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 her.” This was the beginning of Ethan’s sense of responsibility to Zeena. This sense of duty was backed by “an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm.” Ethan was terrified by the thought of being left alone to face the dreadful winter; this played a role in his marriage to Zeena and “he had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter.” He was left in a loveless marriage where he was caught in a cycle of “obeying her orders,” (29) and the chill of the passing winters built up in his mind and body until he “did not know how to begin” to “thaw out” (31).
With Mattie, on the other hand, the same winter that is usually displayed as bleak, dark, and cold, is described with vibrancy and beauty. 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 ones used to describe Ethan’s interactions with Zeena. Zeena is described as having a “shut face” and when he is around her, Ethan “felt the chill of such forebodings” (30). 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 Ethan’s perspective on the world shifts when he is with Mattie as opposed to Zeena. Mattie is like Ethan’s sun, melting the ice that formed over his heart because of Zeena (14).
Altogether, the contrast between Ethan’s winter experience with Mattie and Zeena is clear to see.

Zeena is the deep winter chill that is cold and plotting, while Mattie is the bright life of winter that is colorful and passionate. The two women fulfilled different hopes of Ethan; he had a “restlessness” and a “desire for change and freedom” (21). Zeena was Ethan’s “freedom” once upon a time; she enabled him to return to his routine and he felt obligated to her for that, creating the sense of responsibility he feels toward her. Now, Mattie is Ethan’s “change.” She enables him to see color in the previously monochrome landscape through love tinted lenses, and she found a way “to utter his secret soul” (14). Though, both of these options leave something to be desired for Ethan. If he were to choose responsibility he would lose Mattie, his love that “when she saw him, always looked like a window that has caught the sunset” (14). If he were to choose love he would abandon Zeena, whom he feels responsible for. He couldn’t handle the thought of leaving Zeena with the “burden” (56) that would be placed on her if he were to leave, even if it would free him from all of the “possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance”

(56).
In either situation, Ethan would have regrets. He would feel unsatisfied by never finding a balance between love and responsibility. This dissatisfaction can be seen in the very beginning of the book when present day Ethan is described as “a part of the mute melancholy landscape” (5). He discovered a compromise of sorts in the end, ending up with both Zeena and Mattie, but he received none of the benefits as a result. Mattie grew cold like Zeena, her face “as bloodless and shriveled” (74), meaning Ethan lost the Mattie he loved after the crash. Additionally, Ethan must take care of them both now, increasing his responsibility greatly. This outcome transformed Ethan into a shell of who he used to be, turning him into the landscape as he became “an incarnation of its frozen woe” (5).