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Morality In Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

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In Edith Wharton’s most remarkable novel, Ethan Frome, the main character, Ethan Frome, is in love with a prohibited woman… his wife's cousin. His wife, Zeena, is a sick woman who has a villainous essence to her and an irrevocable hold on Ethan. Mattie Silver is Zeena’s cousin and the woman Ethan is infatuated with. Through Ethan’s eyes, Mattie is described as youthful, attractive, and graceful basically everything Zeena isn’t. This references to the theme: society and morality as obstacles to individual desires. Society is unanimously known for constraining people from following their individual desires. Thus, the marriage that binds Ethan and Zeena together is valued and viewed as something sacred. Ethan's desire to want to commit adultery would dishonor their marriage and is viewed upon in society. The conflict lies between his passion for Mattie and the constraints society imposes. However, his morals control his conscience. Both societal views and morals prevent him from giving in to his selfish desires. …show more content…

The dish was a wedding present given to the married couple. The shattering of the dish symbolizes the death of their marriage. In relation to the theme, the dish shatters during a romantic dinner between Ethan and Mattie, this ties in with morals. Ethan Frome obviously wasn't preoccupied with his crumbling marriage. To Zeena, the shattering of the dish meant the end of their marriage “[Zeena] picked up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as of she carried a dead body.” His morals weren't high in this scene and if he perpetuated his attitude perhaps his morals wouldn't be an obstacle from fulfilling his

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Sebastian Castellanos English Unit Activity Ethan Frome There are many different symbols or themes to be found in the story of Ethan Frome. A novel written in 1911 by Edith Wharton. But of all things the red glass pickle dish meant the most and best described the main topic of the story, Ethan's and the relationship to his wife Zeena. Ethan Frome is a story of a man who finds love in his cousin’s wife Mattie although unhappily married to another woman by the name of Zeena. One day Zeena leaves and Ethan is excited to have the house alone with Mattie.

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In the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton multiple objects are used to represent big moments in the book and is heavily used. There are many objects that clearly relate to people and relationships between people. The first emblem that represents love between Mattie and Ethan is Mattie's red scarf and ribbon in her hair. The first symbol is the pickle dish representing Ethans and Zeena’s relationship. The final commodity is the cat which represents Zeena.

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”(Wharton 3). Because of his loneliness, he asked Zeena to marry him without thinking it through. He had no feelings for her and desperately hoped it would make him feel better. While being married to Zeena, his unhappiness peaked and caused him to fall in love with another girl who was the Fromes’ maid, Mattie Silver. Romance was in the air and most definitely not between Zeena and Ethan.

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DEFINITION. In the passage Ethan Frome, the marriage between Ethan and Zeena would begin from the illness of Ethan’s mom and the need for money for Zeena. Furthermore, “When [Ethan and Zeena] married it was agreed that, as soon as he could straighten out the difficulties resulting from Mrs. Frome's long illness, they would sell the farm and saw-mill and try their luck in a large town... But purchasers were slow in coming, and while he waited for them Ethan learned the impossibility of transplanting her. And within a year of their marriage she developed the sickness which had since made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances” (Wharton 4).

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Mattie is panicked and worried when the pickle dish is knocked over and destroyed by the cat, and 3. Ethan is trying to figure a way out to repair or get a new pickle dish. Each of these represent different parts of Ethan and Zeena’s marriage and the relationship between the three characters. In Ethan Frome, the pickle dish is kept up high on the shelf so that nobody can get to it.

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Ethan Frome’s mother becoming ill was the first step toward the destiny that would keep Ethan in Starkfield forever. This destiny required his wife, Zeena, to become sick as well. It was necessary for Ethan to remain there since it would lead him to meet Mattie Silver, who would push him even closer to his fated downfall. Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie’s destinies were tangled together because of the conjoined circumstances that surrounded the three of them.

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In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the narrator recounts the life of Ethan before his smash-up. Ethan and his sickly wife, Zeena, live in the small town of Starkfield, Massachusetts with Zeena’s cousin, Mattie. As the years went by, Ethan begins to develop a crush for Mattie and those feelings are reciprocated. Zeena, on the other hand, tries to stay in in control over every aspect of both of Mattie and Ethan’s lives. But towards the end of the novel, Ethan and Mattie attempt suicide and fail, and after the two are incapacitated, Zeena recovers and begins to care for her family.

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In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton depicts Ethan as a tragic hero who gets downtrodden by his circumstances and mainly, his personality. He has the tragic flaw of not being willing to put anyone in pain even if he benefits from it. Through this, he gets blocked from pursuing an education when he must care for his ill parents. Consequently, he also doesn’t get to socialize with other people of his age, making him feel awfully lonely. To further his tragic predicament, he marries Zeena, his cousin who arrives to take care of his mother and unfortunately, she prevents him from pursuing his love for nature and engineering by wanting to stay in Starkfield forever for her own ego.

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1327 Words | 6 Pages

The quest for happiness can be a long and winding path. One that Ethan didn’t know where to start from, or where to go when he got on it. He struggled in making key decisions to achieve happiness for himself. Instead of choosing happiness Ethan chose to isolate himself from others and not pursue his feelings although it went against his own moral code. In the novel “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, the title character, Ethan, immolates his euphoria so he can obtain an improved quality of life for his family and to retain a superb reputation.

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Ethan’s bad choices of leaving school, feeling lonely and marrying Zeena and then also being avoidant when he wants to leave her. Obviously, Ethan Frome’s tragedy is all caused by his personal decisions. One of many ignorant choices Ethan makes is when his mother gets ill, somewhere in the beginning of the story. During this time, Ethan dropped out of college.

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That looks on tempests and is never shaken” (Lines 1-7). In Edith Wharton’s classic, Ethan Frome, this theme is present for protagonist Ethan Frome, who falls in love with his maid, Mattie, and forsakes his wife, Zeena. Ethan and Mattie’s flirtation with infidelity sets a catastrophic series of events into play: Zeena is jilted by the lovers’ betrayal, Mattie asks for the irrational way out of her situation, and all three characters make destructive decisions. Ethan’s indifference toward his wife and lack of compassion for her illnesses clearly demonstrates Ethan and Zeena’s loveless relationship.

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The novella, Ethan Frome, was about a poor farmer who had a forbidden love with a girl that he could never be with. The conflicts, characters, and symbols of this story give this novella a sense of loneliness and isolation from the outside world. The conflicts in Ethan Frome represent the depression and loneliness of living in the countryside in the early 1900s. Zeena was always fighting for Ethan’s attention.

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820 Words | 4 Pages

He could have just not taught his kids, his morals would not have rubbed off on

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1006 Words | 5 Pages

Melissa Palacios English 3A Feb. 21 2017 The novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is about a tragic hero, Ethan who is not in love with his wife, but another person named Mattie. An important symbol in this novel is a pickle dish. This dish symbolizes Ethan’s relationship with his wife. The pickle dish first appears in chapter 4 of the novel.

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738 Words | 3 Pages

Both Zeena and Ethan have varying responses, however both showing some commitment to repair their union. In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton utilizes a broken pickle dish, to represent the views of espousement, and the representation of their varied human actions. Ethan and Zeena Frome’s marriage represents a union based on obligation rather that love. Throughout the story, Ethan is a weak and submissive husband under the control of a domineering wife.

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