A General Review of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome is a novel where the very limits of humanity is forced, tested and tresspassed on. What we witness in that book is a human tragedy, not a sacrifice. In fact, sometimes, it is hard to call it even a tragedy as we don’t see purification through pain in the story. A tragedy aims at reaching a state of purification and exaltation through sacrifice. There is no sacrifice in this story. There’s not death and martyrdom, as well. And we cannot see any moral lesson to be derived in the end. The lack of moralization, martyrdom and sacrifice leave us awestruck in the face of stark cruelty and inhumaneness.

This novel is the story of a struggle between opposing wills. Not only the clash of wills of Ethan and Zeena: the wills of the whole village also participate in the struggle, making the situation more and more untangible for the Fromes. In this struggle, do we realize that even failure has a spiritual value? I looked for a sign of spiritual greatness in Ethan and Zeena, but couldn’t see any. This must mainly because of the fact that such a prolonged and hopeless defeat as Ethan Frome’s has hardly anything to bring out but isolation and a twisted body. In this atmosphere, I can’t help loathing the notion that suffering and defeat have an innate value.

What is sadder and more pitiful for Ethan is his lack of hope of any kind. Under the pressure of his ill fate, he is no longer able to extend the limits of his future beyond the family graveyard at the age of 28. The most striking line in the whole novel, the line that, to me, summarizes the story, is when Ethan confesses that “..it [his propose to Zeena] would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter…" (p. 29)

Zenobia and Ethan, despite they are young, seem old and already wretched emotionally. Was that natural and conventional for those times -- to feel like old at such an aerly age -- or was that the result of their incompatibility and lovelessness? If the answer is the second option, then we would easily put the whole blame on Zeena.

Personally, I hate those kind of women who pretend to be weak, helpless and lopsidedly vulnerable -- Women who seem to be always on the verge of a psychological and physcial collapse. Zeena is a successful valetudinarian. And I ask myself, are women weaker than men? The answer to this would reveal if Zeena was really sincere or was just pretending.

Actually, Zeena was a hypochondric well before she began nursing Mrs. Frome. At some point, it is said in the novel that, “..her skill as a nurse [her nursing of Ethan’s mother] had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.” Indeed, that’s why she so successfully was able to take care of Mrs. Frome without any single complaint. And again, after the smash-up, she quite happily turns back to her former ‘occupation’ of nursing ‘the sick,’ this time two person on the list, one crippled, the other bedridden, forgetting all about her hypochondric sickliness.

Zenobia had never been a sincere person. She was a schizophrenic that needed professional help, which was a luxury at that time. The worst part of her truthfully sick personality is her disinclination to consent to any change, even the slightest, in her physcial environment. This bad character of her forces Ethan to give up his hope of selling the farm and trying his luck in a city. This gleam of hope, however, is cruelly blown out when Zeena shows a blatant doggedness against such an idea.

Zeena’s sneaky characteristics is once again made clear in her arrangement for Mattie to take the job of an unpaid servant, whom she could abuse without any fear of social denunciation. Until she discovers the blooming love between her and Ethan, she is perfectly consent with her. Because, to her, Mattie is more than a servant, but a modern-era, so to speak, slave without shackles. It is when the rapport between Mattie and Ethan developes into something which is close to love that Zeena rushes forward, through a despicable plan carried out masterfully, to find out a ‘real’ servant, but not a slave, whom they have to pay.

And think about the lashless lids… “Two small tears… on her lashless eyelids.” This is a very strong depiction of a brutal personality. A physcial symbol of a merciless psychology, like that of Genghis Khan who were born with a blood clot in his palm, that wants neither a lover, nor a husband, nor a sensitive, compliant servant, but slaves that she could abuse and make fun of.

In the face of this brutality, the first and the last revolt of Ethan against Zeena happens when he angrily declares to drive Mattie to the railroad station although Zeena has arranged for the handyman to do the job. And this revolt emerges at the wrong moment and is carried out very badly. The two lovers’ overt and exeggerated sentimentality brings about the very dawn of their fate, which is to be shaped at the hands of Zeena herself from then on. Such an execessive, childish sentimentality, given her age, is expected from Mattie; however, I would like to see Ethan to be more articulate, mature and reasonable.

But in the end, I still have enough symphaty for Ethan, having seen that, after years of misery and ill-fate, he remains, still, capable of reacting in a friendly way toward the narrator and showing a deep interest in modern knowledge.

It is strange to see that, despite all her cruelty and inhumaneness, Zeena does not break the moral codes in the society. No one blames her for anything. Ethan and Mattie go against some basic traditional values. However, Zeena never displays a sign of humaneness except when she has wept over the pickle dish, a wedding gift, which she has never used. Zeena’s humaneness somehow manages to go as far as shedding few tears over a pickle dish – a pitiful distance, indeed, to go while she at the same time keeps up making a ruin out of the flowering love of Ethan and Mattie.

How was Ethan’s mental state during his short happy life with Mattie? Was he really happy? Or did he keep suffering – suffering from a love that has hardly been fulfilled and from lovelessness? And why did Zeena’s apparition stand between him and the elm tree at the last moment? The moment that could have been their salvation? And who suffered most? I guess that’s one of the questions we need to ask. In this respect all my symphaty goes to Mattie, as she had nothing to do with Ethan’s or Zeena’s particular situations. She was not part of their lives and destinies until just one year ago. She did not deserve to be kept in a dark, cold kitchen for 20+ years as a bedridden young girl under the care of the one who were the very reason for her calamity. This is not a simple tragedy; this is mere cruelty. This level of realism leaves me in a state of shock and I come to the realisation that Wharton never wanted to give us a moral lesson. She simply wanted us to get awestruck.