Ethan Frome: A Personal Tragedy

Another characteristic Ethan shows is that he is a reversed person. Like the rest of his family, Ethan is naturally quiet. He seldom

In addition to Ethan’s conflicts with Zeena, he now had more weight over his shoulders with Mattie. Leaving with Mattie gave a horrible twist to his story. “Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me down again!’ ‘Down where?’ ‘The coast. Right off. ‘ she panted, ‘so’t we’ll never come up any more” (p.90). His decision to leave with Mattie was probably one of the worst choices he could have made. Not only did he mess up his life, and his relationship with Zeena. He also ruined Mattie’s life by going down that hill and running into the elm causing her to be

Ethan Frome, who has to face multiple conflicts throughout the book with his nonstop dream to be an engineer which is crushed due to the illness of, Zeena, his cousin, but who also happens to be his wife. Also a love begins to grow mid way through the book between a girl named Mattie and Ethan, even though he is still married to Zeena which ultimately leads to the distance between their love. In the book Ethan Frome, the feeling of isolation in Ethan and Zeena becomes more prominent, while anger grows between Ethan and Mattie from having denying their love, which contributes to the many mistakes and downfalls Ethan has to face throughout the book.

Ethan Frome is a classic novel, written in 1911 by author Edith Wharton. She based the accident that occurred in her novel on the historical “Fatal Coasting Accident.” In Ethan Frome, the simplicity of the accident is similar to that of the “Fatal Coasting Accident”, but the details overall are very different. Edith knew one of the victims personally, which made her change some aspects out of respect, but she also changed them to make the story her own. Ethan Frome is different from “Fatal Coasting Accident” because Edith changed the storyline and technicalities, the reasons behind the accident, and the aftermath of the accident, which dramatized her novel and made it fictional.

Ethan Frome is a man, so his issues are not the same as Edna’s, but they were caused by the very same social structure, a structure in which divorce was unimaginable; because a woman would not be able to support herself on her own, they needed men in their lives for financial support. In Society during that time period, your choices would affect the whole course of your life, Edna, Ethan and Mattie are very extreme examples of what could happen to people who rebel against societal

He could have left caring for his mother/Zeena to someone else, and lived his own life. He would never be lonesome if he lived in a big city, and he could have possibly been wealthier. The story introduces this idea by having one of the introductory characters say, “Most of the smart ones get away.” (Prologue) This ties in with the idea of Ethan’s conformity being his downfall. If Ethan didn’t “stay and care for the folks” (Prologue), he could have made the future much better for himself. Ethan definitely would have been happier in Florida being an engineer than in this village being a farmer. "When a man's been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit.” (Prologue) Ethan’s forgotten dream was probably his only way out of this

In the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton the narrator tells the readers how he met the main character,Frome, in Massachusetts.Edith Wharton takes the reader twenty-four years into the past and there we see that Frome is a young man,who chased after an education in science, but when his father dies he is forced to return back to the farm.After that his mother becomes ill and his cousin Zeena comes to take care of her,but when his mother dies, Frome marries Zeena out of loneliness. As time passes by Zeena becomes more sick, due to this their marriage is without love and Frome feels very lonely and has no one to talk to.Then Mattie silver,Zeena’s cousin,comes to take care of her,and Frome falls in love with her and can not imagine life without

The novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is about a tragic hero, Ethan who is not in love with his wife, but another person named Mattie. An important symbol in this novel is a pickle dish. This dish symbolizes Ethan’s relationship with his wife. The pickle dish first appears in chapter 4 of the novel. As Ethan and Mattie are eating, the cat interferes by causing the dish to fall. The plate breaks into multiple pieces. The dish mainly represents the broken relationship of Ethan and his wife, Zeena, after Mattie arrives. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton uses a pickle dish to symbolize Ethan and Zeena’s relationship in the past, and future.

He abruptly chose not to go back to school after his father died, which was one of his biggest mistakes. He stayed in Starkfield even though he had the opportunity to go back to school and study his main interest, science. Because of this, he spent most of his days cooped up in his house. “But one phrase stuck in my memory…Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.”(Wharton 3). Because of his loneliness, he asked Zeena to marry him without thinking it through. He had no feelings for her and desperately hoped it would make him feel better. While being married to Zeena, his unhappiness peaked and caused him to fall in love with another girl who was the Fromes’ maid, Mattie Silver. Romance was in the air and most definitely not between Zeena and Ethan. Ethan flirted with Mattie and would try his hardest to impress her, for example, he began shaving his face everyday which he never used to do for Zeena. These inappropriate actions caused chaos within the household. Ethan began to lust over Mattie, wanting to spend as much

The novel takes place in Starkfield, a bleak New England town during the winter months. In fact, the narrator believes that Ethan’s character developed due to the frigid

In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton utilizes a broken pickle dish, to represent the views of espousement, and the representation of their varied human actions. Ethan and Zeena Frome’s marriage represents a union based on obligation rather that love. Throughout the story, Ethan is a weak and submissive husband under the control of a domineering wife. Unfortunately with this type of relationship, a goal of happiness cannot be achieved or

Ethan chooses his duty to Zeena over his dream with mattie he would receive when proposed with the option of moving to the West, he decides against it because of what he owes to Zeena. He doesn 't knows if she would not be able to support herself and that clouded future is why he doesn 't agreed to leave. Again, Ethan chooses between duty to Zeena and seeking his personal dream when he and Mattie were going to take their lives so they would not have to live without each other. Throughout his time with Zeena, he was forced to choose between duty to his family and his dreams. He could have left and continued his dream of being an engineer but instead he married her do to a sense of payment for what she had done for his mother. He cast away his dream because he did not know whether he would have an opportunity like this

In a final scene from Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton draws a timeline leading up to the main character, Ethan Frome, and his love interest, Mattie Silver deciding to take their lives rather than letting the rules implied by the society of Starkfield force them to part, their decision in turn contributing to the theme that confinement from pressure from society can drive citizens to their torment. Contributing to the novel as a whole, this scene also highlights Ethan’s built up misery by displaying his willingness to die in order to escape his unwanted marriage to his ailing wife, Zeena. To begin with, as a resident in Starkfield, a town whose residents, obviously unadjusted divorce, consider seven year of marriage as “not so long”, Ethan feels

Doomed to remain in an ever-stagnant state of being like that of the bones of his past ancestors deep in the frozen ground of cemetery that houses them. As his own antagonist, he forces himself to be frozen in his death while still breathing by never taking a risk to change his fate of ending up being buried beside his wife in Starkfield while he longed for another. Whether progressive or detrimental, Ethan time and time again refuses to take his life into his own hands and make decisions to change it. In the end, Ethan truly is a dead man walking, accepting his life as it was and simply waiting it out until it’s

For Ethan Frome this is a terrible situation since he doesn’t love Zenobia and her cousin Mattie doesn’t love Ethan back. He is basically staying in a house all by himself during the cold nights of the New England weather. In this quote said by Ethan Frome "when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome's young manhood." he understands his life has no meaning during the harsh winter season. Until February comes around he nothing to live for. His Mother and Farther are died, his marriage with Zenobia is died and the new love of his life lMattie hasn’t shown any interest in