gain associated with the ‘melancholy landscape’, an incarnation of it’s frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface’. Ethan Frome is very quiet and depressed, he is an embodiment of silence, keeping all of his feelings to himself. We can conclude that he is only like this because of the harsh winters, the suffering and repression. Another little reminder to Ethan that he has been stuck in the depressed village is the Frome gravestones at his house. Ethan did want ‘change and freedom’ and because he never found it they mock him, ‘we never got away - how could you?’. His farm is his existence, his farm is ghostly as it stands ‘in all it’s plaintive ugliness’. His house has rubbed off on Ethan and the ghostly house has contributed to his hard life. Ethan has been left to ‘carry the burden of the farm’, since his ‘father’s accident’ and when his mother fell ill he was left alone, so since he was young he has looked after his mother and the farm. Ethan’s mother’s illness led him to meet Zeena, his future wife. When his mother died, ‘he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm’, so he asked Zeena to marry him, without really loving her. Ethan’s economic problems have had a major effect on his life because he has been poor all of his life so he has had to work very hard. All Ethan has to try and get his home through winter is a ‘barren farm and a failing saw mill’. Frome’s wife, Zeena also adds to Ethan’s economic problems with all of the different medicines she buys. Even when Ethan does meet ‘his one ray of light’ whom he loves, he can’t leave, Ethan is trapped by his poverty. He can’t leave his wife or farm because he doesn’t have enough money. All of Ethan’s ...
