This makes him very nervous and he starts to second guess himself he wants to go and find love so badly but he know he will be punished severely. They are no longer happy with each other. Leaving their marriage in a very bad place because of Zeena and her sickness and isolated….
Wright being isolated has had an impact on her mental health. Her husband refusing to share a telephone line pushed her even more into isolation, disconnecting her from the outside world. The attorney, sheriff, and Hale would not see it this way, however. Essays Essays FlashCards. Browse Essays. Sign in. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality.
Show More. Ethan and Mattie express their love for each other and Zeena expresses her hatred for Mattie subtly, without explicitly stating so. However, Edith Wharton shows the consequences of silence by highlighting the dishonesty in relationships, the isolation people live in, and the denial of happiness due to guilt and societal pressures. Edith Wharton lived from January 24, to August 11, , in a time when women were stifled and their ambitions suppressed.
She came from a wealthy, distinguished upper middle class family that lived in New York and was unhappily married to Edward Robbins Wharton in , who she eventually divorced in From to , Wharton had an affair with Morton Fullerton, and a year after she wrote Ethan Frome.
The climatic sled scene of Ethan Frome was inspired by a sledding accident in Lenox, MA in that killed a young girl and injured 4 others. Many farming communities in New England were in decline because of industrialization and lack of suitable farmland.
Many rural inhabitants began moving to cities and out West, but no one replaced them in the New England farming communities. While divorce was gaining popularity in urban areas in the United States, in rural areas divorce was still very much frowned upon. Marriage in rural communities was considered a partnership in which both parties felt obliged to contribute certain duties indefinitely.
He tries to manipulate Mrs. He fears that if he discusses his situation of feelings for Mattie, he will be ostracized by the community. Because Ethan feels he cannot be honest with the people around he chooses to say nothing at all. Hale for the advance. His failure to be honest with the people around him forces him farther into the shell of silence that has been slowly built up throughout his life.
Ethan could not admit to anyone his love for Mattie, he loses the chance for their relationship to have any type of permanence. Due to his inescapable unhappiness, he smothers his emotions in an attempt to lessen the pain of his misery, thereby smothering his other emotions and leaving him mute with shallow apathy. Instead of speaking to Mattie about their problematic relationship, he denies what they mean to each other.
The physical cold of the environment cuts off all feeling from its inhabitants, severing their ability to communicate important thoughts and sentiments. While the cold numbs Ethan to his pain and depression, it does not eliminate it. Lurking under the surface rests all the loneliness and resentment that he suppresses, mainly because of the disconnection of the community and the exclusive mentality of the citizens of Starkfield.
The Frome farm exhibits the insulated way the people live perfectly and draws parallels between itself and Ethan Frome. Physical isolation and suppression translate into personal and emotional isolation and suppression. The harsh winters and unsympathetic landscape of Starkfield exact an injurious toll on the inhabitants and especially Ethan Frome.
The severance from feeling stems from ruthless environments that humanity resides in. Ethan finds refuge from the cruel world in which he lives in silence. However, without communication nothing will ever change, so Ethan and Starkfield move into a vicious cycle of unhappiness. Ethan Frome unquestionably fit the description of a tragic hero.
His hamartia is his silence, imposed on him by the perceived oppression of societal expectations and pressures. His silence can also be attributed to the shame he feels because of his distant relationship with his wife and his inappropriate devotion to her cousin.
His refusal to communicate leads to indecisive procrastination because Ethan does not want to hurt Zeena. This remorseful stalling leads to love driven desperation, the eventually crippling of Ethan and Mattie, and the forced proximity of Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie. She takes Mattie back; however, she appeases her conscience, which was probably telling her that the accident was partially her fault. She forces her own hypochondria aside and play caretaker to two full grown debilitated people who cause her unhappiness.
Ethan initially plans to ask Mr. It isn't until Zeena forces Mattie to leave the Frome household that Ethan and Mattie express their feelings for each other.
They abandon rational thought as they attempt to commit suicide and enter a silent hell in which the only verbal communication to be heard is Zeena and Mattie's complaining.
Isolation, another major theme in the novel, is not self-imposed before the tragedy that befalls Mattie and Ethan, but is enforced upon them by outside circumstances. Ethan tried to escape the isolation of Starkfield and his father's farm by going off to the technological college at Worcester.
He began to cultivate his own social traits and to overcome his reticence; however, his father's death forced him to give up college and return to the farm and his ill mother.
After his marriage to Zeena, Ethan is imprisoned by the farm, millwork, and caring for Zeena. He is physically isolated from the world at large and is also cut off from the possibility of any human fellowship that life in a village might afford. Mattie and Zeena are isolated characters also. Mattie is isolated by the deaths of both parents and the ill will of most of her relatives. She moves to the Fromes', an unfamiliar farmhouse and, except for church socials, is cut off from contact with human beings other than the Fromes.
Because Zeena is consumed by her many illnesses, she rarely leaves the farmhouse, and only speaks to Ethan and Mattie when voicing her complaints or demands. Because the attempted escape from isolation by Ethan and Mattie fails tragically, Ethan, Mattie, and Zeena are left to spend their lives in an isolation even more complete than that from which they tried to flee.
If all of these death references still haven't convinced you, we also have actual graves. Ethan's ancestors, including his namesake, are buried right there on his property, and Ethan sees them everyday.
As you can see from our discussion so far, there is lots of foreshadowing of death in Ethan Frome. But the joke is on us. The foreshadowing doesn't foreshadow literal death, but rather the death of any dreams, hopes, and plans for the future that Ethan, Mattie, and Zeena might have had. The red pickle dish isn't only a symbol of shattering and death. It's also a player in another set of symbols, all centering around the color red.
The color red is often related to desire, love, seduction, sin, passion, heat, and lust. Blood, accidents, danger, warning, and alarm also factor in. There are eight items specifically described as red in the story: Ethan's scar, the "cherry-coloured fascinator," Mattie's "cherry-coloured scarf," the notorious pickle dish, the fire, the Mattie's "crimson ribbon," and most often, the sun. Let's focus on Ethan's gash. Many readers will instantly be reminded of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter , published in , about 61 years before Ethan Frome.
In that story a woman is forced to wear a scarlet red letter "A" on her chest to show that she commit adultery. In Ethan Frome , Ethan is similarly branded with a red mark.
If you've read our discussion of "Genre," you know this is a Gothic piece. Red is definitely a Gothic color, and Ethan's scar is a Gothic touch. The red items in Ethan Frome are related to anxieties surrounding marriage, passion, adultery, and sexuality, as well as public and private forms of shame and related emotions.
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