Personal Choices In Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome It has been known since the beginning of time that personal choices could completely flip your life upside down. Just like the saying “Curiosity killed the cat,” many people have fallen in the dark shadows of temptation and lived life in misery. Some choices could change your life for the better, but in most cases, we are attracted to the prohibited. For example, in the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Ethan was trapped between commitment and desire. It was Ethan’s impulse and irrational decisions that led him to his own crisis. One of Ethan’s first mistakes was to marry Zeena. “And within a year of their marriage she developed the ‘sicklines’... When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health , but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed

“He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in the spring instead of winter…” (p.38). This aspect doesn’t mean anything. He could’ve still married Zeena in fear of being lonely even if his mother would’ve died in the Spring. Maybe he wouldn’t of been as trapped inside because of the weather but the general idea would’ve still been the same. A marriage without love and a life with misery. Spring or winter, it would’ve all been the same. In addition to Ethan’s conflicts with Zeena, he now had more weight over his shoulders with Mattie. Leaving with Mattie gave a horrible twist to his story. “Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me down again!’ ‘Down where?’ ‘The coast. Right off. ‘ she panted, ‘so’t we’ll never come up any more” (p.90). His decision to leave with Mattie was probably one of the worst choices he could have made. Not only did he mess up his life, and his relationship with Zeena. He also ruined Mattie’s life by going down that hill and running into the elm causing her to be