” (Wharton, 53).Four years after their marriage, Zeena fell in and hired her cousin, Mattie Silver, to come care for her. Ethan Frome finds silence falling between him and Zeena and the dreariness she carries. He noticed one night, in particular, “the pale light reflected from the banks of snow made her face look more than unusually drawn and bloodless, sharpened the three parallel creases between ear and cheek, and drew querulous lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth. Though she was but seven years her husband’s senior, and he was only twenty-eight, she was already an old woman (Wharton, 47).Ethan Frome, in an attempt to escape the entrapment of the failing marriage finds himself falling in love with her the youthfulness she carries, as, “the pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave life and elasticity to Mattie” (Wharton, 60). Mattie, being young and single, often went to gatherings in town. Ethan always took it upon himself to meet her afterward and escort her home. One evening while waiting to pick her up from a dance he is drawn to the window and watches the young couples dance. He picks her out of the crowd and watches her dance with another young gentleman of the town. As they turn about, she continually tosses her head back with laughter, the way he loved and so often recreated in his mind, and “to him, who was never gay but in her presence, her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference. …The sight made him unhappy, and his unhappiness roused his latent fears” (Wharton, 25). While escorting her home he wants to tell her his feelings and thoughts, but “the fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him, and he feared” (Wharton, 34). But during the walk home he continues thinking of ...
