Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome’s focus on marriage and domestic life means traditional gender roles loom large. Broadly speaking, 19th- and early-20th-century gender ideology put women at a disadvantage relative to men; as middle-class women were conceived of primarily as homemakers, their financial security often depended on having and keeping a husband. Mattie, for instance, grows up lacking any skills that would make her employable, having only learned the ornamental accomplishments prized in middle-class wives: “She could trim a hat, make molasses candy, recite ‘Curfew shall not ring to-night,’ and play ‘The Lost Chord’ and a pot-pourri from ‘Carmen’” (36). Zeena’s dismissal of Mattie thus represents a threat not just to her relationship with Ethan, but also to her very survival. Of course, Zeena’s own situation is also precarious; if Ethan left her, she would have no way of supporting herself, not least because her sickness and advancing age would probably prevent her from finding another husband.

Ethan himself knows this, and the guilt he feels is among the reasons he doesn’t leave Zeena. This predicament points to something significant: the way in which men, though ostensibly empowered by the era’s gender norms, could actually be constrained by them. Another example involves Ethan’s ignorance of “household wisdom”—”feminine” domestic tasks like cooking, cleaning, and caring for the sick. Never having learned these skills, Ethan becomes completely reliant on Zeena when she takes over his mother’s care: “The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance and magnified his sense of what he owed her” (41).

Zeena’s presence, in other words, allows Ethan to reassume a conventionally male social role, but it also makes him dependent on her; he can only play the part of a breadwinner in public because Zeena is attending to the household chores. This dynamic poses several problems, beginning with the incentive it creates for the couple to marry despite their obvious ill-suitedness. More abstractly, the fact that Ethan is “obeying” Zeena by “going about his business again” belies the era’s association of masculinity with independence, authority, and agency. Ethan continues aspiring to this ideal, however, and consequently feels emasculated whenever he’s reminded of his relative powerlessness.

The flipside of this dynamic is the skill with which Zeena leverages female gender norms to secure power. At the time Wharton was writing, femininity and sickness were conceptually intertwined thanks to stereotypes framing women as frail and neurotic. The idea also provided a useful explanation for the very real boredom and depression that some women who were trapped at home experienced and that even Ethan seems vaguely aware of: “He recalled his mother’s growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning ‘queer.’ Women did, he knew. […] [H]e himself knew of certain lonely farm-houses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined” (42-43). Zeena, however, turns this idea to her advantage. Regardless of whether she’s truly sick, she uses the perception that she is to get her way, most obviously when she demands Mattie’s dismissal, but also whenever she plays on Ethan’s guilt to ensure he complies with her wishes. The novel therefore complicates the idea that 19th-century gender roles straightforwardly disadvantaged women; although this was their net social effect, the power dynamics of specific male–female relationships could be more complex.