Ethan Frome

3 Pages 628 Words

In the novel Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton draws many parallels between the plot of the novel and its setting. The setting of a cold and gloomy winter makes for an inevitably cold and gloomy plot. Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie all contribute to the gloominess of this plot by either making it worse, or having the chance to improve their circumstances and not taking it.

Ethan Frome, a New England farmer, is a very complex, sensitive, and emotional man, yet no one besides the reader is let in on this little secret. He feels a great deal of love towards Mattie, and a great deal of hate towards Zeena, but these feelings are unknown to the women because he cannot express them. Like most men, Ethan is afraid to express his feelings to anyone, and because of this problem, he and Mattie end up crippled and in a constant state of misery, while the one from whom they are trying to escape ends up as their caretaker. Ethan's feelings are like the sun that does not shine during this gloomy winter. And had this sun shone down on the trio, they could have ended up in a much better state than they did. Perhaps Mattie and Ethan wouldn't have felt that a double suicide was their only way out, and maybe (but probably not) Zeena would have understood that Ethan never loved her, and that it was a one-sided marriage from the beginning.

Zeena is a mean, bitter, hypochondriac who has nothing better to do with her time than to make her husband's life a living hell. Actually, she has better things to do with her time, but she's a hypochondriac, so she always has an excuse for why she can't. She shows no sensitivity towards anyone other than herself. Even when she realizes that Ethan loves Mattie, instead of her, she shows no sensitivity towards the couple, and instead ruins the fate of them and herself by trying to send Mattie away. Zeena is much like the bitter winter that shows no sympathy to the rest of the world. She has a bad attitude about life, and she need...