We are reviewing the environmenatal forces, physical drives and economic circumstances that impacted the characters in Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. Use the graphic organizer that was passed out last week as a reference tool.
Short in class writing response to the following:
In order to fulfill your own happiness you have to hurt or gravely disappoint a family member or a friend. What would you do, and why? Is hurting another person ever justified? What price are you willing to pay for personal happiness?
REMEMBER that we are in the 3rd floor lab tomorrow, writing on the following:
Does the tragedy of Ethan Frome result from circumstances which the characters have no control over or from avoidable errors in judgment ? (please take into account the three aspects of naturalism: economic circumstances, physical drives and environmental circumstances) You must have a detailed example of each that clearly demonstrates you have read the book. The assignment will be blogged.
Society and Morality as Obstacles to the Fulfillment of Desire
ReplyDeleteThe constraint social and moral concerns place on individual desire is perhaps the novel’s most prominent theme, since Ethan Frome’s plot is concerned with Ethan’s desire for a woman who is not his wife. By denying Zeena a single positive attribute while presenting Mattie as the epitome of glowing, youthful attractiveness, Wharton renders Ethan’s desire to cheat on his wife perfectly understandable. The conflict does not stem from within Ethan’s own heart—his feelings for Mattie never waver. Instead, the conflict occurs between his passions and the constraints placed on him by society, which control his conscience and impede his fulfillment of his passions.
Again and again, Wharton displays the hold that social convention has on Ethan’s desires. Although he has one night alone with Mattie, he cannot help but be reminded of his domestic duties as he sits in his kitchen. He plans to elope and run away to the West, but he cannot bring himself to lie to his neighbors in order to procure the necessary money—and so on. In the end, Ethan opts out of the battle between his desires and social and moral orders. Lacking the courage and strength of will to face down their force, he chooses to abandon life’s burdens by abandoning life itself.
Winter as a Stifling Force
Ethan Frome, the novel’s protagonist, is described by an old man as having “been in Starkfield too many winters.” As the story progresses, the reader, and the narrator, begin to understand more deeply the meaning of this statement. Although a wintry mood grips Ethan Frome from the beginning—even the name Starkfield conjures images of northern winters—the narrator appreciates the winter’s spare loveliness at first. However, he eventually realizes that Starkfield and its inhabitants spend much of each year in what amounts to a state of siege by the elements. The novel suggests that sensitive souls like Ethan become buried emotionally beneath the winter—their resolve and very sense of self sapped by the oppressive power of the six-month-long cold season. Ethan yearns to escape Starkfield; when he was younger, we learn, he hoped to leave his family farm and work as an engineer in a larger town. Though Zeena and poverty are both forces that keep Ethan from fulfilling his dream, the novel again and again positions the climate as a major impediment to both Ethan and his fellow townsfolk. Physical environment is characterized as destiny, and the wintry air of the place seems to have seeped into the Starkfield residents’ very bones.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Illness and Disability
Ethan and those individuals close to him, including (by the end of the novel) Mattie, suffer from sickness or disability. Caring for the sick and the lame defines Ethan’s life. He spends the years before the novel begins tending to his ailing mother, and then he has to care for his hypochondriacal wife, Zeena. Finally, after his and Mattie’s attempted suicides, Ethan is forced to spend the rest of his days as a cripple, living with a sick wife and the handicapped Mattie. Outward physical signs reflect inner realities in Ethan Frome, and the predominance of illness in the characters’ physical states indicates that, inwardly, they are all in states of destitution and decline.
Snow and Cold
ReplyDeleteThe imagery of Ethan Frome is built around cold, ice and snow, and hues of white. The characters constantly complain about the cold, and the climactic scene hinges on the use of a winter sport—sledding—as a means of suicide. These motifs work to emphasize the novel’s larger theme of winter as a physically and psychologically stifling force. Like the narrator, we initially find beauty in the drifts, flakes, and icicles. Eventually, however, the unremittingly wintry imagery becomes overwhelming and oppressive, as the overall tone and outlook of the book become increasingly bleak. The cumulative effect is to make the reader feel by the end of the novel that, like Ethan himself, we have “been in Starkfield too many winters.”
