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Tone
Explanation and Analysis:
For the most part, the tone of Ethan Frome closely aligns with the novel’s bleak and melancholy mood. Wharton’s poetic style, which includes extensive figurative language and eloquent descriptions of nature, evokes feelings of sorrow and loneliness in the reader and contributes to a somber character. At some points, however, Wharton’s tone is better characterized as critical and sarcastic. Although the reader is ostensibly meant to root for Ethan and Mattie and mourn their tragic fate, Wharton’s tone at times suggests that she is not entirely sympathetic to them.
Ethan Frome primarily utilizes third-person narration, but much of the narrative is colored by Ethan’s personal perspective. Through his eyes, Mattie’s beauty and sweet nature make her an ideal wife, while Ethan’s actual wife Zeena comes across as bitter and calculating. As a result, the reader is likely to sympathize with Ethan’s desire to escape his marriage and indulge his love for Mattie. In certain passages, however, Wharton’s tone complicates this simple narrative. It becomes clear, for example, that part of Ethan’s attraction for Mattie stems from her helplessness, which makes her seem more feminine. In Chapter 4, for example, when Mattie becomes distraught over the broken pickle-dish, Ethan feels affirmed in his masculinity when he is able to calm her:
[H]is soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone had subdued her. She did not even ask what he had done. Except when he was steering a big log down the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of mastery.
Wharton’s tone in this passage somewhat sours the reader’s impression of Ethan. The words like “subdued” and “mastery” imply that Ethan views himself as superior to Mattie, while the reference to steering a log down the mountain suggests that he sees her as a mere object to be controlled. In Chapter 7, it becomes clear that part of Ethan’s unhappiness in his marriage to Zeena stems from his inability to control her the way he controls Mattie:
It was the sense of his helplessness that sharpened his antipathy. There had never been anything in her that one could appeal to; but as long as he could ignore and command he had remained indifferent. Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her.
In this passage, Ethan freely admits that he has made no attempts to salvage his marriage to Zeena and has instead ignored her as much as possible, which has likely contributed to her sense of isolation and led her to lash out at him in response. Ethan, Wharton implies, has never truly considered how his behavior has affected Zeena, but the moment the roles are reversed and Ethan’s authority is challenged, he is left feeling emasculated and outraged. This hypocrisy makes Ethan seem less sympathetic and leaves the reader wondering if Ethan would actually be happier with Mattie or if their relationship would deteriorate in a similar fashion.
This complicated portrayal of the relationships between men and women, combined with Wharton's cynical tone, elevates Ethan Frome from the status of a tragic love story to a piece of social criticism that demonstrates the harmful nature of traditional gender roles.
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