The author achieves the latter by having the farm and the weather symbolise Frome’s relationship with his wife. In his flashback, Ethan’s farm has “an orchard of starved apple-trees writhing over a hillside,” the soil dotted with “outcroppings of slate” (17). Not only do the trees remain bare and fruitless throughout the year, but even the soil is inhospitable—unable to sustain or give any life. Fallen decrepit from lack of attention, the apple orchard symbolises their seven year marriage, lonely, barren, and childless. Every drawn out day of their relationship is torture, and Ethan not only “struggl[es]...under the burden of his barren farm and failing saw mill,” but also under the burden of his barren wife and failing marriage (54). Whenever
