiquity, or "god-like."   She is often making it seem that the characters are not aging or are in some way defying death.  When talking about Mrs. Beaufort, it seems that she is some type of immortal through the statement  that she "grows younger and blonder and more beautiful each year" (28)  Newland seems to be like a Greek god, or hero in Wharton’s eyes.    Also interesting is the description of the "immortal" nature of the van der Luyden‘s.  Mrs. van der Luyden is "looking exactly like her portrait." (64) Just like Mrs. Beaufort this is to say that Mrs. van der Luyden never ages.  The "immortals" so to speak are the van der Luyden’s, the Mingotts, the Archers, the Wellands, and the Leffertses.  These families are like the gods of the New York pantheon.  The mortals would be people like Ellen Olenska, Ned Winsett and the regular common folks.  These people age, have flaws, are alive, and are relatively left out of the scheme of the great New York Society.

    Ethan is a man who is stuck in a situation in which a sense of obligation put him there.  His mother is dead, and he is married to Zeena, who is continuously sick.  He felt obligated to marry her after she had taken such good care of his mother; yet now the only happiness he seems to have is through Mattie, Zeena’s cousin who has come to stay with them. The marriage between Zeena and Ethan is his first weakness, because to him it is a marriage of obligation and duty for what she had done to help his mother before her death.  The thought of having to live alone in that house after his mothers death was too much to bear, and he jumped on the opportunity  to have someone there with him.  Mattie moving in became a weakness to him as well.  She was a "ray of light" and a relief from hearing Zeena’s constant complaints of illness.  He longed to be with Zeena yet knew he had a loyalty to his wife.  He did not have the courage to stand up to society and resolve the error that he committed by marrying his first wife. 

    Another example of this weakness of character was his inability to stand up to his wife.  His wife claimed that a new doctor said that she was extremely sick, and needed more help around the house.  She told Ethan, without any consultation on how he felt, that Mattie had to go so he would be able to help her more.  Ethan could not manage to find any words within him to contradict this decision, and "Now she (Zeena) had mastered him (Ethan) and he obeyed her" (Wharton, 1911, 132).  Ethan’s weakness kept him from standing up to his wife and how he was losing the one thing that made him happy.  The accident was another weakness of his.  He had planned to commit suicide with Mattie, but when it failed they were both left at the mercy of Zeena, as she had to care for them from now on.

    Newland Archer was also stuck in a position of loving two different women.  He loved Ellen, yet, she is married, and he is engaged to May.  Ellen also has this bad reputation and is in a sense one of the "mortals" or on the common folk side.  He doubts very much his marriage with May.  He looks around him and sees the deceit of the other marriages and is worried that his will be the same way. He fears that the two of them will always live in secret from one another.  Time goes on and Ellen and Newland still have this connection for one another, yet are trapped into situations which they do not want to be in. This situation is similar to that of Ethan’s in Ethan Frome only because they both love someone in which they find it impossible to have.  It would be wrong in the eyes of Ethan’s society for him to divorce and marry Mattie, the cousin of Zeena; and at the same time, Ellen has a bad reputation in society which makes it unacceptable for Newland to be with Ellen. 
    
    Even after the death of  Newland’s wife, May, he is still stuck with the decision of being with Ellen.  She has been drawn to divorce through a sense of loneliness and longing for freedom. However, Newland doesn’t want to be seen as having been a reason for this.  Now the situation is free for this too happen but he has to fight with his own self to decide, he is a state of confusion. He too had a "past" (with the things that happened between him and the Rushworth woman) so perhaps this is something that had drawn him to overlook the things that society looked down on Ellen for.  Throughout the novel society seemed to be the reason for Ellen and Newland not being together, but in the end, it seems as if it were his own weaknesses that were to blame.  He wanted it to seem that it was society’s fault, when really, it was him and his inability to make decisions on his own.

    Freedom seem to be a theme for both of these novels.  Ethan wanted to be free from his marriage with Zeena, and before that from the duties of an ailing mother.  In The Age of Innocence Newland wishes for freedom from himself and the problems he faces.  He believes in more freedom for women, yet, it can be thought that this was for Ellen and May to be free from the thoughts and trial they have gone through with him.  There is a sense of wanted freedom from the norms and expectations of society in both novels.  Newland had all of these expectations that he had to abide by, and Ethan had the expectations from the village people to take care of his wife.

    These are both excellent novels.  Wharton took the things that she faced and turned them into entertaining and extreme thought involving books.  The characters in The Age of Innocence are a variety of flat and static, simple and complex people who all represent New York’s society in one way or another.  In Ethan Frome the character and the situations are complex, flat and round.  Everyone is trapped in one way or another, and the only way to find their way out is to look past the norms of society and figure out who they are as an individual, freeing themselves from personal conflicts.