Ethan Frome Literary Analysis

In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton conveys that you will never be satisfied if you try to choose between love and responsibility. Through her use of the metaphor comparing winter to Ethan and his life, Wharton illustrates the dissatisfaction that comes from attempting to choose between two equally beneficial and detrimental choices. Around the time of his mother’s death Ethan was alone and overwhelmed, but then Zeena was there and she filled the “mortal silence” that had surrounded his mother’s sickness. Ethan had “felt that he might have ‘gone like his mother’” if a new voice hadn’t entered the picture. It was Zeena who provided this relief and allowed him to feel “free to go about his business again,” which “magnified his sense of what he owed
Ethan describes being with Mattie as full of “sensations,” some of which were “less definable but more exquisite” and full of “silent joy” (14). These words are a stark contrast from the words used to describe Ethan’s interactions with Zeena, where Zeena is described as having a “shut face” and when he is around her, Ethan “felt the chill of such forebodings” (30). These words focus on how Zeena is closed off, cold, and reserved from Ethan and their marriage. This can be compared to the colorful language used to describe even the landscape when Mattie is around; bold colors like “the cold red of sunset” and “the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow” are used to illustrate how drastically the Ethan’s perspective on the world shifts when he is with Mattie as opposed to Zeena. The winter metaphor is still woven throughout Ethan’s interactions with Mattie, but instead of the cold dark winter that is experienced with Zeena, Mattie’s winter is vibrant and alive. When Ethan was with Mattie the “words had at last been found to utter his secret soul,” Mattie brings out a side of Ethan that has been hidden under Zeena’s oppressive presence. Mattie is like Ethan’s sun, melting the ice that formed over his heart because of Zeena