He gets up and they begin the morning chores. At breakfast, Zeena confirms her decision of the previous night by telling Jotham that Daniel Byrne is going to pick up Mattie's trunk and take it to the train station.
Ethan decides to ask Andrew Hale for the money owed him once again, but on the way he meets Mrs. Hale who is sympathetic towards him. He realizes that he can't ask for the money and must accept the reality of the situation. While he's home for lunch, Ethan defies Zeena and refuses to allow Jotham to drive Mattie to the train station, insisting that he drive Mattie himself.
Zeena retires to her bedroom, and Mattie and Ethan begin their journey to the train station. Ethan tries to tell Mattie of his wish to run away with her, and she produces the note he'd written the night before that she'd found in his study. They confirm that their imagined love for each other is real.
They arrive at the sledding hill and decide to make good on the plans they had to go sledding together. After they successfully coast down the hill once, they kiss good-bye. Because they don't wish to be separated, ever, they decide to commit suicide by sledding into the elm tree.
As they start down the hill and approach the elm tree, Ethan has an ugly vision of Zeena's face that causes him to swerve the sled; but he resumes the course and steers the sled into the elm tree.
As Ethan regains consciousness, his vision returns and he tries to determine if the star he is looking at is Sirius. As his hearing returns, he hears the sound of a small animal calling out in pain. He becomes aware that the sound is coming from under his hand, which is on Mattie's face in the snow. He hears his horse whinny and is reminded that the horse needs to be fed. When Ethan goes to his study and lays down on the sofa, a cushion that Zeena made for him — the only piece of needlework that Zeena had ever done — pokes him in the cheek.
Ethan throws the cushion across the room. His action is symbolic of his growing rejection of Zeena. He thinks of going West with Mattie and of escaping from Zeena, but realizes that he is a prisoner of circumstance. Wharton uses the image of captivity to convey Ethan's feeling of despair; "the inexorable facts closed in on him like prison-warders handcuffing a convict," "he was a prisoner for life.
Wharton contrasts Ethan's gloom with a sudden, mocking illumination of the night sky as the "pure moon" reveals all the natural beauty of the landscape that Ethan associates with Mattie. The moon also foreshadows the sledding accident as Ethan remembers that this is the night when he had promised to take Mattie sledding.
After Mattie finds him and they begin the morning chores, things don't seem so bleak to Ethan. His self-deceptive optimism about Mattie takes over his thoughts, and despite his earlier realization that Zeena's decision is unchangeable, he decides that things are not hopeless and that he can find a way to keep Mattie at home with him.
At breakfast when Zeena confirms to Jotham that Mattie would definitely be leaving, Ethan's subservience to her is again evident. He does not mention his thoughts or intentions. He fails, once again, to assert himself over his wife. Again, Ethan feels defeated. His reaction is to rebel against Zeena. He is determined to do something to change the situation.
He decides to go to Andrew Hale once again for the money he is owed, but on the way, he meets Mrs. Hale, who is sympathetic towards him. We also know that Ethan is still going to be alive at the time when the narrator arrives in Starkfield, and so we immediately know that their suicide attempt is going to be unsuccessful.
The suicide attempt is the final and most terrible failed plan of Ethan Frome. It caps off a long string of aborted plans and frustrated wishes, and this time the consequences are tragic.
We are back with the narrator of the opening. He is entering Ethan Frome's house, and from afar he has heard the harsh sound of a woman complaining. In the kitchen two old women are sitting, one tall and severe, the other slight.
The tall woman gets up to get supper on the table. The slight woman moves her head without moving her body; she is paralyzed. She has a witch-like stair and a nagging, terrible voice. Ethan introduces the women to the narrator: the tall woman is Zeena. The cripple is Mattie Silver. Later, the narrator is talking with the widowed Mrs. Hale Ruth Varnum, before she married Ned.
Hale is surprised that Ethan invited the narrator in for the night. Not many go into the Frome home, on account of Ethan's pride. Hale visits there one or two times a year. She tries to pick a day when Ethan is out, because she cannot bear to see the pain on his face. On the night of the accident, Zeena came right away to the minister's place, where the two of them had been taken. As soon as Mattie could be moved, Zeena had her brought back to the Frome farm.
Mattie has been there ever since; she had nowhere else to go. Zeena has cared for them both for twenty years; somehow, she found the strength, even though at one time she believed she couldn't take care of herself. All of them are hard, bitter people. Mattie is hateful and difficult, and although Zeena usually bears it, at times the two of them quarrel viciously. At these times, the look on Ethan's face is heart-breaking.
Hale confides in the narrator that she thinks it would have been better if Mattie had died. The novel finishes with one of the more memorable closing lines of American literature, spoken by the widow with conviction: "And I say, if she'd ha' died, Ethan might ha' lived; and the way they are now, I don't see there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues.
The narrator's outside view brings the Fromes' poverty into sharp relief. He remarks that even by the standards of the rural poor the Fromes' kitchen is squalid. And when we see Mattie Silver, now a paralyzed and hideous hag, we are reminded that she had nowhere else to go. Ethan Frome is partially a reaction against portraits of rural living that romanticized poverty and farming.
Wharton shows again and again that poverty is soul-destroying. It has taken away Ethan's chances at happiness again and again. It forced Mattie to stay with the Fromes after the accident, and it has led to all of them ending life as stunted, hateful people. We see the theme of time as destroyer, waster. Before, the novel has given us the contrast between buildings as they were in the past and as they stand now; we have also seen the painful contrast between the young Ethan and the old lame man he becomes.
But Mattie's transformation is the most horrible change we have seen. She is transformed from a lively, pretty girl to a hideous and bitter crone. Her re-entrance as an old cripple is one of the novel's most chilling moments. Zeena's transformation is an interesting and ambiguous development. Some have read it as showing that Zeena possessed untapped reserves of strength and compassion; however, this reading runs up against some significant counter-evidence.
The first is the narrator's description of her: "She [Zeena] had pale opaque eyes which revealed nothing and reflected nothing" Suddenly, Ethan proposes that they embark on their sledding adventure right away, reassuring Mattie that the hired girl can wait for them at the station. Sighting a sled beneath the Varnum spruces, they make their way over to it and climb aboard. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Themes Motifs Symbols. Important Quotes Explained.
Mini Essays Suggested Essay Topics. Summary Chapter ix. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3. Previous section Chapter viii Next page Chapter ix page 2. Test your knowledge Take the Chapter ix Quick Quiz. Popular pages: Ethan Frome. Take a Study Break.
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