Arriving home, Ethan finds the door locked. Mattie opens it, in her usual dress but with a streak of crimson ribbon in her hair. She has carefully set the supper table for Ethan with festive treats and colorful serving dishes.
After Ethan removes his outerwear, he returns to the kitchen, where Mattie has put the teakettle on the table. She playfully admits to entertaining Jotham Powell over a cup of coffee, which makes Ethan prickle slightly with jealousy.
At supper, the cat jumps up onto the table, upsetting and breaking a pickle dish. Ethan confidently consoles her, balancing the fragments into a convincing whole high atop the closet, where it would be unlikely that Zeena could detect the breakage.
Having averted the disaster, Ethan and Mattie settle back down at the table to finish their supper. As he stares at the gravestone, which memorializes the lives and fifty-year marriage of ethan frome and endurance his wife , Ethan believes his own fate is spelled out before him.
This is page 26 of Buy a copy of Ethan Frome at Amazon. Edith Wharton : Ethan Frome 2. CHAPTER II continued They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded lane, where Ethan's sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields.
Previous: Chapter 2 continued. Denis laughed, and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast of her retreating figure.
Get in quick! It's as slippery as thunder on this turn," he cried, leaning over to reach out a hand to her. By this time they had passed beyond Frome's earshot and he could only follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued to move along the crest of the slope above him.
He saw Eady, after a moment, jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over one arm. The other he tried to slip through hers; but she eluded him nimbly, and Frome's heart, which had swung out over a black void, trembled back to safety. A moment later he heard the jingle of departing sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty expanse of snow before the church.
In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she turned with a quick "Oh! They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars.
He brought his question out. Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw. Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious.
To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in a growl of rapture: "Come along. He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had done, and fancied it was faintly pressed against her side, but neither of them moved. It was so dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head beside his shoulder.
He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable runners, looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn. She lingered, pressing closer to his side.
We were all sure they were killed. They're so happy! I guess I can take you down all right! He was aware that he was "talking big," like Denis Eady; but his reaction of joy had unsteadied him, and the inflection with which she had said of the engaged couple "They're so happy! These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome.
The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him, and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired. To-night the pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward despair, and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady.
He mounted School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they reached the lane leading to the saw-mill; then the need of some definite assurance grew too strong for him.
He could not pronounce the name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat. She stopped short, and he felt, in the darkness, that her face was lifted quickly to his. For a woman in her position, who can gain security only through marriage, this action is reckless. Active Themes. Duty and Morality vs. After Denis leaves, Ethan joins Mattie and they begin the walk back to the farm. They pause near the top of a hill on the road home, and Mattie tells Ethan that Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum narrowly escaped sledding into a big elm tree at the bottom of the icy slope.
Ethan promises Mattie that the two of them can return to "coast" when there is a moon, boasting that with him steering there will be no danger of striking the tree. Mattie claims that she is not the kind of person who would be afraid of a possible sledding accident. The love Ethan and Mattie share is palpable, in their boastful, flirting language, but they never actually get up the courage to admit their feelings. The tale of another young couple's narrow escape foreshadows Ethan and Mattie's sledding accident.
Ethan's boast that he can guide the sled to safety indicates his desire to prove his masculinity to Mattie. Determinism and Free Will. Wanting to find out for sure whether Mattie has feelings for Denis , Ethan mentions that other people have been saying that Mattie will be leaving the Frome household. Mattie, however, thinks that Ethan is referring to Zeena 's dissatisfaction with the way she does the housework. Mattie is clearly distressed at the prospect of having to leave, and this reassures Ethan.
Though Mattie's feelings for Ethan are obvious, Ethan can't quite believe it. Meanwhile, the mention of Zeena's dissatisfaction with Mattie already makes clear that if they want to stay together they will have to act in some way.
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