Edith Wharton's 1911

georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/wharton.html)

Even as she writes with startling clarity about the desire of so legion(predicate) men in her world (as in so many others times and places) for the kind of pretty, dependent woman that Zeena epitomizes, she sides with the reader against Zeena, ask us how a woman can expect to witness happiness if she is not giveing to run after it on her own.

The focuss in which the limited day-dreams of the three main characters will spin themselves out into tragedy are reinforced by the social geography of the world in which Wharton has set Ethan Frome. artless New England in this era is one that is clearly distinguish into gendered spaces with clear boundaries between male and effeminate spaces. In the world of this novel, men's

In Ethan Frome this house servant space is contested by the two women, both of which dream of love, and both of which have a train to Frome's love. Zeena has the formal claim to his love and devotion both because she is his legal wife and because her physiological weakness should inspire his (and our) pity. Mattie has a claim to Frome's love because she is healthy and beautiful and is intimately available to him in a way that Zeena is not. Ethan serves as the locus of dreams, as the symbol of possible unchangeable happiness, for both of the women, although each one of them conceives of love and happiness in a different way. Conversely, each of the two women serves as a symbol of the kind of love that he believes may fill him enduring happiness in the future.

Segalla, Spencer D. "Re-Inventing Colonialism: Race and Gender in Edith Wharton's In Morocco." Edith Wharton Review 17 (2),Fall 2001: 22-30.

domains begin at the scarecrow door of their homes, extending from those doors outward to the rest of the world. Women's domains (the realms of all of their dreams) lie on the inside of those doors. They have a certain amount of berth in their interior, domestic spaces, and because their realms are so small dribble every possible advantage that they can.

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no(prenominal) of the three main characters in the book are horribly good at fulfilling their prescribed gender roles, and much of the commerce of the novel as well as the nature of its lowest tragedy arises from this central irony. Zeena does not fulfill the gender-determined role of sexual partner and producer of heirs that is the major role of women: Her physical valetudinarianism protects her from the risks of repeated pregnancies. Mattie too fails to be a competent female - failing again and again in the domestic chores that Zeena sets her to do. And Ethan, in his attempts to help Mattie (so Zeena will not be angry
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