Ethanfrome In Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Ethan, a reserved young man was torn between two women. He was married to Zenobia Frome, but his true love was his wife’s cousin, Mattie Silver. Zeena and Mattie were different in all aspects. Mattie was a caring, loving, beautiful young girl, while Zeena was a sickly, shrewish woman aged well beyond her years. Ethan was continuously drawn to Mattie throughout the novel, as she was much more attractive and amicable than Zeena. In the novel light was an important motif. When light was shed on Zeena it “…drew out of the darkness her puckered throat… and deepened fantastically the hollows and prominences of her high-boned face under its ring of crimping pins”. The author used light in order to emphasize Zeena’s austere and worn face illustrating her cold personality. When light was shed on Mattie it “…drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat and… it threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, edged her eyes with velvet shade, and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows”. Mattie looked radiant and full of beauty beneath the light under which Zeena had appeared hideous. It is clear that Mattie would appear more attractive to Ethan. The author also referred to the hair of Zeena and Mattie quite often. Zeena had only “thin strands of hair”, and she wore a “hard perpendicular bonnet” above her head. The sight imprinted in the reader’s mind is not a pleasant one. Zeena appears to be stern and rigid. On the contrary when Mattie’s hair was described, it is more appealing. Ethan remembers her “smoothed hair and a ribbon at her neck”. A ribbon is more appealing to the reader than a “hard, perpendicular bonnet.” Mattie’s hair was also described as looking like a “drift of mist on the moon”. Unlike Zeena’s uninviting hairstyle, Mattie’s hair had a soft and silky quality to it. Mattie seemed to walk about the house with a halo of light surrounding her, almost like an angel. The conflicting hairstyles of the two women represented an overall difference in personalities. Mattie was a feminine young girl, while Zeena was an old hag who made no attempt to better her appearance. In addition to appearance, the two women have extremely different relationships with Ethan. In order to portray each woman’s relationship with Ethan, the author uses the motif of silence.
The writing in the novel, Ethan Frome is fantastic. The love of Ethan Frome is crystal clear. Ethan and Mattie are both believably in love and Ethan's desperation grips the reader. Zeena, I think, is the most well described of them all. She is reality itself--beyond love, beyond fate, and it is she who outlasts them all. Although I think I fell in love with both Mattie and Ethan in this story and was feeling that intense love and pain of impending separation in their last moments together, the realist in me loved the ending! Zeena, the old witch, the nagging and cunning negative hag, is the one who is the rock in the moving stream. It's so 20th century. There is something black about the ending that you have to like.
Throughout the book, Ethan himself appears to be lifeless which reflected on how he lived his life due to not pursuing his dreams and remaining in the same old town his ancestors inhabited. Ethan is not the only one dreaming within the book. Mattie also pictures herself with Ethan in the future and it does come true. However, she is not Ethan’s wife like she planned to be. She is stuck with both Ethan and her cousin as her cousin cares for her and the man of her dreams. The reality they are facing becomes more of a hell than a happy ending as they imagined it would
Throughout the novel Mattie and Ethan are genuinely in love with one another. This can be proven when Mattie turned down Denis Eady the “rich Irish grocer” for Ethan. Another example was when Mattie “had an eye and an ear to hear” that not only listened but also understood Ethan. However it was the “lover” archetype that Wharton incorporated into Ethan that blurred the image of Mattie in Ethan’s eyes. Mattie is a manipulator that dragged Ethan into his predicament and...
Several Years after their marriage, cousin Mattie Silver is asked to relieve Zeena, who is constantly ill, of her house hold duties. Ethan finds himself falling in love with Mattie, drawn to her youthful energy, as, “ The pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave life and elasticity to Mattie.” Ethan is attracted to Mattie because she is the opposite of Zeena, while Mattie is young, happy, healthy, and beautiful like the summer, Zeena is seven years older than Ethan, bitter, ugly and sickly cold like the winter. Zeena’s strong dominating personality undermines Ethan, while Mattie’s feminine, lively youth makes Ethan fell like a “real man.” Ethan and Mattie finally express their feeling for each other while Zeena is visiting the doctor, and are forced to face the painful reality that their dreams of being together can not come true.
