Ethan Frome Symbolism Analysis
Written by Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome is set in small fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan Frome is small farmer in town who live with his wife Zeena Frome and her cousin Mattie Silver. In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton illustrates symbolism in life through infidelity, crippled love, and isolation.
Wharton uses infidelity to show symbolism in Ethan's life. Ethan and Zeena’s marriage is in shambles. Zeena has stopped trying and when she becomes a trouble in Ethan's life. “Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise” (Wharton 410). Once Ethan realized his feeling for Mattie he …show more content…
Zeena received a pickle dish as a Wedding give when she was married to Ethan. “As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face. The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the red glass pickle-dish.”(Wharton 1296). Zeena received that pickle dish as a wedding gift, so in a way it represented Ethan and Zeena’s marriage and love for each other so when the pickle dish broke so did their love and marriage. Her emotion surpasses any physical meaning the dish may have, so much so that other emotional meaning of the dish force themselves on the reader. Speaking to Mattie, she says, " ... you waited till my back was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I've got, and wouldn't never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner, or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge.... I tried to keep my things where you couldn't get at 'em—and now you've took from me the one I cared for most of all ….gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body…” (1326). The body she carries out is the corpse of her marriage. Wharton's illustration of symbolism through the pickle dish shows all the love Ethan and Zeena once had for each other and the broken marriage they now
Wharton uses infidelity to show symbolism in Ethan's life. Ethan and Zeena’s marriage is in shambles. Zeena has stopped trying and when she becomes a trouble in Ethan's life. “Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise” (Wharton 410). Once Ethan realized his feeling for Mattie he …show more content…
Zeena received a pickle dish as a Wedding give when she was married to Ethan. “As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face. The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the red glass pickle-dish.”(Wharton 1296). Zeena received that pickle dish as a wedding gift, so in a way it represented Ethan and Zeena’s marriage and love for each other so when the pickle dish broke so did their love and marriage. Her emotion surpasses any physical meaning the dish may have, so much so that other emotional meaning of the dish force themselves on the reader. Speaking to Mattie, she says, " ... you waited till my back was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I've got, and wouldn't never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner, or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge.... I tried to keep my things where you couldn't get at 'em—and now you've took from me the one I cared for most of all ….gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body…” (1326). The body she carries out is the corpse of her marriage. Wharton's illustration of symbolism through the pickle dish shows all the love Ethan and Zeena once had for each other and the broken marriage they now