79 pages • 2 hours read
Edith WhartonEthan Frome
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1911A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Prologue
Reading Check
1. What is the name of the town where the novel takes place?
2. What is the narrator’s profession?
3. How does the narrator meet Ethan Frome?
4. What event causes the narrator to spend the night at Ethan’s farm?
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following best describes the narrator’s depiction of rural Massachusetts in winter?
A) desolate
B) picturesque
C) hazardous
D) sleepy
2. The narrator’s remark that Harmon Gow “developed [Ethan's] tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted” suggests that which of the following may shape the narrator’s own account (Prologue)?
A) racism
B) sexism
C) classism
D) ableism
3. What does Harmon Gow imply regarding the value of the Fromes’ farm?
A) It has increased in value.
B) It has decreased in value.
C) Its value has remained steady.
D) It is worth more than it is valued at.
4. Which of the following moments hints at Ethan’s frustrated ambition and dreams?
A) when he picks up medicine at the post office
B) when he discusses having to take down his farm’s “L”
C) when he offers to drive the narrator to the power plant
D) when he shows interest in a book the narrator is reading
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What contradiction does the narrator immediately notice in Ethan’s appearance?
2. To what does Ethan attribute his mother’s decline and death?
3. As strongly suggested by the narrative, which character is most likely responsible for the “querulous droning” the narrator hears upon entering Ethan’s house?
Chapters 1-2
Reading Check
1. What is Mattie’s relationship to Zeena?
2. Why did Ethan abandon his study of engineering?
3. What event is Mattie attending at the church?
4. Identify Denis Eady in terms of two other characters.
5. What local landmark do Mattie and Ethan pass on their way back to the farm?
Multiple Choice
1. How does Ethan feel as he watches Mattie dance?
A. intrigued
B. resigned
C. hopeful
D. jealous
2. In what way are Zeena’s references to her health characterized?
A. excuses to avoid housework
B. genuine expressions of concern
C. attempts to make Ethan feel guilty
D. hints that Ethan himself is sick
3. Which of the following passages contains an example of foreshadowing?
A. “Though [Ethan’s studies] had not gone far enough to be of much practical use they had fed his fancy and made him aware of huge cloudy meanings behind the daily face of things.” (Chapter 1)
B. “[Ethan] turned and looked at [Zeena] where she lay indistinctly outlined under the dark calico quilt, her high-boned face taking a grayish tinge from the whiteness of the pillow.” (Chapter 1)
C. "Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all sure they were killed. […] Wouldn't it have been too awful? They're so happy!” (Chapter 2)
D. “It was Zeena's habit, when they came back late from the village, to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat.” (Chapter 2)
4. Which of the following best explains the “wave of warmth” Ethan feels when Mattie trips and catches his arm to stop herself from falling (Chapter 2)?
A. He enjoys feeling strong and protective in Mattie’s presence.
B. He suspects Mattie tripped on purpose and is flattered.
C. He feels sudden embarrassment at Mattie’s proximity.
D. He grows annoyed at this evidence of Mattie’s carelessness.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What color is the scarf Mattie wears at the dance, and why is it significant?
2. Which qualities of Mattie’s does Ethan find especially attractive?
3. Why does Zeena’s remark about Ethan shaving disturb him?
4. How does Mattie respond to Ethan’s remark that she might marry?
Chapters 3-5
Reading Check
1. What jobs did Mattie work before coming to live with the Fromes?
2. Why is Zeena going to Bettsbridge?
3. What lie does Ethan tell Zeena as she prepares to leave?
4. What breaks during Mattie and Ethan’s dinner?
5. What gesture of affection passes between Mattie and Ethan just before they go to bed?
Multiple Choice
1. Mattie’s financial situation highlights which of the following issues?
A. the injustice of laws that prevent women from holding property
B. the insufficient education provided to middle-class women
C. the double standard that punishes female sexual desire
D. the hypocrisy of refusing to allow women to vote
2. How did Ethan feel while trying to tend to his sick mother and the Frome household?
A. incompetent
B. jealous
C. bored
D. infuriated
3. Which of the following serves as a symbol of Zeena in her absence?
A. the cat
B. the pickle dish
C. the red ribbon
D. the geraniums
4. Which pair of quotations best captures Ethan’s perceptions of Zeena and Mattie, respectively?
A. “When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.” (Chapter 4); “He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the station.” (Chapter 3)
B. “She chose to look down on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on her.” (Chapter 4); “Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung lashes, and his soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone subdued her.” (Chapter 4)
C. “She laughed at him for not knowing the simplest sick-bed duties and told him to ‘go right along out’ and leave her to see to things.” (Chapter 4); “She set the lamp on the table, and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh dough-nuts, stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass.” (Chapter 4)
D. “At times, looking at Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of […] forebodings.” (Chapter 3); “He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze.” (Chapter 5)
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What sorts of skills did Mattie learn growing up and why?
2. How does Ethan imagine his evening with Mattie beforehand? What does this suggest about the kind of relationship he wants with her?
