Theme Of Naturalism In Ethan Frome

Skylar C. Kromer

Mr. Williams

Honors English 2

05 March 2023

The Appeal of Naturalist and Realist Writing to Readers

There, Ethan stands, watching from afar, through the church window. He sees light and dancing, joyous smiles and church community. These joys of which he cannot take the time to waste on. He has food to put on the table, money always fleeting from his grasp, and a sickly, miserable wife at home. So instead he waits outside for Mattie, to take her home for the next morning of chores and care taking for his wife, at least like this he can behold her beauty in quiet. In the short story, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton uses her character’s unfortunate life story to provide readers with an example of naturalistic and realistic conflict.

According to the article, “Understanding Wealth: How Is It Defined and Measured?” by The Investopedia Team, economic “wealth measures the value of all the assets of worth owned by a person, community, company, or country.” Especially during the time or Realism and Naturalism, when many were trying to find a place to settle and ways to make money in a very industrial and changing American society, economical wealth was hard to come by and the general population suffered from poverty and lack of needs, This can be noted in “The Outcasts of Poker Flats” when we are introduced to their small society, its described to the reader that, “[Poker Flats] had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen…A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons” (Harte 452). The community has lost money and valuable assets to their town and as their means of fixing this they seek out ‘improper persons’ which are the outcasts in their town, this includes, women with no husband, ‘witches’, gamblers and others. By Harte using this in his writing it offers readers to open their eyes to the struggles of the community economically and their irrational ways of solving them. The idea that poverty makes the majority desperate for a way to fix it efficiently. Economic suffering can also be seen in Ethan Frome, when the narrator and reader learn part of Ethan’s

During the time of the Naturalist writing era, a plethora of stories with naturalistic and environmental conflict were written. As described by Britannica, “Their views on heredity gave them a predilection for simple characters dominated by strong, elemental passions. Their views on the overpowering effects of environment led them to select for subjects the most oppressive environments -- the slums or the underworld…” In Jack Londons, “To Build a Fire,” a man walks alone, in freezing cold weather, snow piled at every look and the temperature is seventy five degrees below zero. His dog, a companion and safety precaution, knows they won't survive out there. The man had just slipped into a puddle of water underneath the snow and quickly started a fire with no delay or he risked losing his foot. Just when he got the fire going and he began to warm, the tree above him weighed down with snow, threatening to drop onto his fire any minute and “no wind had been blowing for weeks and each branch was heavy with snow. Each time he pulled a stick he shook the tree slightly. There had been just enough movement to cause the awful thing to happen. High up in the tree one branch dropped its load of snow. This fell on the branches beneath. This process continued, spreading through the whole tree. The snow fell without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was dead. Where it had burned was a pile of fresh snow. The man