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Ethan Frome Ethan Frome (main character of Ethan Frome) was a man who lived in his own world of silence. Ethan also lived in the small, dark town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. He was the most striking figure in his town yet he was but the ruin of a man. By many people Ethan was mistaken for an old man though he was not more than fifty-two.
This narration is a far cry from the character of Newland Archer (main character in The Age of Innocence). Newland was a dashing young man who was part of New Yorks finest society. Though only thirty years old he "read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world than any other man of his Fifth Avenue set. However these two diametric characters can be compared with one another. Due to certain circumstances, the deviousness of their wives, and being tragic characters both men were unable to be with the women their hearts truly yearned for.
Ethan Frome had lost his father to a horrendous accident. Soon after this ordeal Ethan's mother became ill. He was now left alone to carry the burden of the families farm and mill. But there was a hope for Ethan- Zeena. Zeena was able to help Ethan take care of his ill mother.
She seemed to understand his case at a glance. Zeena would tell him to go right out along while she took care of things. As his mother is close to death, his cousin Zeena takes care of his mother. To Ethan at first, Zeena's presence makes things seem more optimistic and easier for him to deal with. After the mortal silence of his long imprisonment Zeena's volubility was music in his ears. He felt that he might have gone like his mother if the sound of a new voice had not come to steady him (2).
Not realizing that Zeena has control over him, after his mothers death he marries Zeena. He marries her not for true happiness but only because he does not like the thought of himself being left alone. After the funeral, when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him (2). Zeena controls Ethan from the get go. She tells him where she wants to live, but it seems that no town is good enough for her.
She chose to look down on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on her (1). Although Ethan wants to live in a city, he lives in Starkfield because Zeena wont have it any other way. Many times Ethan wants to be able to be free of Zeena's control, but he is too passive to break loose. Not only does he not live where he wishes, but when true happiness comes into his life Ethan doesnt take the chance to be blissful. He wants to be with Mattie, Zeena's younger, energetic cousin who comes to the Frome house to help out.
At one point, Ethan gets the courage to write a letter to Zeena telling her that he wants to leave her. After he thinks that the inexorable facts closed in on him There was no way outnoneHe as a prisoner for life his lack of bravery fails him from giving the letter to Zeena (1). Because Ethan is used to being controlled by his wife, he doesnt have the audacity to take action to go against her and to do what he really desires to do; therefore, his soul is inflated with melancholy. Not only is Ethan not courageous, but he lives in his own world of silence. This silence is almost like a disease in the Frome house. First it starts with his mother and then it goes onto him and then Zeena catches this disease.
The total lack of communication between the "silent" couple is a significant factor in Ethan's miserable marriage. While Zeena complains about everything, Ethan takes in all the misery and decides not to give his opinion or speak his mind. Ethan keeps silent in his dealings with his wife, to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked (2). When Zeena argues that Mattie is to leave because she hired another girl, Ethan at first tries to tell Zeena that he thinks that Mattie should be able to stay.
He fails to stand up for Mattie and for what he truly feels, and yet again he is silent. He meant to humble himself, to argue that Mattie's keep didnt cost much but Zeena's words revealed the peril of such pleadings. Basically the silence breaks down the marriage even more than the domination that Zeena has over Ethan. Ethan many times hopes of a new, more exciting life that will fulfill his need for euphoria.
His feelings for Mattie are tremendously overwhelming for him. To Ethan, Mattie is radiant and energetic. He sees possibilities in her beyond his trite life in Starkfield, something truly worth standing up for. Her energy and warmth excite him and allow him to escape from his lonely, monotonous life. The night that Zeena is away in another town seeing a doctor, Ethan and Mattie spend the night together as if they are a married couple.
Although he constantly thinks about being with Mattie the return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anaesthetic (1). She awakens hope in Frome of a different life, yet he knows that the chance of him actually living this different life is slim to none. The hope of a new, fulfilling life causes Ethan to write the letter to Zeena, think about leaving Zeena, to defy his wife by falling in love with Mattie, confusion of what to do, and to do things that he wouldnt normally do. Ethan does not know how to deal with his feelings for Mattie or the stress that is caused from his dream to be with her. While Mattie is sewing, his emotions flow like a wild river because he longs to show his affection for Mattie by kissing her or holding her lovers do. Without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed the bit of stuff in his hold (1).
Instead of Ethan kissing Mattie, his unfulfilled hope provokes his confusion and he kisses the piece of sewing that Mattie works on. Ethan Frome has been unsatisfied by his life deeply and the causes of that laid in misappropriate ways of conduct. Indeed we may see on the problem from different points of view but I would like to use the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson to analyze the psychological problems and mistakes of Ethan Frome. The leader of the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered today to be a very intellectual man. His views are very simple and complicated at the same time, but that is probably how he would have wanted it. Against racism and good with the pen, Emerson spoke to others with great effectiveness.
