Isolation In Ethan Frome

How a man goes about dealing with his past experiences portrays not only his character, but also his true inner self. This is especially true in Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome. The main character, Ethan Frome, struggles with the consequences of his decision to marry his wife Zenobia following the loss of his parents. Ethan made this disastrous decision because of a feeling of obligation from societal pressure and ancestral conservatism. Wharton controls Frome like a puppet throughout the story displaying his perpetual contentions with his mistake-ridden marriage and uses it to power the novel as a whole. Struggling to support himself financially on the farm, Ethan Frome needs all the help he can get to look after his ailing parents. Enter

Engraved on the graves on the knoll were the words, “Sacred to the memory of Ethan Frome and Endurance his wife who dwelled together in peace for fifty years” (33). Essentially, Ethan is trapped, for he cannot escape his marriage for moral reasons and he remains fixed in Starkfield to nurse Zeena’s inconsistent illness. Ethan, actually, does most caring for the people of Starkfield as Harmon Gow notes, “I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring” (2). Ethan traps himself with his marriage to Zeena, and sadly he does not realize it soon

Ethan as a whole would change; his character and his way of acting would positively transform. Furthermore, everything Wharton tries to convey through Ethan would be flipped upside down, for this would no longer be a story of a man’s contentions with his past, but a love story between Ethan Frome and Mattie silver. Ethan’s marriage with Zeena is one of fear of isolation and forcing love, something that should come naturally, without this theme and how it weighs down Ethan throughout the story, there would be not as much to