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.
Perhaps Edith Wharton's reason for writing Ethan Frome, was that it so vividly reflected her own dreary life. Abandoned of any love as a child from her mother and trapped in a marriage similar to that of Zeena and Ethan, Wharton found herself relying on illicit love. This illicit love was also her favorite topic of writing, which helped her to escape her own tragedies. She spent many nights in the arms of other men searching desperately for the love she believed existed, but had never felt, which is evident in all of her writings.
This quote is explaining the feeling of Ethan when Mattie Silver comes into his home. Ethan was gloomy and pretty much sick of his wife and when Mattie comes to his house she brings hope and a whole new outlook on life to Ethan. Ethan feels that she is warm person and a polar opposite compared to Zeena. Her coming transforms Ethan?s cold and depressing existence.
Influenced by the opinions held about the peers around, an individual can make a choice that can lead either him or her on a productive or destructive path. Ethan Frome, a poor farmer living in Starkfield, Massachusetts, is not an exception to this reality. In the novel, Ethan Frome written by Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome’s opinions about his sickly wife Zenobia “Zeena” Frome, his new love Mattie “Matt” Silver, and his close acquaintance Andrew Hale leads Ethan to a destructive direction. These mixed and contradicting opinions lead Ethan Frome where he has obtained what he desired but also where he still has what he desperately wanted to leave.
Ethan marries Zeena so he won't be alone after his mother dies. She seemed like a very cheerful, vivacious person while his mother was sick. After their marriage all this changed. She became a very nagging, sick wife. Because of Zeena's "complications" they had to hire someone to help around the house. Mattie, Zeena's cousin, needed a place to live and seemed fit for the job. She moved in and Ethan took and immediate liking to her. He found someone that cared for him, was always happy, and could share his youth. All of which, Zeena was incapable of doing. Ethan longed to be with Mattie, but he was loyal to Zeena. Being married to Zeena was Ethan's first failure.
In Ethan Frome, Wharton uses symbols and archetypes to create Ethan’s anguish to his moral obligation to his wife Zeena which keeps him from his true love, Mattie. His moral prison is established with the headstone of another Ethan Frome and his wife that bores that they “dwelled together in peace for fifty years,” which interests Ethan (Frome 66). Later on, his own neighbors “don’t see there’s much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard” (Frome 140). The symbol of “the Fromes down in the graveyard” establishes Ethan’s similarities to the dead illustrating his moral obligation to Zeena for eternity (Frome 140). When Ethan feels Zeena’s presence, coincidently Zeena’s grey cat “[elongates] its body in the direction of the milk-jug, which stood between Ethan and Mattie” (Frome 69).The cat then tries an unobserved retreat and “[backs] into the red pickle-dish, which [falls] on the floor with a crash” (Frome 69). The color archetypes of ‘red’ establish Ethan and Mattie’s love while the ‘grey’ cat establishes Zeena who breaks their love, the dish. Ethan is always besieged by Zeena even when lacking her presence. He wants to stay with Mattie yet his obligation to his wife thwarts him from her. When Ethan and Mattie finally reach the point by his mill “they descended [and] the darkness descended with them, dropping down like a black veil” (Frome 125). The “darkness” symbolizes Ethan’s obligation and his moral duty to his wife (Frome 125).He cannot leave her though he scorns her because it is his morally obliged to reside by her side.
Zeena is the deep winter chill that is cold and plotting, while Mattie is the bright life of winter that is colorful and passionate. The two women fulfilled different hopes of Ethan; he had a “restlessness” and a “desire for change and freedom” (21). Zeena was Ethan’s “freedom” once upon a time; she enabled him to return to his routine and he felt obligated to her for that, creating the sense of responsibility he feels toward her. Now, Mattie is Ethan’s “change.” She enables him to see color in the previously monochrome landscape through love tinted lenses, and she found a way “to utter his secret soul” (14). Though, both of these options leave something to be desired for Ethan. If he were to choose responsibility he would lose Mattie, his love that “when she saw him, always looked like a window that has caught the sunset” (14). If he were to choose love he would abandon Zeena, whom he feels responsible for. He couldn’t handle the thought of leaving Zeena with the “burden” (56) that would be placed on her if he were to leave, even if it would free him from all of the “possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance”
Ethan was very sad man. Ethan never got to finish his studies and thought about it from time to time. Even at the beginning of the book when the narrator dropped his copy of Popular Science, it was obvious Ethan had a sad, nostalgic tone about him as he talked about the fact that he used to study in that field. Ethan was also sad that he had to come home every night to a woman who didn’t love him. Zeena was a self-absorbed woman whose only happiness came from other’s grief. The moment she left town every minute of Ethan’s life became better. The thought of Zeena even made him jump as shown in this quotation: “Ethan, a moment earlier, had felt himself on the brink of eloquence; but the mention of Zeena had paralyzed him” (84). Ethan was also sad because he couldn’t run away with Mattie and live in another place with her. This is extremely evident in this quotation: “ A moment...
With Mattie's youthful presence in the house, Ethan is awoken of the bitterness of his youth's lost opportunities, and a dissatisfaction with his life and empty marriage. Ethan and Mattie, in turn, fall in love. However, they never follow their love due to Ethan's morals and the respect he has for his marriage to Zeena. Ethan eagerly awaits the night when he is able to walk Mattie home from the town dance. He cherishes the ground she walks on.
He is physically isolated from the world and is also cut off from the possibility of any relationship. Due to his new situation, he looks for an outlet in order to relieve himself from this isolation. Luckily enough for him, Mattie comes around in order to help Zeena out due to her illness. Wharton writes, “...the coming to his house of a bit hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire under a cold heart” (Wharton 33). As Smith recognizes in this comparison, he says that “His (Ethan) life of isolation changes, however, when Mattie Silver comes to stay with him and his wife” (Smith 96). Smith correctly analyzes Ethan’s situation, labeling Mattie as this outlet of hope that he can turn to in order to cope with his isolation. Wharton herself shows that Ethan truly did view Mattie as his outlet for hope, mainly due to his love for her, which Mattie shares equally for him. This love sprouts from many things including attractiveness, conversation, understanding, and listening, many of which he lacks for his whole life and where most of his isolation roots itself. Wharton writes, “She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will” (Wharton 28). This is a fancy way of saying that they Mattie not only listened to Ethan, but also
She becomes suspicious, noticing every little detail that Ethan does. Panicking, she figures out a way to save both of their relationship, by faking her illness to the next level and firing Mattie in order to get another maid. When Zeena developed her ‘sickliness,’ she “fell silent” (Wharton 39), because Ethan “never listened” (Wharton 39). Up to the point until Mattie came to live with them, she started to say more than she has ever said. She started to break her silence slowly because of her jealousy. “She grumble[s] increasingly over the house-work” (Wharton 18) and remarks that he’s “always late, [because he] shave[s] every morning” (Wharton 19). Zeena also “found oblique ways of attracting attention to [Mattie’s] inefficiency” (Wharton 18). Zeena, at this point of time in the novel, notices the strong connection that Ethan and Mattie have developed for each other. After Zeena speculates those things and tells Ethan, her “thrusts frightened him” (Wharton 19). He had “assumed that [Zeena] would not notice any change[s] in his appearance” (Wharton 20). Ethan is blind to Zeena’s perception. He seems to think the things that he has done with Mattie does not betray or deceive Zeena. He is ignorant of what is going around him. Despite Zeena’s ‘thrusts’ he doesn’t think anything of it. He continues his secretive relationship with Mattie, while Zeena notices his changes