ethan frome1

Edith Wharton is an American author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In her novella Ethan Frome, Wharton uses symbolism as a means of developing the theme of her story. Ethan Frome takes place in a small New England community in which there is little acceptance towards sinful deeds. Around the Frome house many objects take a symbolic level. The cat, the “L” shaped barn, the red pickle dish, and the elm tree …

…broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body “(63). Figuratively speaking critic Kenneth Bernard causes this body the “corpse of her marriage “(393). Another major symbol used in this novel is the Frome’s cat. “The cat, used symbolically throughout this part of the book to represent Zeena’s inescapable presence, knocks the dish to the floor”(Shuman 399). The dish breaks after Mattie had just prepared a supper for only