Duties Caused By Characters In Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

Your personal fulfillment versus your duties can cause a rift in your life. Ethan Frome was in competition with the duties for his wife and his personal happiness and choosing to be with Mattie. He had to always choose on the important things in his life. This very thing caused confusion in his life. The author uses point of view , imagery, and the setting to show how Ethan’s feelings were portrayed about both women in the book and his life.
Point of view is mostly used throughout the book. You get to see through Ethan’s perspective. This showed how the duties for his wife made his life boring and dull until Mattie came along. He describe Mattie as “The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had thought her. 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) . The conversation and long walks just made him happy. The duties for Zeena made him miserable but he made a vow to her. It also showed how he gave into his duties by choosing to quit school and come home to help his ill parent.

The description of how Mattie made him feel when he touched her. Ethan want happiness so bad that he was willing to end his own life to be with Mattie, but when Him and Mattie decided to end their life, A picture of Zeena flashed through his mind. “But suddenly his wife's face, with twisted monstrous lineaments, thrust itself between him and his goal, and he made an instinctive movement to brush it aside. The sled swerved in response, but he righted it again, kept it straight, and drove down on the black projecting mass. There was a last instant when the air shot past him like millions of fiery wires; and then the elm…”, He thought about the commitment he made with Zeena. Even though he thought about his wife, he still chose his personal