An Analysis Of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

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Edith Wharton’s novella Ethan Frome chronicles one winter in the life of a family living in the rural town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The main character, Ethan Frome, gives up his own dreams and aspirations in order to keep the household financially stable and provide for his wife Zeena and housekeeper Mattie. In the process, he reveals not his selflessness but his cowardice, and serves as an example of the dangers of routine and inactivity. With a frequently sick wife and an understaffed farm to run, Ethan is constantly working throughout the novel. From splitting wood, to shoveling snow, to running errands, he seems to singlehandedly manage all the household affairs. He keeps the family farm running, taking odd jobs in the winter to

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    His isolation manifests itself throughout the book with either characters speaking about him, or through depictions of the author, Edith Wharton. One example where this unveils itself is when Harmon, who develops a lot of the town gossip, speculates on the cause of Ethan Frome 's ruined and prematurely aged appearance. He speaks about Ethan saying, “Guess he 's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away” (Wharton 6). His remark expresses the theme of the landscape 's shaping of character and fate. This describes the theme of isolation as it says that Ethan has been in Starkfield too long, and is essentially isolated. Here, it becomes apparent that through his stay in Starkfield, an ironically stark place, he transforms into an isolated human being. Another way in which Ethan’s isolation becomes apparent occurs in the prologue, where Wharton describes Ethan in comparison to the setting of the book. Wharton exclaims he represents “a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface… in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access” (Wharton 14). The book takes place in the fictional place of Starkfield,

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