Ethan Frome Foreshadowing Plot and Conflict

In the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, foreshadowing is used to show and explain plot and conflict within the novel. The narrator’s introduction to the story describes Ethan as a crippled man who has had a “smash-up“(11), foreshadowing that his relationship with Mattie will meet a tragic end. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator makes several references to the “smash-up” (11) foreshadowing that the way Ethan, the main character, looks has something to do with this so called “smash-up” (11). “Even then he was still the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but a ruin of a man” (11). Ethan’s looks gave the narrator an impression that Ethan was an old man. “There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that [the narrator] took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that [Ethan] was not more than fifty- two” (11). The repeated references to sledding, and to the dangers associated with it, foreshadow the climactic scene in which Ethan and Mattie crash into the elm tree. When they reach Starkfield they see some boys with sleds leaving the sledding-grounds, and at the top of the hill Ethan asks Mattie if she’d like to coast down with him one time before they drive to the station. Mattie says there isn’t time, but Ethan helps her onto a sled that’s lying under the trees and climbs on behind her. Mattie asks him if he can see, and Ethan says he could steer them down with his eyes closed. He peers through the dusk and they fly down the hill, passing safely by the elm. Ethan asks Mattie if she was scared, and she replies that she is never scared when she’s with him. Ethan boasts that he is a good judge of distances, but that one swerve would have sent them into the elm, and they’d “never ha’ come up again” (128). Ethan feels strong and competent; Mattie feels protected and cared for. Ethan’s boast that his judgment saved them from a collision makes Mattie realize that they could easily kill themselves by steering into the tree. As they climb back up the hill, Ethan thinks to himself that it’s the last time they’ll ever walk together. Ethan says he thinks the sled is Ned Hale’s, and Mattie asks him if this is the place where he saw Ned and Ruth kissing. She kisses him, crying “Good-bye!” Ethan cries that he can’t let her go, and Mattie, sobbing, says she can’t bear to go either. They cling to each other as the church clock strikes five. Mattie’s impulse to kiss Ethan on the spot where another couple have kissed indicates her wish that their relationship, like Ruth and Ned’s, were legitimate in the eyes of the community. The couple’s passion causes them to act recklessly. Suddenly, Mattie asks Ethan to sled down with her again, “So’t we’ll never come up any more.” Ethan asks her what she means, and she says she wants him to steer them into the big elm. He says she’s crazy, but Mattie responds that she will be if she has to leave him. Mattie realizes that death offers them an escape of last resort. Society won’t let them be together in life, but society can’t touch them in death. For his part, Ethan decides that real death is preferable to the living death he shares with Zeena. Jumping forward twenty years, the narrator enters the Frome household. Inside, he meets the gaze of two frail and aging women, and takes stock of the house’s squalid conditions. Frome apologizes for the lack of heat in the house and introduces the narrator to the woman preparing their supper—his wife, Zeena—and to the seated, crippled woman in the chair by the fire—Mattie. Ethan and Zeena’s sad marriage will continue is the tombstone in the Frome graveyard. It reads, “Sacred to the memory of / Ethan Frome and Endurance his wife / Who dwelled together in peace / For fifty years” (Wharton 59). The writting refers to a previous Ethan Frome, but the significance to Zeena’s husband Ethan is clear. Though the marriage may appear peaceful from the outside (like the pickle dish), the use of the name/word ‘Endurance’ gives it a negative connection, suggesting that while Ethan and Zeena’s marriage is something to be endured and struggled through, rather than enjoyed, it will continue until their dead in the future, when he and Zeena will have a similar tombstone. The broken pickle dish was given to Ethan and Zeena as a wedding gift , and it is, in fact, a symbol for their marriage. When a combination of Mattie, Ethan, and the cat manage to break the dish, Ethan “…laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting form below that the dish was broken” (Wharton 64). The dish (their marriage) is broken, but instead of throwing it out, Ethan puts it back together without really fixing it, and returns it to the shelf. There’s not anything but appearance holding it together, and it is a sad thing, but together it is, suggesting that no matter the pain and brokenness involved in Ethan and Zeena’s marriage, it will (somewhat depressingly) remain intact. In conclusion, the narrator uses Ethan’s appearance, the many references to sledding, and Ethan’s marriage to foreshadow plot and conflict within the novel.