Zeena Frome - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

In the prologue, Wharton sets the frame for the main story. The prologue (and epilogue) take place some twenty years after the events of the main story and are written in the first person. The anonymous Narrator describes his first impressions of Ethan Frome and about how he pieced together the story of Ethan Frome from personal observation and from fragments of the story told to him by townspeople. The prologue not only introduces The Narrator, but also describes Starkfield…

Significant themes in Ethan Frome include silence, seclusion, impression, and the consequences that are the result of living according to the guidelines of society. Wharton depends on personal experiences to relate her thematic messages. Throughout her life as a writer, Wharton would arrange the time that she wrote around social engagements and she did not easily discuss her writing. As an outcome, she was familiar with silence and seclusion. The guidelines of society did not condone a lady who belonged…

For my paper, I will be analyzing the prologue to Ethan Frome, specifically the passage in which the narrator describes the winter season in Starkfield when “the village lay under a sheet of show perpetually renewed from the pale skies” (7). The narrator is not only intensely responsive to the beauty of the natural scene and the seasons, but has a distinct inclination to provide his response in imagistic or poetic language. The lexical field of wintry weather in all…

Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a sophisticated period piece which places the reader in a poignant era of American history during the turn of the 20th century. Published in 1911, Ethan Frome can be considered a historical document that reflects the growing ideologies that came about as a result of the Progressive Era, in which people demanded social change as a result of rapid industrialization and modernization (Kennedy, 453). Throughout the text, Wharton uses setting and characterization to illustrate these…