3. Why doesn’t Ethan press the issue of the advance with Hale, and what does this say about him?
4. Why is Mattie so upset about what happens to the pickle dish?
Chapters 6-8
Reading Check
1. Why isn’t Ethan able to buy the glue before Zeena returns?
2. What was the doctor’s advice to Zeena?
3. Where does Ethan consider going with Mattie?
4. What does Ethan see in the paper that causes him to abandon his hopes of eloping with Mattie?
5. What happens when Ethan returns to the Hales about the advance?
Multiple Choice
1. Ethan’s difficulty buying the glue relates to which of the following themes?
A. the foolishness of love
B. the effects of industrialization
C. the power of gender norms
D. fate versus free will
2. Which of the following ideas is implied by Zeena’s remark, “I know well enough what they say of my having kep' [Mattie] here as long as I have” (Chapter 7)?
A. that people think Zeena has fulfilled her familial responsibility to Mattie
B. that people think Mattie should pay for her father’s actions
C. that people think Mattie and Ethan are romantically involved
D. that people think Zeena’s health has suffered since taking Mattie in
3. How does the narrative frame the moment when Ethan nearly hits Zeena?
A. as something he takes pleasure in
B. as something he has no control over
C. as something he does deliberately
D. as something he feels guilt for
4. Which of the following plays the largest role in dissuading Ethan from trying to run away with Mattie?
A. financial considerations
B. social propriety
C. pity for Zeena
D. responsibility to his farm
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is Zeena’s demeanor during the argument with Ethan? What does it suggest about her thought process?
2. What fate does Ethan imagine awaits Mattie if Zeena dismisses her and why?
3. What does Ethan have in his study, and what do these items say about him?
4. How do Mattie and Zeena’s positions as women complicate Ethan’s plan to travel west?
Chapters 9-Epilogue
Reading Check
1. What event do Mattie and Ethan recall while stopped at Shadow Pond?
2. Who proposes committing suicide?
3. What causes Ethan to swerve on the ride into the elm tree?
4. What injury does Mattie sustain in the crash?
5. With whom does the narrator discuss Ethan’s story?
Multiple Choice
1. In retrospect, which of these devices is exemplified by Ethan’s remark, “I want to do for you [Mattie] and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome” (Chapter 9)?
A. fallacy
B. dissonance
C. satire
D. irony
2. Sledding, particularly in Chapter 9, serves as all but which of the following?
A. a substitute for sex
B. an allegory for industrialization
C. a metaphor for Ethan’s life
D. an illustration of Ethan’s passivity
3. Which of the following best describes how Mattie changes after the crash?
A. She has become reserved.
B. She has become anxious.
C. She has become bored.
D. She has become bitter.
4. How does poverty exacerbate the Fromes’ current situation?
A. It forces them to live in close quarters.
B. It prevents them from seeing a doctor.
C. It causes arguments over rations.
D. It makes them outcasts in Starkfield.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is the emotional significance of the picnic for Mattie, and how does her admission regarding it affect Ethan?
2. Why does Mattie resist when Ethan tells her he wants to ride in the front of the sled? What does Ethan say in response?
3. When Ethan wakes up after the crash, one of his first thoughts concerns feeding his horse. What does this say about him?
4. What does Mrs. Hale mean when she says there isn’t “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” (Epilogue)?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Prologue
Reading Check
1. Starkfield, Massachusetts
2. He’s an engineer of some kind.
3. He hires Ethan to drive him to and from the train station (though he has previously seen Ethan at the post office and elsewhere).
4. a blizzard
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Ethan has a powerful build, but he also bears significant and to some extent disabling injuries; his face is scarred, and he walks with a pronounced limp.
2. Ethan suggests the building of the nearby railroad was indirectly responsible for his mother’s decline by eliminating the traffic that used to pass by the Fromes’ property. This isolation, he says, “preyed on her right along till she died” (Prologue).
3. Details suggest the “droning” is Zeena’s; the novel has already implied that Ethan’s wife is needy and hypochondriacal (and has not even mentioned Mattie yet).
Chapters 1-2
Reading Check
1. They’re cousins (Mattie is also serving as the Fromes’ housekeeper).
2. His father died and his mother fell ill, leaving only Ethan to tend to the farm.
3. a dance
4. Denis is the son of a wealthy local grocer. Ethan worries Denis may be trying to seduce or marry Mattie.
5. School House Hill, where the locals go sledding
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Mattie wears a red scarf; its color suggests vibrancy, passion, and love—all of which she represents to Ethan—but it also foreshadows the violent event that will paralyze her.
2. Mattie is young and pretty, and this vivaciousness alone appeals to Ethan, whose life seems full of dead ends and wasted opportunity (his marriage, his struggling farm, etc.). Beyond that, Ethan believes that Mattie is a kindred spirit: someone who shares his sensitivity, his curiosity, and his admiration of the natural world.
