How old is ethan frome in chapter 1

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The Narrator 's "vision" of Ethan Frome's story , told in the third person, begins. It is winter in Starkfield. Young Ethan Frome walks through the deep snow to the church where a dance is being held. As he walks, Ethan is reminded of a physics course he took four or five years earlier at a technological college in Worcester, before his father's accidental death forced him to drop out of school and return to Starkfield to take over the Frome farm.

Ethan's educational ambitions were thwarted by events outside of his control—a horse kick to his father's head—and by his own sense of duty to return and take over the farm.

Active Themes. Determinism and Free Will. Hiding outside the church, Ethan peeps through a window and sees Mattie Silver , his wife's younger cousin, dancing with Denis Eady , the son of Michael Eady , a wealthy shopkeeper.

Mattie, wearing a cherry-colored scarf called a "fascinator," appears happy and exhilarated. Ethan is dismayed that Mattie doesn't see what an arrogant, offensive fellow Denis is. Since Ethan is only happy when he is with Mattie, he's confused by Mattie's high spirits, and worries that she may be in love with Denis. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion.

But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. And there were other sensations, less definable but more exquisite, which drew them together with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of sunset behind winter hills, the flight of cloud-flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow.

As he stood in the darkness outside the church these memories came back with the poignancy of vanished things. Watching Mattie whirl down the floor from hand to hand he wondered how he could ever have thought that his dull talk interested her. To him, who was never gay but in her presence, her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference. The face she lifted to her dancers was the same which, when she saw him, always looked like a window that has caught the sunset. He even noticed two or three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him: a way of throwing her head back when she was amused, as if to taste her laugh before she let it out, and a trick of sinking her lids slowly when anything charmed or moved her.

The sight made him unhappy, and his unhappiness roused his latent fears. Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping, and her training had done nothing to remedy the defect. She was quick to learn, but forgetful and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously. Ethan had an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant instinct would wake, and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the county; but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her.

At first she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her; but she laughed with him and that made them better friends. He did his best to supplement her unskilled efforts, getting up earlier than usual to light the kitchen fire, carrying in the wood overnight, and neglecting the mill for the farm that he might help her about the house during the day. He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after the women had gone to bed; and Zeena, one day, had surprised him at the churn and had turned away silently, with one of her queer looks.

Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour, as intangible but more disquieting. One cold winter morning, as he dressed in the dark, his candle flickering in the draught of the ill-fitting window, he had heard her speak from the bed behind him. He had supposed her to be asleep, and the sound of her voice had startled him, though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after long intervals of secretive silence. He turned and looked at her where she lay indistinctly outlined under the dark calico quilt, her high-boned face taking a grayish tinge from the whiteness of the pillow.

Frome turned away again, and taking up his razor stooped to catch the reflection of his stretched cheek in the blotched looking-glass above the wash-stand. Ethan, glaring at his face in the glass, threw his head back to draw the razor from ear to chin. His hand was steady, but the attitude was an excuse for not making an immediate reply. He was getting into his clothes in fumbling haste. That thrust had frightened him more than any vague insinuations about Denis Eady.

He also acknowledges his fear that Mattie has no real affection for him and that Zeena will uncover his growing love for Mattie. This train of thought is triggered by the sight of Mattie treating Eady to some of the mannerisms and affectations that Ethan thought she reserved for him alone.

Ethan thinks about Zeena's "sickly" nature and suspects that she feigns part of her illness. He remembers the morning when Zeena observed him shaving and he realized that Zeena is aware of everything that goes on around her — in spite of her illnesses. Feeling shy because of his recollections of Zeena and his reaction to Mattie's attentions to Eady, Ethan decides to test Mattie and see if she will ride home with Eady. Mattie refuses Eady and as she goes off alone to walk home, Ethan catches up with her.

He feels happy by what he perceives as her choice of him over Eady. The couple stops for a moment above the Corbury hill as Mattie tells Ethan about Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum's brush with death as their sled almost hit the elm tree on its downhill run. Because Ethan is insecure, he intimates that Mattie will be leaving the Fromes' house to marry Eady.

Mattie interprets Ethan's comment about the fact that she might want to marry Eady to mean that Zeena wants her gone. She apologizes for her inadequacies as a houseworker, and asks Ethan to clarify what he means. Ethan, however, is unable to communicate his true feelings.

Approaching the farmhouse, Ethan is reassured that Mattie will not marry Eady. He walks arm in arm with her and when she stumbles, uses the opportunity to put his arm around her. When they reach the back door, they cannot find the door key that Zeena always leaves for them. As Ethan searches for the key in the snow, he sees light under the door and Zeena opens it. She hadn't put the key out because she was up; she felt "so mean" she could not sleep. After scolding Ethan and Mattie about the snow on their boots, Zeena starts to go off to bed; Ethan does not want to follow her upstairs to their bedroom but thinks he sees Mattie blink him a warning, so he gives in to his wife and goes to bed.

Chapter 1 begins the main story of Ethan Frome, which takes place about twenty-four years earlier than the prologue and epilogue and describes the three and a half days before and including the "smash-up" Mattie and Ethan's sledding accident. Wharton shifts the point of view in this chapter from the first person to the limited omniscient point of view. The limited omniscient point of view allows Wharton to relate the thoughts and feelings of only one character.

In Ethan Frome , Wharton relates the thoughts and feelings of Ethan. As the story opens, Wharton continues the imagery and symbolism of the winter setting in Starkfield. The first paragraph describes the winter night when Ethan walks into town to meet Mattie at the church. It is windy, and there is two feet of snow on the ground; the stars shine like icicles and Orion seems to be a "cold fire. Wharton's intention is to emphasize the bitterness and hardness of the winter by describing a star in a "sky of iron.

Wharton uses imagery associated with winter to characterize Zeena, and imagery of spring and summer to represent Mattie. When Ethan reaches the church, he stays in "pure and frosty darkness," analogous to the silence and isolation he experiences and in opposition to the happy sociability of the interior of the church which he sees in "a mist of heat" caused by the "volcanic fires" from the stove in the room.

Ethan feels that Mattie's effect on him is like "the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth.