In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Zeena makes the mistake of taking Mattie in instead of hiring a girl from the start. This one issue, sparks the feelings between Mattie and Ethan, causes the smash up and ruins Ethan’s chances of living a life outside Starkfield. Due to Zeena’s choices, Mattie and Ethan are left with the constant reminder of their attempted suicide attempt. Hiring a girl instead of taking Mattie in would stop Ethan falling for Mattie. While living with the Frome’s, Mattie and Ethan start a secret relationship towards the end of her stay. When they first meet, Ethan believes Mattie is a sickly girl who can’t work around the house. As she begins to get better, Ethan feels their attraction grow. Partly because of Zeena’s silence
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
Ethan has dreams of leaving Starkfield and selling his plantation, however he views caring for his wife as a duty and main priority. One day, Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to assist the Frome’s with their daily tasks. Immediately, Mattie’s attractive and youthful energy resuscitates Ethan’s outlook on life. She brings a light to Starkfield and instantaneously steals Ethan’s heart; although, Ethan’s quiet demeanor and lack of expression causes his affection to be surreptitious. As Zeena’s health worsens, she becomes fearful and wishes to seek advice from a doctor in a town called Bettsbridge, giving Ethan and Mattie privacy for one night.
Ethan Frome, a novella written by Edith Wharton, communicates a story of Ethan and his life living with his ill wife, Zeena, when a new lover comes into his home. Ethan and Zeena live in a place called Starkfield, a cold and lonely location situated in the New England area. Mattie comes into Ethan’s life to help her cousin, Zeena, around the house as her sickness has obstructed her ability to do housework. This causes problems for Ethan because he starts to fall in love with Mattie as she stays with the Fromes. The isolation of Starkfield prevents Ethan from living his life the way he wanted to. That causes Ethan to abandon his dreams of college and moving away from Starkfield. Ethan becomes hindered by the isolation of Starkfield because of
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...
The book says, “His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie, but of late she had grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girl 's inefficiency(Wharton, chpt 1).” This means Zeena knew about the love affair. Because Ethan and Zeena did not honestly love each other, the affair did not bother Zeena. Eventually, though, Zeena wants to force Mattie to go back home. Ethan and Mattie are extremely devastated by this. Ethan is not in love with either girl, but cannot leave either one. What happened next was a sleigh riding accident. Ethan purposely drove a sled into a tree hoping to kill Mattie and himself. By doing this he could escape all his responsibilities. He would not be abandoning anyone technically. The immaturity in Ethan 's personality is shown through this event. The accident caused Ethan and Zeena to be obligated to care for Mattie for the rest of their lives. Because the accident was intentional Ethan should be held accountable for it. He was supposed to be a mature adult who made the right decisions. He failed at this. Ethan should have been put in jail for this mishap. Moreover, Mattie did die that day because her liveliness
Ethan Frome is the main character of Edith Wharton’s tragic novel. Ethan lives the bitterness of his youth’s lost opportunities, and dissatisfaction with his joyless life and empty marriage. Throughout the story Ethan is trapped by social limits and obligations to his wife. He lives an unhappy life with many responsibilities and little freedom. Ethan Frome studied science in college for a year and probably would have succeeded as an engineer or physicist had he not been summoned home to run the family farm and mill. Ethan quickly ended his schooling and went to run the family farm and mill because he feels it is his responsibility. He marries Zeena after the death of his mother, in an unsuccessful attempt to escape silence, isolation, and loneliness. Ethan also feels the responsibility to marry Zeena as a way to compensate her for giving up part of her life to nurse his mother. After marring Zeena he forgets his hope of every continuing his education and he is now forced to remain married to someone he does not truly love.
...ss for yourself because in the end, one will regret it. Ethan’s morals prevent him from leaving Starkfield to pursue and achieve his dreams. He cannot baffle the traditions of his town. After Zeena tries to "foist on him the cost of a servant", forcing Ethan to let go of Mattie, he chooses to “leave with Mattie”. However, he cannot go through with the plan because he cannot bear to leave Zeena alone with her sickness. He knows she would not be able to take care of herself and cannot afford her own medicine. It is inappropriate to leave his wife in this bad condition. Therefore Ethan chooses to live an unhappy life instead of deceive his family and friends. Wharton portrays that by following society’s standards they will lose their hope and end up living in misery. Ethan chose to embark the obstacles and in the end it ruined him to a life of unhappiness and failure.
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.
Mrs. Hale tells the narrator that if Mattie had dies, Ethan may have lived, but as things are, his existence is a kind of a living death. In addition, in chapter two, he had asked his dead ancestors, at their graves, to help him keep Mattie with him. We find that his natural ally is death and life is his enemy. Mrs. Hale believes that Mattie? surviving the accident is literally a fate that is worse than death, since the dead hold their peace, whereas Mattie and Zeena are often mad at each ther, adding to Ethan?s suffering and unhappiness.
The contrast between Zeena and Mattie is most extreme! Zeena is fully undesirable and Mattie is a veritable angel:
Although when we are young, we commonly find ourselves gravitating to books with predictable endings that leave the protagonist and us with what we want, as we mature we develop a hunger for different, more thoughtful or realistic solutions. This is not to say, however, that we can be satisfied solely through the reading of any story that concludes with mere tragedy. The reason why the book Ethan Frome is so widely read is because there is a great deal of technique behind the element of mere tragedy. Edith Wharton is able to distinguish her novel through the use of irony. Irony has been the defining element of many great pieces of literature throughout time. The use of irony dates back all the way to ancient Greece when it was used by Sophocles in the play Oedipus Rex. Irony was also a key element in many of Shakespeare's works and appears in many famous short stories. In Ethan Frome, Ethan ends up falling in love with Mattie who at the time seems young and effervescent in comparison to his sickly, deteriorating wife. In attempting to free himself and Mattie from his commitment to Zeena, Ethan ends up causing Mattie to become paralyzed, taking with it her previous, lively characteristics. All the household responsibilities then fall into the hands of Zeena who is ultimately the most vivacious of the three.
Due to Mattie's injuries, and Ethan's inabilities to leave Starkfield, he remains at his home in an uncomfortable relationship with Mattie and Zeena. Even though he still had Mattie at his side, he was not living the life he wanted in the "west" with Mattie. There was no real "difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard." Ethan gave up his life to stay at the farm with the woman he loves, and the woman he does not, resulting in him being subconsciously tied to Starkfield. Ethan's "father's accident" and his mother's falling "ill" results in Ethan's sacrifice of his career "to be an engineer" and makes him stay in Starkfield to marry Zeena. Even with opportunities that come along to change Ethan's continuous cycle of his life, he still ends up sacrificing everything to fulfill his duty and obligation to his wife
“No, he didn’t. For I’d ‘a’ been ashamed to tell him that you grudged me the money to get back my health, when I lost it nursing your own mother” (Wharton 46). This section of the book fixed my perception of Zeena. As I begun reading I thought Zeena was just simply an ill wife, with her hard-working husband. While Ethan battles his feelings for Mattie, I was angry. This is based on how I was raised, I was angry that Ethan liked another while his own wife struggled with her own health. I thought he could do more to help his wife. The quote shocked me, I didn’t think of Zeena like this. I thought of her as a sickly, caring wife. I was wrong and this section gave me a new version of what was happening. Soon instead of being angry at Ethan, I became
The crash left them both severely injured. The Fromes were poor before, but after, with Ethan only able to do a little work, they were poorer than ever. Never a social man, Ethan cut off the few relationships that he had maintained so his old friends would not see his poverty. The townspeople speak of Ethan, Mattie, and Zeena in the past tense, just like they refer to dead people. When Mrs. Ned Hale talks about Ethan and Mattie she said, "Yes, I knew them both.
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