Ethan Frome

Luis Diego Rodríguez Cruz

When a feeling of hopelessness invades the heart of the gloomed, a

door to a void of despair opens, and leaves us into an endless
fall with so much to bear. That was what was left in the town of
New England, in which, darkness was not represented by a dark
color; rather a light one: snow. And that was what was left to a
man called Ethan Frome.

Sorrow is very present as the reader comes closer to the main

character’s personal life. Such emotion, if we jump to the
exophoric literary spectrum, we would find the author giving a
piece of herself during the time it was written. A time, where
there was not voice to be heard, but the one she put into words—
from the male perspective. Although a reader should not assume
that the characters she or he writes, there is always a piece of
the author’s self in their writing.

If someone wants to connect with someone else, the best way

to do it is through telling a story. That is what Edith Wharton
had prepared as she began the introduction to the novel, she built
a character; a narrator, that made us connect and see from his
shoes, to find out together the cataphoric and enigmatic character
that it was yet to be presented.

No one is perfect, and not even when it comes to create

fictional characters, that is having flaws and features typical
from the world that the reader can recognize and relate. That is
what makes the novel special: it takes pieces from the real world
to have a better connection with whom decides to read it.
 Although characters play an important role to provide
different links between the reader and the text, the atmosphere
should not be forgotten, whereas it brings together the reasons
why characters behave the way they do. We can attribute the
inability to move forward from each of the three main characters
due to the town in which story takes place. This was covered with
snow, and this phenomenon kept people inside of their small and
sad destiny.

Only the braves could leave such place, they say; however,
it begs the question of why wouldn’t they wanted to leave, if
everything was in favor of doing it so. It shows how people prefer
to stay with what it is comfortable to them, and not allowing them
to improve. It is easy to interpret the actions of the characters
now, since these are daily topics and the solution would have
demolished the storyline.

Nonetheless, it has to be taken into consideration that times

are different, and so are people. The author went through a tough
time fighting for both her rights as a woman, and as a significant
other. In this same sense, Ethan, Zenobia and Mattie portraited
the stages in which the author conceived her feelings and stories.
If we take the pickle dish that was given to Zenobia and Ethan as
a wedding gift, and Zenobia’s heart break when seeing it broken,
we can make the analogy of having the last string that kept their
relationship together being torn, over the freshness of youth.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at

the broken places.”, 18 years later Ernest Hemingway mention on
his book ‘Farewell to Arms’. And so did Edith, as she said
farewell to the story that she once lived, or, ‘lived’.