Edith Bouvier Beale

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a novel dealing with a young man’s persistent battle between his desires and moral principles. The story is set in 17th century New England in a rural community. The town of Starkfield is an area in which northern winters siege the inhabitants and hinder their daily lives. The characters within the novel must resist the frigid climate as it is a major impediment throughout the novel. Ultimately, Ethan Frome faces a conflict between his emotional desires and moral…

The book Ethan Frome was a fictional work written by Edith Wharton. The book was set in the fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Edith Wharton is an esteemed writer who received a Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Age of Innocence. Ethan Frome details the story of a man and his struggles with maintaining his daily life and marriage with his sickly wife. Throughout the book, each character is faced with life-changing choices that would affect at least one other character within the tale.…

O Pioneers and Ethan Frome are two classic, exciting novels. Even though the two plots of these stories aren’t much alike, the have similarities so often, it’s eerie. From the cold, harsh winter that the stories take place in, to the fact that they were written 2 years apart (1911 - 1913). These stories were not meant to relate at all, but the more you read, the more similarities you may find throughout both books. I find it funny that the similarities are not more recognised in the reading…

An interesting problem in John Green’s Paper Towns is Man vs. the public. While Margo has disappeared Quentin tries to find her using various clues she has left behind. Before Margo disappears they both go and seek revenge on Margo’s “friends” that night is when Quentin thinks he has seen the “true” Margo. Quentin finds the reference paper towns. He finds out that paper towns can mean an undeveloped subdivision. He finds a subdivision in the area and finds clues that she has been there. He ends…

A metaphor I find interesting and vivid in The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is portrayed in, “[Selden] had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at” (Wharton, 54). In this quote, Wharton used the gilt cage as a metaphor for the social trap created by New York City’s high society. The novel was set in the Gilded Age, an era in which the…

In her task of characterizing Zeena as selfish and shrewd wharton recounts Zeena and Ethan's marriage and how their plans for the future are ultimately forgotten. After his mother's death and subsequent marriage to Zeena they both agree to try and sell the farm and move to a big city. It sounds like a good plan except, not only has no one bought the farm, but Zeena will be impossible to move. “She chose to look down on starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on…

In Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, Irony is a perpetual theme and appears in many aspects of the plot. The novel is presented through the point of view of an omniscient unnamed narrator, and describes a story of old New York’s reactions to scandal and contradiction. In a society where aristocrat families influence the city, and the powerful dictate the social classes, the idea of innocence is not illustrated. Throughout the first few chapters of the story the narrator makes ironic…

Wharton establishes patterns of imagery by using figurative language — language meant to be taken figuratively as well as literally. In Ethan Frome, Wharton's descriptive imagery is one of the most important features of her simple and efficient prose style. Her descriptions serve a definite stylistic and structural purpose. The figurative language used by Wharton includes metaphors and similes. Metaphors compare two unlike things without using words of comparison. For example, in the beginning…

In her realist novel, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton strategically crafts a story that highlights the contrast between two opposing archetypal images, winter and darkness versus summer and light, in order to draw forth a comparison between the effect that both Zeena, Ethan’s wife, and Mattie, Ethan’s love interest, have on Ethan. Zeena’s stark personality and depressive aura causes her to exemplify the desolate qualities of winter, dragging Ethan into a life classified by lonely days and even…

With bountiful snowfall and harsh winters, Edith Wharton establishes an inhospitable setting for her piece of literature, Ethan Frome, which gives the book a frigid and depressing atmosphere. The cold nature of the book explains the protagonist’s, Ethan Frome’s, need to search for companionship in other people. The fear of existing alone and forgotten in the gelid winter appears to be too much to bear for Ethan Frome. He pounces on the first opportunity that arises and marries his mother’s…