the term has to be viewed as derogatory. The next American author who vilifies women is Edith Wharton. Her novel, Ethan Frome, has two main female characters, Mattie and Zeena. Wharton initially uses physical description to present these women as villains. Mattie is young, vibrant and usually happy; she is a temptress to Ethan. Zeena, on the other hand, is harsh and cruel long before her time. Wharton uses descriptive details to paint an image of Zeena in the reader’s mind; her features are as hateful as she is. Ethan observes her lying in bed in the early hours of the morning and says “her high boned face was taking a grayish tinge from the whiteness of the pillow” (Wharton 26). Later, she is described as “tall and angular” with a “flat breast” (Wharton 138). Before Zeena leaves to see the doctor, when she is convinced that her sickness is getting worse, Ethan says “her face looked more than usually drawn and bloodless, and the three parallel creases between her ear and cheek were sharpened and there were three querulous lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth” (Wharton 47). The negative description of Zeena’s physical appearance forces the reader to identify Zeena as a villain in the novel.Ethan says that his wife is only seven years his senior, and he was only twenty-eight, but “she was already an old woman” (Wharton 47). Zeena had plenty of imagined ailments; when Zeena nursed Ethan’s mother until she died, Ethan thought she had remarkable skill, but later “saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms” (Wharton 52). The only time Ethan can convince himself that there is some semblance of peace in his house is when Zeena had Mattie to work for her and therefore had “more leisure time to devote to her complex ailments” (Wharton 44). Zeena is “wholly ab...
