THEMES in Ethan Frome
Poverty and isolation can weaken the human spirit.
 What does it mean “to weaken the human spirit”? How would a person with a
weakened human spirit feel? What kind of behavior would you expect from such a
person?
 How do you think poverty and isolation can weaken the human spirit of individuals?
 Circumstances isolate many of the characters.
.......Ethan marries out of loneliness but ends up with a wife who rarely speaks to him
except to complain. The climate, the remoteness of his home, and his Puritan heritage
deepen Ethan's isolation. The narrator observes,
 He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe,
with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was
nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation
too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the
result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow
had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters." (Section 1)
 .......Zeena withdraws into herself, becoming an irritable hypochondriac, after the
isolated farm works its effect on her. Mattie Silver loses her father, then her mother,
and faces the world alone at age twenty. Her health suffers when she tries stenography
and fails to improve after six months in a department store. When she joins the Frome
household and falls in love with Ethan, Zeena and propriety come between them. Except
for brief snatches of conversation with him—and her walks with him back from her
night in town—she too lives in isolation.
.......Rheumatism and the death of her husband isolated Old Mrs. Frome. She even had
difficulty moving from one room to another.
Lack of education and money make it difficult to fulfill one’s dreams.
 How does this happen? Think of some examples.
 Do all life’s dreams require education and money? Give examples of dreams that require
education and money, and dreams that do not.
People should feel a moral obligation to fulfill their duties and responsibilities.
 Do you believe this is true? Even to the exclusion or loss of personal happiness?
 Who decides what is morally right or wrong? Society? Individuals?
 Do you feel a moral obligation to anyone? Explain who and why.
Lack of decisive action can lead to misery.
 Give reasons for believing or not believing this statement.
 How can personal domination result from indecisiveness?
 Why do you think some people refuse to act to change their lives for the better?
Circumstances can defeat love
Ethan’s story can be read as a tragic tale of love defeated by
circumstances. Soul-crushing poverty, backbreaking work for little
reward, emotional isolation, and unremitting responsibility for others
seem to be Ethan Frome’s inherited lot. Every attempt he makes to
escape those circumstances ends in failure, culminating in his inability
to find a way to either live or die with Mattie on terms of his own
choosing.
People must communicate
Another way of looking at Ethan’s tragedy is as a failure of expression
or communication. He is crushed by the silence all around him as well
as by the silence within him, which offers no creative solution to his
constricted circumstances.
Ethan Frome as Fortune's Fool
 .......Fortune treats Ethan Frome cruelly. As a young man, he had a promising future
while studying for a technical career in Worcester. Then his father suffered a brain injury
in a farm accident, and Ethan had to end his education—and his dream of bettering
himself—to return home to attend his father and run the farm and sawmill.
.......According to Harmon Gow, Ethan's father was giving away money “like Bible texts”
(Section 1) in his last days. After he died, Ethan's mother became ill and slowly declined.
When she was in the final stages of her illness, her cousin Zenobia Pierce (Zeena) came
to the Frome house to help care for her.
.......After his mother died, Ethan married Zeena for the company she would provide in
his isolated surroundings. They did not love each other; it was a marriage of
convenience. But Zeena then became sickly herself. However, her illness was imaginary;
she was a hypochondriac. Over time, she became irritable and bad-tempered.
Meanwhile, Ethan had to keep up the farm and sawmill while attending her.
.......Then Mattie Silver appeared to help out. Ethan and she fell in love. But Zeena's
presence and her dominant personality came between them. Moreover, the Puritan
moral ethic—passed onto Ethan and other Starkfield residents over the centuries—
prevented Ethan from betraying his wife in her own house. And then there was social
convention: What would people say if Ethan openly carried on a romance with Mattie?
Finally, Ethan was impoverished. He could not afford to to run off with Mattie; he could
not afford a divorce and alimony.
.......Too many circumstances—too many forces beyond his control—were conspiring
against Ethan. He was, in the words of Shakespeare, “fortune's fool” (Romeo and Juliet,
3.1.103). Because he and Mattie saw no way out for themselves, they attempted
suicide. But they survived and lived on, psychologically and physically maimed, under
the dour tendance of Zeena.