Love is supposedly such a strong force that a couple would die to be together forever. The force that traps the escape of love and living happily together for a couple is almost just as strong. In Ethan Frome, Ethan falls out of love with his wife Zeena and into love with his house girl Mattie. Throughout their year together Ethan is finally able to express his love for science and talk about what he feels is important with his one true love Mattie.
When Mattie is asked to leave, Ethan and Mattie find themselves in a ompromising position, they can’t afford to run away together, they also can’t live apart. They feel the only remedy to stay with each other forever would be to commit suicide together. Zeena is clearly partially to blame for driving Mattie and Ethan to an attempt at suicide. Zeena came to Ethan’s house to care for his sickly mother who was dying and in need of female assistance.
After caring for his mother, Ethan and Zeena fell into what seems like a state of lust for each other and decided to get married. Whether it was true love or Ethan feeling that he needed to repay Zeena for her help, they found hemselves bound in matrimony for the rest of their lives. Zeena quickly became sick and blamed it on her care for Ethan’s mother. She was convinced that she caught whatever “complications”, which were serious and sometimes considered fatal from Ethan’s mother. “Complications, to have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases a death warrant. (pg88)”. Zeena hardly ever left her bed except to spend what little money Ethan was earning at a new doctor in a different town. Zeena drove their marriage down the drain when she wouldn’t do anything for herself and made
Ethan wait at her hand and foot. Ethan needed help, and Zeena’s cousin Mattie was in search of a place to live and in debt to the Frome’s. It seemed like a perfect idea, they would have a relative in the house to help Zeena and do house work and they would only have to provide her with room and board. Mattie’s help as a house girl would lead to Ethan realizing that he wasn’t in love with Zeena. Zeena finally realized about a year into the engagement with Mattie living in her house that Ethan was in love with Mattie and decided it was time for Mattie to go.
Zeena did not hesitate to tell Ethan as soon as she got home from a doctor that her sickness had gotten worse and they needed to hire a girl that would prove to be more competent. Mattie had to go and Ethan had to be the one to tell her. Realizing that Mattie would have to leave forever and not even knowing if he would ever see her again or where she was going, Ethan knew he had to do something. Ethan felt that if he let Mattie get on the train out of town, he could never be happy again. Zeena tried to get rid of Mattie and Ethan had no other way to be with Mattie then to kill imself. Even though the reader never gets to meet Ethan’s mother, all of the problems between Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie seem to tie back to her. To begin with, Ethan and Mattie couldn’t run away west together like he had hoped. This is because Ethan did not have fifty dollars to spend on the trip, he also did not want to leave Zeena without any source of income. Ethan had been attending college to further his interest in engineering and science, the one thing he had ever loved before Mattie, when his mother had fallen ill.
He had to go back to the farm, leave school, and maintain the farm and his mother’s health. All of his new tasks proved to be too much for one person, and they called a family member about Ethan’s age to care for his mother. At first Zeena proved to be all of the good things a wife at the time should be, Ethan fell for her, and so in essence, Zeena’s presence was his mother’s fault. The Frome farm was not able to make a large enough profit for a luxurious lifestyle. Ethan was making just enough from himself and Zeena, and after Zeena caught his mother’s illness, he was all alone and working very ard. Ethan had hoped to graduate from school and make money so he could associate with intelligent and upper class people in a larger city. Zeena, at first, seemed like someone that he could take with him to the city because she was smart and easy to get along with. She did not want to leave the small town and he was trapped with his low income job. His mother forcing Ethan to come home before graduation and hiring Zeena ultimately lead to his attempt at suicide, without her even knowing. Mattie’s father was also at fault for the suicide even though he was not directly nvolved. He moved to Connecticut to become a business man. He led his family to believe that it would prove profitable for them to invest in his business. Before he died, he had mismanaged much of his family’s money through bad deals. Through his death, his family learned of his mismanagement of the money and he left his immediate family in debt. No one wanted to help Mattie at the young age of twenty because they were so hostile about being tricked. Zeena was the only relative that was willing to help her by taking her into her house.
Zeena trapped Mattie by not paying her but just giving her a roof and food, Mattie could never save up to move away. Zeena was able to do this and Mattie was forced to accept because Mattie’s father put her in a position with no where else to turn. If Mattie’s father had not angered everyone else in his family, Mattie would’ve received financial help from someone else and never have moved to Starkfield. The suicide attempt by Ethan and Mattie was obviously a last resort. They would’ve done probably anything else to ensure a happily ever after fairy tale ending together.
That night that they were forced into the tree, the girl Ethan loved had died. Not physically, but mentally, she changed into someone that could no longer help her self. The fault of the suicide attempt was not any one person’s, rather three people, the two lover’s parents and the wife. Ethan’s mother forced him back to Starkfield, Mattie’s father forced her into Starkfield, Zeena, metaphorically, lay between their love and wouldn’t get up. She refused to let them be together and tried to force them apart. Combined, these three people were basically the snow under the sled into the tree.
Author: Noah Kennedy