Return To Reality In Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

Alone in the living room, Ethan Frome thought, “the return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anesthetic” (Wharton 52). This thought was born while Zeena was away, leaving Ethan and Mattie alone to decipher the future of their desired relationship. In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the character of Ethan Frome has deliberately sacrificed his love for Mattie in an attempt to preserve his shattered marriage with Zeena, illuminating the prevalence of social pressures in his life through his fatalistic mindset, inability to control his own life, and his final attempt to find true happiness. Ethan Frome lives with a fatalistic mindset, which prevents him from reaching his true desires. He has always been fascinated …show more content…
The incident with the pickle dish exemplifies his inability to make smart decisions. The action of the cat breaking Zeena’s favorite dish while she left Mattie and Ethan alone, symbolizes the role Mattie has in breaking apart their marriage. Ethan’s response of delicately arranging the fragments in hopes Zeena will not notice, shows how he is attempting to postpone disaster in his marriage. To the outside world, their marriage seems unbroken and healthy, but in reality is awaiting the slightest issue to fall apart. Ethan’s response to the broken dish is also symbolic. Wharton purposefully depicts Ethan precisely piecing together the fragments of the dish, rather than admitting the dish and his marriage is broken, to draw attention to the fact that Ethan is trying to put on a facade for the public. Ethan Frome describes his struggle in feeling that Mattie is now out of reach: “But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable” (Wharton 50). The living room is viewed as the center of a household, and this is significant as the setting of the conversation. It reminds Ethan of his marital obligations and his ethics, forcing Mattie out of reach. The forces of the room overpower his inner desires because he is a man of conscience and will not allow himself to violate social order. At this moment, Frome is forced to choose between desire and convention, but the setting being in the living room proves how his choice is predestined. He can not rebel social order in his own living room, while it reminds him of his prior commitment to