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Ethan Frome Character Analysis Essay

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Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, is based through a realistic genre that displays a tragic romance between the main characters, Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver. Forced to subdue to their circumstances, Ethan and Mattie live in a paralyzed situation in which “they are passionate or imaginative spirits, hungry for emotional and intellectual experience”, but, “find themselves locked into a small closed system” and “suffer a living death”, accordingly to the views of Edmund Wilson. Wilson’s perspective is accurately exemplified as Ethan depresses his desires to fulfill his longings in order to adhere to his circumstance, and through Mattie bowing to her duties to replace her youthful and vivacious spirit. Ethan Frome goes under several situations …show more content…

Mattie is broke and homeless after her father’s death, but Zeena offers her a place to live in return for aid in her illness. However, this job and her financial situation holds Mattie back from living her young and curious life abroad, as she can barely maintain pressure of working for Zeena in her additional service incompetence. Zeena constantly brings Mattie down, commenting on her poor housework harshly. To demonstrate, Wharton writes, “ …but of late she (Zeena) had grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girl's inefficiency,” (Wharton 43). This allows Mattie to feel locked in a system suffering, but she has to adhere to her obligation to Zeena given her life circumstances, and no matter what her aspirations in youth are. As well as her job, Mattie’s desire to pursue her emotions ultimately hold her back in mental imprisonment and a life of everlasting agony. Her developed feelings for Ethan become unavoidable as she yearns to start a relationship with him, but is yet again restrained because she cannot fully and freely express her emotions. Displaying this love for each other, Wharton describes Ethan and Mattie when, “They clung to each other's hands like children, and her body shook with desperate sobs,” (Wharton

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