A Minor Character Serves as Foil to Major Character in Ehtan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan’s first impulsive decision was to marry Zeena as soon as his mother died. Since Ethan did this he wasn’t able to follow his ambitions.

In Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome, setting is an important element. The setting greatly influences the characters, transportation, and activities.

Ethan had “taken a year’s course at a technical college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory,” however later ended his schooling because of “his father’s death, and the misfortunes following it” (Wharton 24).His action in giving up his proud studies is an example of what makes Ethan a tragic hero as he feels obligated to pursue his family’s farm instead of following his dreams through college. Not only is he troubled by leaving college for the farm, but Ethan is also unhappy with his relationship with his wife, Zeena. Zeena they were both happy until within a year of their marriage Zeena contracted an alleged illness and she becomes bitter. “He felt a chill of such forebodings,” within Ethan’s diminishing marriage with Zeena as she has become a burden (Wharton 63). Since Ethan is not capable in revealing his feelings about Zeena, it leads to the downfall of Ethan’s miserable relationship with her. than Frome begins to live a life of tragedy that evolves into suffering by the action of unthoughtful

When his mother, too, had fallen ill, Ethan had had no time for “convivial loiterings in the village” (Wharton 61). Once a social and admired man, Ethan now lives in a life of solitude and silence. After his mother fell ill, “the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields” (Wharton 61). His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her illnesses, the sound of her voice was seldom heard. When asked why, her answer would be “because [she was] listening” or “they’re talking so [loud] out there that I can’t hear you” (Wharton 61). Towards the end of her illnesses, Zenobia Pierce came to help Ethan. It was only then that Zeena’s volubility was “music in his ears”, relieving him of the “mortal silence of his long imprisonment” (Wharton 61). After his mother’s death, Ethan married Zeena, hoping to rid him of the loneliness of the farm. However, Zeena, too, eventually fell silent, and Ethan must take of her like he once did for his mother. In addition, irony also takes place during Ethan and Mattie’s first evening together. Zeena, being a hypochondriac claims that her “shooting pains” have gotten more severe and therefore must leave to Bettsbridge to see a new doctor, leaving Ethan and Mattie alone. On what should have been a romantic idyll, the evening is in fact stressful and

Motifs are interesting literary devices, treasured by many authors, to make up or help support the plotline of each story written. In the novella Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, she uses the motif of parallelism of the setting of Starkfield, Massachusetts, and other characters such as Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver, to help describe the way that Starkfield and other factors entangle each character mentally, emotionally, and physically. The importance of this is evident, as it shows during key periods in the story.

When Ethan was young, he studied physics at Worchester. Ethan had hoped to become an engineer, but “his father’s death, and the misfortunes following it, had put premature end to Ethan’s studies” (21). This shows that the death of Ethan’s father forced Ethan to stop his education, which would limit his career opportunities. Zeena also got in the way of Ethan achieving his dream. After the two were married, it was agreed that they would move to a larger town.

The relationship between Ethan and Zeena exemplifies separation. Zeena, a sickly woman, was often bed-bound and remained at home, such as when Ethen called her down for supper, but she remained home saying she “didn’t feel that she could touch a morsel” (46). Zeena even feels that she lost her health tending to Ethan's ailing mother, and she blames Ethan for it, as in “You grudged me the money to get back my health, when I lost it nursing your own mother!” (48). Zeena and Ethan bickered for some time, but it was Zeena who got her way.

Ethan's wife, Zeena, displays another area of the poverty of Ethan's life. Her particular poverty is the lack of feeling. She is a cold, decrepit individual, who is convinced that she is sick, and refuses to be told otherwise. She is very uncaring and unpleasant. She constantly gripes at Ethan, and she can't stand her cousin, Mattie. on page 38, Zeena is trying to get rid of Mattie, by hinting that she should get married quickly. She wants to hire another girl.

Ethan being very needy marries Zeena, and once she turns cold, Ethan suffers. Ethan had been very lonely, living with his sickly mother.

Zeena poses as an asset to Ethan initially helping him tend to his sick mother. It is the passing of his mother and Zeena’s organization of his life that leads him to view her as spouse material. What starts out as Zeena’s light in the darkness of his isolation is quickly turned into a time of despair. Zeena is oppressive and begins to evolve as an individual who takes and never gives. When she is unsuccessful at getting Ethan to do what she wants, she begins to take on a series of unexplained illnesses that require a great deal of money and medical attention to tend

Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, is a frame story telling two separate stories of Ethan Frome. The epilogue and prologue are the frame of the novel, occurring at a different point in time compared to the main portion of the story. Taking place twenty-four years later, they reflect how Ethan had changed from the time since the main story occurred. The narrator’s purpose was to figure out why Ethan Frome was the way he was, shown in the prologue and epilogue, and how he became that way.

Ethan Frome and his wife, Zenobia (Zeena), never really know what true love feels like because they are both very lonely people. They meet when Zeena is caring for Ethan’s mother; due to their loneliness, they mistake the bizarre feeling of companionship for love. Ethan marries Zeena, not because he is in love, but because he does not want to be alone and he feels like he owes it to her for everything she is doing for him. She is aware of this and claims, “...you grudged me the money to get back my health, when I lost it nursing your own mother! And my folks all told me at the time you couldn 't do no less than marry me after—” (Wharton 83). In addition to Zeena saying that Ethan

Although Frome can be held responsible for his moral inactivity, he can be considered a morally inadequate man in his present state. His inadequacy, however, was not a constant in life or a sudden occurrence-- it snowballed from his youth and finally solidified through the ‘smash-up’. His earlier experiences in a university and the joy it brought him was quickly interrupted after a year by his sickly parents. The unfortunate circumstance forces Ethan Frome to move back to the depressing Starkfield he had just escaped. His parents’ illnesses bring along Zenobia, who would be another future, unseen oppression along with Starkfield. For years, Ethan lives in depressing conditions that decline as time goes on. The chance to finally leave them behind, however, comes in Mattie, Zenobia’s cousin and maid. Ethan’s inability to act on this chance of escape finally seals his fate when Mattie is paralyzed and he is critically injured. Although jinxed with unfortunate circumstances, Ethan Frome’s life could have been bettered if one small step or action was taken by him for himself with the intention to create personal joy or pleasure.

In the story Ethan Frome, it was a love triangle. Ethan was married to a sickly women named Zeena. When Mattie Silver was the maid of the Frome home, Ethan almost instantly fell for her. Ethan got married too quickly because he had a fear of being lonely. Zeena seemed to be the only option for Ethan, and so he married her. Zeena was not a nice women and controlled his own home and said that she was sick and needed a maid. This is the reasoning for Matties arrival.Ethan fell for her and Zeena knew that. She wanted Mattie out by leading her to go somewhere else, but Ethan did not want to let her go. This is what lead to the purposeful sledding incident. There could have been a change to this. At the end of the story Ethan Frome, it

The novel Ethan Frome is a short story packed with detail. It takes place in Starkfield and is about a farmer named Ethan Frome. Ethan made poor decisions because he was trapped living with two women; his wife, Zeena, and his wife’s cousin, Mattie. Ethan fell in love with Mattie. When Ethan and Mattie fell in love, they made a horribly rash choice making this novel a tragedy. A tragedy in literature is wherewhen a main character or hero suffers a downfall because of a character flaw, error in judgement, or forces beyond human control. The short novel, Ethan Frome, written by Edith Wharton, is a tragedy because of Ethan Frome’s character flaws, errors in judgement and the forces beyond his control.