3. Zeena’s apparently offhand remark that Ethan now shaves regularly could imply that she suspects he has feelings for Mattie (and is therefore paying extra attention to his appearance). Ethan all but admits to himself that is the reason for the change: “It was a fact that since Mattie Silver's coming he had taken to shaving every day” (Chapter 1).
4. Mattie laughs off the idea that she’s interested in Denis Eady but then grows anxious, worried that Ethan has broached the subject of marriage because Zeena wants her out of the house.
Chapters 3-5
Reading Check
1. stenographer and shop clerk
2. to see a doctor
3. that he is picking up an advance payment on some lumber
4. a pickle dish that was one of Zeena’s wedding presents
5. Ethan kisses a corner of the fabric Mattie is stitching.
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Mattie learned a number of mostly ornamental skills: making candy, decorating clothes, playing a few pieces on the piano. None of these activities are particularly useful outside the home or even within it, where she would be better served knowing the basics of cooking, cleaning, and other household needs. This is in a sense the point; Mattie’s education was probably intended to advertise the fact that she grew up in a well-to-do home—one where she did not need to work—in the hopes of attracting an equally well-to-do husband.
2. Ethan envisions a highly domestic evening with Mattie: “[T]hey would sit there, one on each side of the stove […] he in his stocking feet and smoking his pipe, she laughing and talking in that funny way she had” (Chapter 4). Ethan, in other words, does not want to have an affair with Mattie; he wants a very conventional marriage.
3. Ethan is too “proud” to reiterate his request for an advance, even when Hale asks him whether he’s truly in need. It’s likely that any admission that he is struggling to provide for himself and Zeena would undermine his self-image (and in particular his masculinity), especially given that he once dreamed of much greater success than he has enjoyed.
4. The pickle dish was a wedding present, so it holds sentimental value for Zeena. Just as importantly, Zeena has told Mattie not to set it out; the fact that she did anyway means that she ignored Zeena’s orders and implies that she has feelings for Ethan (that is, she wanted to commemorate their dinner together with a fancy setting).
Chapters 6-8
Reading Check
1. A blizzard and an injury to one of his horses delay him.
2. to hire a professional servant girl and to (possibly) have an operation
3. westward
4. an advertisement listing train fares
5. Mrs. Hale compliments him on his devotion to Zeena, and he leaves without asking for the money.
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. eena is consistently collected throughout the argument and spends a lot of time looking at Ethan as though sizing him up. While it isn’t clear that her entire trip was, as Ethan fumes, “a plot,” Zeena does seem to use the situation to her advantage in a calculated way: Her “drily resolute” tone when she says she intends to follow the doctor’s advice implies that she has already planned for the conversation to end with Mattie’s dismissal.
2. Ethan fears that Mattie will end up struggling to find work in New England’s industrial cities. The novel doesn’t specify what could happen to her, but as an unmarried woman with no skills or connections, the best she could hope for would likely be grueling factory work; at worst, she might face homelessness, prostitution, etc.
3. Ethan has modeled his study on one owned by a minister he knew as a student; it contains a makeshift sofa and shelves, papers, books, a portrait of Lincoln, and “a calendar with ‘Thoughts from the Poets’” (Chapter 9). The room reflects his frustrated intellectual aspirations and his equally futile desire for leisure time to sit and think rather than labor.
4. As middle-class women, both Mattie and Zeena rely on Ethan as a breadwinner; he therefore feels bound to ensure both that Zeena can live off the profits (or sale) of the farm and that he can support Mattie from the moment he leaves with her. Unfortunately, the farm is essentially worthless, and Mattie’s presence could complicate Ethan’s efforts to find work.
Chapters 9-Epilogue
Reading Check
1. a church picnic at which Mattie lost a locket and Ethan found it for her
2. Mattie
3. a memory of Zeena
4. paralysis from the neck down
5. Mrs. Hale
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Mattie says that she first thought of running away with Ethan after the picnic, implying that that was when she realized she was in love with him. This more or less open acknowledgment of longstanding feelings deeply impresses Ethan, who feels “wild wonder […] knowing at last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too” (Epilogue).
2. Mattie points out that Ethan won’t be able steer from the front, to which Ethan responds that they can simply follow the ruts that other sleds have carved. This doesn’t convince her, so Ethan tries ordering her to switch seats before finally saying that he wants her to hold him as they die.
3. The fact that Ethan remembers he needs to feed his horse even in the midst of excruciating pain underscores his dutiful nature. It may also hint at the reason why Ethan and Mattie’s suicide attempt does not go as intended: Ethan is ultimately too responsible and conventional to abandon Zeena and the farm, even by dying.
4. Mrs. Hale believes Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie are leading lives so devoid of hope, love, and meaning that they might as well be dead. Her remark that the women in the cemetery must “hold their tongues” extends the novel’s gender politics (Epilogue), which involve an “unnatural” (according to the era) power dynamic: It’s Ethan who must cater to and obey his wife (and now Mattie as well).
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By Edith Wharton
