Characterism In Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton both directly characterizes Ethan though her description of him and indirectly characterizes Ethan through winter’s effect on him as well as his actions concerning Mattie to depict him as unassertive, immobile, and frozen. Although Ethan wishes to act romantically with Mattie, he ends up making somewhat neutral actions instead of ever acting boldly and is thereby is characterized as immobile like the winter he is trapped by. As soon as the novella begins, Wharton describes winter almost as though it is a character slowing down the people of Starkfield and thereby immobilizing the people into a frozen hypnosis. Wharton even says that instead of the weather invigorating the people, the cold instead “[retards]