Ethan Frome

After Zeena’s departure, Ethan heads into town. The prospect of dinner with Mattie has cheered him, reviving the optimism and sociability his struggles have suppressed: “Left alone, after his father’s accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had had no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields” (41). It was largely to escape this loneliness that Ethan married Zeena, who had helped him care for his sick mother. However, even before Zeena fell ill, the marriage was troubled; it was partly Zeena’s need for social prominence that made Ethan’s dream of moving to a larger, more anonymous city impossible.

Ethan reaches his destination—the builder Andrew Hale’s yard—and unloads the logs. To cover his earlier lie, he then awkwardly asks for an advance payment. Hale declines, and Ethan refuses to press the matter. While in town, Ethan also notices Denis Eady; he’s driving towards Ethan’s farm, and Ethan worries he’s going to visit Mattie. However, when Ethan reaches the farm, he sees no sign of Denis, and Mattie tells him her only visitor was Jotham.

Mattie is wearing a red ribbon in her hair and has already set the table for dinner. She and Ethan sit down to eat, but their conversation becomes stilted whenever Zeena’s name comes up. When the cat jumps onto the table, Mattie and Ethan both reach to move the milk jug, accidentally brushing hands. In the confusion, the cat knocks a pickle dish off the table and breaks it.

Mattie cries as she cleans up, explaining that the dish was a wedding present of Zeena’s that Mattie wasn’t supposed to use. Ethan tries to reassure her, hiding the pieces and devising a plan to fix it without Zeena knowing: “If he glued it together the next morning months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened, and meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadd’s Falls or Bettsbridge” (49). Ethan then sits back down to dinner, urging Mattie not to worry.

After dinner, Ethan settles next to the stove while Mattie sews. He invites her to come closer to the fire, but when she takes Zeena’s usual chair, she complains she can’t see her work and returns to her prior seat. The two chat, and Ethan absorbs the scene’s domesticity:

The commonplace nature of what they said produced in Ethan an illusion of long-established intimacy which no outburst of emotion could have given, and he set his imagination adrift on the fiction that they had always spent their evenings thus and would always go on doing so (52).

Ethan eventually mentions their conversation about sledding, and Mattie playfully accuses him of forgetting; he responds that it’s too dark tonight but that they can go the following evening if the moon is out.

Reaching for the material Mattie is stitching, Ethan mentions that he saw her friends Ruth and Ned kissing in town earlier that day: “Ethan had imagined that his allusion might open the way to the accepted pleasantries, and these perhaps in turn to a harmless caress, if only a mere touch on her hand. But now he felt as if her blush had set a flaming guard about her” (53). Awkwardly, Ethan says he expects the pair will marry soon and again suggests that Mattie herself might wish to wed. Mattie questions why he keeps broaching the subject, worried that Zeena wants her gone; Ethan says he’s just trying to grow used to the idea and urges her not to worry. He’s still holding the fabric, and as his thoughts turn towards Zeena’s inevitable return, he lifts a corner of the material and kisses it.

Mattie stands, folding up the fabric and attending to her nightly chores around the room. Ethan hands her a candle and says goodnight as she leaves for bed.