Ethan Frome 1127does not participate in social functions. In addition,
few people visit the Fromes; the narrator learns he
is one of the few guests ever to stay at their house,
where at last he is able to piece together the sad tale.
Ethan’s story suggests that although he is not in
touch with fellow human beings, he does relate to
nature. Mattie’s connection with Ethan intensifies
when she recognizes his harmony with nature, so she
steps into the energy he too experiences. Wharton
explains: “It was during their night walks back to the
farm that he felt most intensely the sweetness of this
communion. He had always been more sensitive than
the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty.
His unfinished studies had given form to this sensi-
bility and even in his unhappiest moments field and
sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persua-
sion.” Ethan, in particular, is drawn to nature rather
than to people, and finding someone who enjoys the
same communion gives him hope for happiness.
Because of his sorrowful situation, Ethan relates
to the dead more than to the living. He understands
his dead ancestors lying in the local cemetery more
than he communicates with the living of Starkfield.
When he passes by the graveyard, he thinks of those
who have gone before him who never made it out of
this place, and he realizes that, like them, he is stuck
in Starkfield. On a few occasions, the narrator notes
Ethan’s likeness to a corpse. Harmon Gow tells him
that Ethan will probably live to 100, and the narra-
tor responds: “That man touch a hundred? He looks
as if he was dead and in hell now!” Wharton applies
this idea to the entire community as the narrator
comments on “the contrast between the vitality of
the climate and the deadness of the community.”
Like his mother, who dies under his watch, Ethan
continues to withdraw further away from those
around him. He asks his mother why “she didn’t say
something,” and she replies: “Because I’m listening.”
Left to himself, though physically surrounded by
Zeena, Mattie, and the community of Starkfield,
Ethan must listen to the voices that come from his
own brokenness.
Tracy Hoffman
IndIvIduaL and SocIety in Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton’s commentary on the roles of men
and women, including their individual responsibili-
ties to a community and a greater society, emerges
through the narrator’s growing knowledge of the
town and culminates in the conclusion of the tragic
story at the Frome farm. The narrator is the connec-
tion beyond the borders of the town. Though not a
permanent resident of Starkfield, he has business
matters at Corbury Junction, and Wharton records
his various business endeavors and meetings. The
narrator is what Ethan Frome could have been. The
two share an interest in “a volume of popular sci-
ence” that the narrator leaves with Ethan to strike
up a conversation, and Ethan shares some of his
resentments about interests he abandoned because
of his circumstances.
Ethan is drawn to the big city. Wharton con-
sistently alludes to the fact that he wants to leave.
When he considers running away with Mattie,
thoughts of the West call to him. Though Starkfield
residents have individual desires, most are trapped
by the community and by what society expects from
them. Ethan wants to be a rugged individualist and
head west, but society’s expectations trap a seem-
ingly weak-willed character. He wants to be free,
but he knows he will not leave: “The inexorable facts
closed in on him like prison-warders handcuffing
a convict. There was no way out—none. He was a
prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light was
to be extinguished.” Mattie, whom Ethan sees at
one point as his only “ray of light,” sentences him to
being further from the man he wants to be and the
life he wants to lead. For without financial stability,
Ethan cannot be the provider that society thinks he
should be, and without the love of Mattie or Zeena,
his misery is sealed.
On the surface, Zeena wants to move to the city,
too, but Ethan realizes that this can never be. Zeena
complains of the small village, but she could not
survive a bigger town: “Ethan learned the impos-
sibility of transplanting her. She chose to look down
on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place
which looked down on her. Even Bettsbridge or
Shadd’s Falls would not have been sufficiently aware
of her, and in the greater cities which attracted
Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of
identity.” Instead of the wife of a great man, Zeena
has become the sickly woman of the town. Tradi-
tionally in Starkfield, a woman’s place is in the home,