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Mattie’s Red Scarf and Red Ribbon
In the two key scenes when Mattie and Ethan are alone together—outside the church after the dance and in the Frome house on the evening of Zeena’s absence—Wharton emphasizes that Mattie wears red. At the dance she wears a red scarf, and for the evening alone she puts a red ribbon in her hair. Red is the color of blood, ruddiness, good health, and vitality, all of which Mattie has in abundance, and all of which Zeena lacks. In the oppressive white landscape of Starkfield, red stands out, just as Mattie stands out in the oppressive landscape of Ethan’s life. Red is also the color of transgression and sin—the trademark color of the devil—especially in New England, where in Puritan times adulterers were forced to wear red A’s on their clothes (a punishment immortalized in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter). Thus, Mattie’s scarlet adornments also symbolize her role as Ethan’s temptress toward moral transgression.
The Cat and the Pickle Dish
During their meal alone, and the evening that follows, Ethan and Mattie share the house with the cat, which first breaks Zeena’s pickle dish and then seats itself in Zeena’s rocking chair. The animal serves as a symbol of Zeena’s tacit invisible presence in the house, as a force that comes between Mattie and Ethan, and reminds them of the wife’s existence. Meanwhile, the breaking of the dish, Zeena’s favorite wedding present, symbolizes the disintegration of the Frome marriage. Zeena’s anguish over the broken dish manifests her deeper anguish over her fractured relationship.
The Final Sled Run
Normally, a sled rider forfeits a considerable amount of control and submits to the forces of gravity and friction but still maintains an ability to steer the sled; Ethan, however, forfeits this ability as well on the final sled run. His decision to coast in his final sled run symbolizes his inability to escape his dilemma through action of any kind. The decision parallels Ethan’s agreement to Mattie’s death wish, his conduct in his marriage, and his attitude toward life in general: unable to face the consequences of any decision, he lets external circumstances—other individuals, society, convention, financial constraints—make his decisions for him. Mattie’s death wish appears especially appealing to Ethan in that it entirely eliminates all consequences for both of them, forever. Just as the rider of a sled relinquishes control, so Ethan surrenders his destiny to the whims of Mattie and of fate.
Shanay said...
ReplyDeleteThe tragety of Ethan Frome is a result from the circumstnaces in which the characters have no control over. Winter is the season in which the story takes place, unfortunately in the Starkfield, these conditions cause much isolation in the community. Ethan and his wife Zeena live on his family farm, which is isolated from the town and the neighbors. The lack of communication causes lonesomeness and bordom, where Mattie comes in the story. Her presences is a source of light and happiness, as she represents spring and warmth. The relationship she has with Ethan is genuine, where it lacks such characteristics with Zeena. Although she is the cousin of Zeena, her asistance is no longer needed, because Zeena wishes to hire another girl to work. The problem of money is a cuase of the bland relationship between the couple in there is money to pay for another girl. Nature plays a part of the 'dead' and miserable life they live together. Ethan's attraction to Mattie is evident as he loves her hair and her lips. The red scarf that she wears represents the sexual essence she has that drives Ethan to her. In addition to the nature, there were ways in which these situations could have been avoided. Ethan could have chosen to try and make his marraige more interesting and loving, but his attraction to Mattie was too strong. At the end of the story he could have also chosen not to attempt suicide with Mattie, as he did. In the end he and Mattie are paralyzed and this results from the naive characteristics of Ethan and the suductive drive Mattie had.
jayshawn says
ReplyDeleteThe setting in which The Tragedy of Ethan Frome was placed in throughout the whole story was the cold harshness of winter in starkfield. Also similar to the enviromental circumstances was the emotional state of Ethan and his wife Zeena. Zeena and Ethan soon were not only trapped in their home but within themeselves as well. Their marriage was unhealthy, very little communication went on and just like the snow outside,plain. Mattie is the cousin of Zeena and Ethan, and her presence in the story brings a different feel to the cold unwanted winter. Mattie's symbolism in the story is almost like the changing of season for Ethan. As their relationship grows stronger and their bond closer the empty void Ethan once felt was filling. Where as Ethan and Zeena's relationship was hindered and slowed by their surroundings. Zeena can see that Mattie's presence in the house is a threat and even though the two are cousins she wants to hire a new working girl.Ethan falls deeper in love with Mattie,her everything and the red scarf Mattie wears is symbolism for the sexual tension the two have for eachother pulling him to her even more.Ethan's marriage in the story seems dead and lifeless but if he would have choosen to put in the effort with his wife that he put in with Mattie things could have been different. As the consequences of Ethan and Mattie's attempted suicide lead to each of them being paralyzed,and choose an unwanted fate for the both of them