He was able to lead an entire group of people with his views on life. In his book Nature, you can picture Emerson outside at night looking towards the stars and writing down how he pictured it. Emerson was a considered a realist and an optimist. He tried the best way he knew how to tell the truth, and then added his own style, bringing it to life through his many chapters of Nature. Emerson's Nature is an essay of a startling philosophy.
Emerson opens our minds to a world, in most cases, forgotten. The isolation of humanity from its natural world and the loss of mans connection to it, creates a widening crevice between man and the unison of mans individuality with nature. Emerson discovers the divinity, the tranquility, and the oneness flowing through nature and shares it through his essay. In Nature, Emerson displays the overwhelming sense of unity, harmony, and the blending of mans identity with the divine essence of nature. Emerson utilizes Coleridge's explanation of the difference between the two: Reason is the power of universal and necessary conviction, the source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in themselves Understanding is discursive in all its judgements [it] refers to some other faculty as its ultimate authority (6). The quote indicates that reason is like intuition.
Emerson said, reason never reasons; never proves, it simply perceives; it is vision. One must have intuition to perceive nature. It is also possible that Nature may be one-sided. Because Emerson has been so withdrawn from society, his view may be misguided or flawed. Maybe because of his obsession with the importance of individuality, he has become too isolated and self-reflecting. Possibly his isolated view of the universe has helped him create a philosophy that only satisfies himself and not the majority.
Emerson's philosophy came from a variety of sources: 1) New England religious thought and related English writings of the 17 th and 18 th centuries; 2) Scottish realism, which he absorbed principally while at Harvard; 3) French and English skepticism, the lasting effects of which should not be underestimated; 4) Neo-Platonism, the dominant element in his thought, especially as it was interpreted by the English Romantic poets and the German and French Idealists; 5) Oriental mystical writings, even though he never accepted their fatalism or their concept of transmigration; 6) Yankee pragmatism, which was latent in almost all of his work and which muted his Romantic Idealism, especially in his essays on political and economic affairs. This collection of sources helped him compose his essays on Idealism and nature. In Nature, Emerson stresses the importance of the individual. He believes that there is a limitless potential available to the individual. This displays Emerson as optimistic as does the fact that he thinks man is a God, but a God in ruins the dwarf of himself. Emerson wrote and lectured that man should make his own path through life and not take a path cleared by the many.
Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. To conform to society and lose ones identity is to lose ones individuality and ones uniqueness. Man should use the limitless potential he has to its utmost. He ought to create his unique path through society to where his individuality will carry him. Emerson thought the supernatural and the natural to be two parts of reality. He believed that the supernatural is the Oversoul.
It is an impersonal force that is eternal, moral, harmonious, and beneficent in tendency. The individual soul is a part of the Oversoul, and man has access to it through his intuition. Nature is a part of the Oversoul, like man. According to Emerson, the Oversoul is the Universal Being. The supernatural and the natural are united. Emerson had worked out his own philosophy and the main point of it is individual worldview which should be found by each person to be happy.
Ethan Frome was unable to make his own path through life. When his mother died he married with Zeena not because of the deep voice of his mind and heart but because of the time for marriage for him. He was sodden of general morality which prevailed of his own worldview. Ethan Frome gets lost when his mother died and became just a piece of the crowd. Emerson in his Nature insists on the inadmissibility of such conduct for personality and in this point Edith Wharton and Ralph Waldo Emerson think the same way because we can see the subsequences of Ethan Frome choice. The reason for Ethan Frone's silence is disharmony of his soul.
He was not able to find the way out by himself and decided to seek help of Zeena. He was to week to fight hard circumstances by himself. That is a reason for many people to fall in religion deeply according to Emerson. Ethan Frome just failed the main conception of Emerson: Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. Zeena was good friend for Ethan Frome but he failed to hear the voice of his heart.
What he had had to do in Emerson's viewpoint is find his own strength in his own soul which has been missed in endless generalizations provided by the church and other groups of his surroundings. The best way to find ourselves is not Christianity or other religion but conjunction with nature. The nature should help any person to realize what one really wants. So Ethan Frome would better get fishing and think about what he has to do next under the blue sky instead of walking from one corner of his dark house to another and falling in deeper and deeper depression on the bottom of which he found Zeena having the same silence as he had. Bibliography: Hattenhauer, Darryl.
Wharton's Ethan Frome. Explicator. 1993 Marshall, Scott. Edith Wharton, Kate Spencer, and Ethan Frome. Edith Wharton Review. 1993 Emerson.
New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1983. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Merriam-Websters Encyclopedia of Literature 1995. Galenet Online. < web > 9 March 2000. Gerber, John C. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Overview.
Reference Guide to American iterator 1994, 3 rd ed. Osgood, Samuel. A Review of Nature. The Western Messenger Vol. II, No. 6, January, 1837.
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Research essay sample on Ralph Waldo Emerson Ethan Frome
