Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome: Connections to Motifs

English 11 AT set 1 B/D

Ethan Frome Essay

Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome: Connections to Motifs

Motifs are interesting literary devices, treasured by many authors, to make up or help support the plotline of each story written. In the novella Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, she uses the motif of parallelism of the setting of Starkfield, Massachusetts, and other characters such as Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver, to help describe the way that Starkfield and other factors entangle each character mentally, emotionally, and physically. The importance of this is evident, as it shows during key periods in the story.

The parallelism all begins with the snowy, New England town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The small community is a place where everyone knows each other on a first name basis. Word spreads quickly, especially when something as severe as a failed double suicide occurs. Mattie and Ethan both suffered deeper entrapment because of this. Starkfield is also trapped, as stated by the narrator, "The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires (Ethan Frome, pg. 13)." This shows the parallelism of Mattie and Ethan with Starkfield; their entrapment by their surroundings.

Physical entrapment is something Mattie and Ethan suffer, similar to the entrapment of Starkfield. Ethan is trapped by his marriage with Zeena. Ethan and Zeena have a very poor relationship with one another, lacking trust and intimacy. The only reason that Ethan and Zeena were married was because Ethan was afraid to be alone when his mother passed away, as stated on page 37 in Ethan Frome: "There, the silence had deepened about him year by year. Left alone, after his father's accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother fell Ill, the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields." This marriage was not about love at all, which is the main cause of this debacle of a marriage. Mattie is physically trapped by her lack of other places to turn to, and a lack of money which limits her options to a minimum, which is described in the novel: "Unhappily Orin Silver, a man of far-reaching aims, had died too soon to prove that the end justifies the means. His accounts revealed merely what the means had been; and these were such that it was fortunate for his wife and daughter that his books were only examined after his impressive funeral. His wife died of the disclosure, and Mattie, at twenty, was left alone to make her way on the fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano (Ethan Frome pg. 31)." This is all that was left with Mattie, which was the piano that she sold for fifty dollars, and herself. Because of her father's failing drug bsiness, which all of the family's money was put into, Mattie was not well liked and until she was needed as a hired girl by Zeena, she was often tossed around from month to month by family to family. Therefore, she is trapped at the Frome home, with few to no options; however, she does not want to leave either.

Mental entrapment is also suffered by Ethan and Mattie, which again shows parallelism to Starkfield. Ethan is trapped mentally because

...