Isolated Dearh
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Ethan Frome, the title character in Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, resides in a detached world both silent and isolated. Poverty and responsibility prevent Ethan from leaving Starkfield. However, the arrival of Mattie Silver enthuses and invigorates Ethan. His love for Mattie ultimately results in their impulsive attempt at suicide. After their futile attempt, they depreciate and live tedious lives full of emotional decay, physical ruin, and loneliness. Isolation becomes evident through the development of Ethan’s character, shown through physical and emotional isolation as well as Ethan’s attempt to break his isolation.
Ethan Frome is physically isolated from the world and cut off from the possibility of any human fellowship that village life may afford. Rural New England winters contain remote towns and farms that lay like distant islands separated by vast expanses of cold and snow. The initial impression of narrator depicts the immense solitude and remoteness of the farm. “Beyond the orchard lay a field or two and above the fields, huddled against the white immensities of land and sky, one of those lonely New England farmhouses that make the landscape lonelier” (Wharton 10). During the harsh Starkfield winters, the Frome farm becomes a place of confinement for Ethan, a place that hinders his aspirations and dreams, an imprisonment unavoidable even in death. “The Frome gravestones. . .had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom.” (Wharton 28). Ethan fears that he will remain in Starkfield, isolated from the rest of the village even in death.
In conjunction with his physical remoteness, Ethan Frome develops a mental and emotional isolation. Ethan psychologically separates himself through his sensitivity to nature as well as through his curiosity in science. Ethan grows in solitude and withdraws his emotions into a protective shell. “He lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access” (Wharton 7). The farm, the millwork, and caring for Zeena imprison him. “He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished” (Wharton 75). Because of this, Ethan’s emotional distress and seclusion begin to cultivate his social isolation.
Throughout his life, Ethan attempts to escape the cycle