FREE ESSAY ON ANALYSIS OF ETHAN FROME

ANALYSIS OF ETHAN FROME

Period #3
June 1st, 2000
Analysis of Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is a story of ill-fated love, set during the winter in the rural New England
town of Starkfield. Ethan is a farmer who is married to a sickly woman named Zeena. The
two live in trapped, unspoken resentment on Ethan's isolated and failing farm. Ethan has
been caring for his wife for six years now. Due to Zeena's numerous ailments they employ
her cousin, the animated Mattie Silver, to help in the house. With Mattie's youthful
presence and attitude in the house, Ethan's bitterness of his youth's lost opportunities
and the dissatisfaction with his life and empty marriage are reawaken. This resentment
leads to Ethan and Mattie in turn, falling in love. However, they never follow their love
due to Ethan's morals and the respect he has for his marriage to Zeena. Ethan eagerly
awaits the nights when he is able to walk Mattie home from the town dances. He cherishes
the ground she walks on and would do anything for her.
After a visit to the doctor, Zeena is told that she needs more appreciable hired help.
Thus, she decides to send her incompetent cousin away and hire a new one. Ethan and
Mattie are desperate to stay together. However, Ethan's lack of financial means and
Zeena's health are the deciding factors that will never allow him to leave Starkfield to
be with his love. 
When the two are unable to find any plausible solutions to this issue, Ethan and Mattie
decide to commit suicide by sledding into a tree. They figure it is the only way they can
be together. The attempt fails, and the two are left paralyzed. Now Ethan's wife must
care for the two for the rest of their lives. 
There were many themes found in Ethan Frome, but the greatest of them all is loneliness
and isolation. In college Ethan acquired the nickname Old Stiff because he rarely went
out with the boys. Once he returned to the farm to care for his parents, he couldn't go
out with them even if he wanted to. Whatever he's done has kept him apart from others:
tending to the farm and mill, nursing his sick mother and caring for Zeena. Ethan's
isolation is intensified, because he is often tongue-tied. He would like to make contact
with others but can't. For example, when he wants to impress Mattie with beautiful words
of love, he mutters, Come along. 
In their own ways, Zeena and Mattie are solitary figures, too. For years, Zeena rarely
leaves the house. She's consumed by her illness. Mattie, on the other hand, seeks refuge
from loneliness at the Fromes' farm. A year later she chooses to die rather than return
to a world of solitude.
Edith Wharton uses characters such as Mattie, to express the theme of loneliness and
isolation. Mattie Silver is unlike any of the other characters in Ethan Frome. The town
of Starkfield is very colorless and dull. When Mattie enters she is wearing bright
clothing and ribbons tied in her hair. From her first appearance, the reader becomes
aware that Mattie is very different from Ethan's wife. Of all the characters in this
novel, Mattie is the most tragic. She was so energetic and full of life that she wanted
to free Ethan from this terrible society he lived in. She suggested suicide as a means of
escape for the two of them. When the attempt failed, she became paralyzed. She is now
stuck in the cold, colorless, world of Starkfield which unto itself is extremely tragic
and ironic.
The setting of Ethan Frome also expresses the isolation. Around the turn of the century,
in Ethan Frome's time, the town of Starkfield was a cold and lifeless place. Life is
dreary and cheerless in Starkfield. People stay indoors and keep to themselves. Weeks
pass between visits with friends or neighbors. Wharton calls Starkfield a small farming
community, and the town does live up to its name. It's barren and it's people are poor.
Ethan can barely scrape a living off the land. 
The town Starkfield afflicts Ethan and helps to shape his destiny. Like the town, he is
sullen and run-down. Starkfield sits alone in its valley, isolated from the world around
it. Ethan is also isolated. He left the lonely valley to go to college, but since
returning he has gone scarcely more than few miles from his remote farm. Physically, and
therefore, emotionally, he is trapped by his wife, his farm, and his poverty. Ethan is in
some ways, a piece of the scenery, or as the narrator says, a part of the mute melancholy
landscape, an incarnation of frozen woe. 
He lacks the strength to shake himself loose before it's too late. The author is able to
clearly portray the themes of isolation and loneliness through the characters and the
setting. 
In conclusion, I feel that Ethan Frome should be included in a list of works of high
literary merit, because it is a classic. The book is about society in general and this
attracts many readers. I think that the magnificence of Ethan himself attracts many
readers. His character was so carefully thought out and brilliantly painted in the
reader's mind. Although Ethan Frome was not a commercial success when it was first
written, many critics praised the novel. 
Dr Kinnicuttt said that Ethan Frome was a classic that will be read an re-read with
pleasure and instruction. Henry James told Edith Wharton that the novel contained a
beautiful art and tone and truth -- a beautiful artful kept downness. 
Many critics also disliked the book. People said that it was too pessimistic to be
recommended to the general reader. A critic in The Bookman could not forgive Wharton for
her cruelty toward both her characters and her readers. 
The novel shows how one will not follow their heart due to what society may think. It
shows how much society's beliefs in the 1900's were valued. Despite low sales when this
book first became published and unfavorable remarks about Ethan Frome, the novel is still
read and loved by many people, in many countries and languages, today. All of these
factors attribute to wonderful teachers, just like Mrs. Verrastro, assigning it as a
required report and analysis to help our young and budding minds and persons develop into
well educated and productive members of society.