Ethan Frome

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Chapter III

THERE WAS some hauling to be done at the lower end of the wood-lot, and Ethan was out early the next day. The winter morning was as clear as crystal. The sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far-off forest hung like smoke.

It was in the early morning stillness, when his muscles were swinging to their familiar task and his lungs expanding with long draughts of mountain air, that Ethan did his clearest thinking. He and Zeena had not exchanged a word after the door of their room had closed on them. She had measured out some drops from a medicine-bottle on a chair by the bed and, after swallowing them, and wrapping her head in a piece of yellow flannel, had lain down with her face turned away. Ethan undressed hurriedly and blew out the light so that he should not see her when he took his place at her side. As he lay there he could hear Mattie moving about in her room, and her candle, sending its small ray across the landing, drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his door. He kept his eyes fixed on the light till it vanished. Then the room grew perfectly black, and not a sound was audible but Zeena's asthmatic breathing. Ethan felt confusedly that there were many things he ought to think about, but through his tingling veins and tired brain only one sensation throbbed: the warmth of Mattie's shoulder against his. Why had he not kissed her when he held her there? A few hours earlier he would not have asked himself the question. Even a few minutes earlier, when they had stood alone outside the house, he would not have dared to think of kissing her. But since he had seen her lips in the lamplight he felt that they were his.

Now, in the bright morning air, her face was still before him. It was part of the sun's red and of the pure glitter on the snow. How the girl had changed since she had come to Starkfield! He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the station. And all the first winter, how she had shivered with cold when the northerly gales shook the thin clapboards and the snow beat like hail against the loose-hung windows!

He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life, the cold and loneliness; but not a sign of discontent escaped her. Zeena took the view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she hadn't any other place to go to; but this did not strike Ethan as conclusive. Zeena, at any rate, did not apply the principle in her own case.

He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had, in a sense, indentured her to them. Mattie Silver was the daughter of a cousin of Zenobia Frome's, who had inflamed his clan with mingled sentiments of envy and admiration by descending from the hills to Connecticut, where he had married a Stamford girl and succeeded to her father's thriving "drug" business. Unhappily Orin Silver, a man of far-reaching aims, had died too soon to prove that the end justifies the means. His accounts revealed merely what the means had been; and these were such that it was fortunate for his wife and daughter that his books were examined only after his impressive funeral. His wife died of the disclosure, and Mattie, at twenty, was left alone to make her way on the fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano. For this purpose her equipment, though varied, was inadequate. 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." When she tried to extend the field of her activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping her health broke down, and six months on her feet behind the counter of a department store did not tend to restore it. Her nearest relations had been induced to place their savings in her father's hands, and though, after his death, they ungrudgingly acquitted themselves of the Christian duty of returning good for evil by giving his daughter all the advice at their disposal, they could hardly be expected to supplement it by material aid. But when Zenobia's doctor recommended her looking about for some one to help her with the house-work the clan instantly saw the chance of exacting a compensation from Mattie. Zenobia, though doubtful of the girl's efficiency, was tempted by the freedom to find fault without much risk of losing her; and so Mattie came to Starkfield.

Zenobia's fault-finding was of the silent kind, but not the less penetrating for that. During the first months Ethan alternately burned with the desire to see Mattie defy her and trembled with fear of the result. Then the situation grew less strained. The pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie, and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments, grew less watchful of the girl's omissions; so that Ethan, struggling on under the burden of his barren farm and failing saw-mill, could at least imagine that peace reigned in his house.

There was really, even now, no tangible evidence to the contrary; but since the previous night a vague dread had hung on his sky-line. It was formed of Zeena's obstinate silence, of Mattie's sudden look of warning, of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would be rain.

His dread was so strong that, man-like, he sought to postpone certainty. The hauling was not over till mid-day, and as the lumber was to be delivered to Andrew Hale, the Starkfield builder, it was really easier for Ethan to send Jotham Powell, the hired man, back to the farm on foot, and drive the load down to the village himself. He had scrambled up on the logs, and was sitting astride of them, close over his shaggy grays, when, coming between him and their streaming necks, he had a vision of the warning look that Mattie had given him the night before.

"If there's going to be any trouble I want to be there," was his vague reflection, as he threw to Jotham the unexpected order to unhitch the team and lead them back to the barn.

It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields, and when the two men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and Zeena was already at the table. Her husband stopped short at sight of her. Instead of her usual calico wrapper and knitted shawl she wore her best dress of brown merino, and above her thin strands of hair, which still preserved the tight undulations of the crimping-pins, rose a hard perpendicular bonnet, as to which Ethan's clearest notion was that he had to pay five dollars for it at the Bettsbridge Emporium. On the floor beside her stood his old valise and a bandbox wrapped in newspapers.

"Why, where are you going, Zeena?" he exclaimed.

"I've got my shooting pains so bad that I'm going over to Bettsbridge to spend the night with Aunt Martha Pierce and see that new doctor," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had said she was going into the store-room to take a look at the preserves, or up to the attic to go over the blankets.

In spite of her sedentary habits such abrupt decisions were not without precedent in Zeena's history. Twice or thrice before she had suddenly packed Ethan's valise and started off to Bettsbridge, or even Springfield, to seek the advice of some new doctor, and her husband had grown to dread these expeditions because of their cost. Zeena always came back laden with expensive remedies, and her last visit to Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use. But for the moment his sense of relief was so great as to preclude all other feelings. He had now no doubt that Zeena had spoken the truth in saying, the night before, that she had sat up because she felt "too mean" to sleep: her abrupt resolve to seek medical advice showed that, as usual, she was wholly absorbed in her health.

As if expecting a protest, she continued plaintively; "If you're too busy with the hauling I presume you can let Jotham Powell drive me over with the sorrel in time to ketch the train at the Flats."

Her husband hardly heard what she was saying. During the winter months there was no stage between Starkfield and Bettsbridge, and the trains which stopped at Corbury Flats were slow and infrequent. A rapid calculation showed Ethan that Zeena could not be back at the farm before the following evening....

"If I'd supposed you'd 'a' made any objection to Jotham Powell's driving me over-" she began again, as though his silence had implied refusal. On the brink of departure she was always seized with a flux of words. "All I know is," she continued, "I can't go on the way I am much longer. The pains are clear away down to my ankles now, or I'd 'a' walked in to Starkfield on my own feet, sooner'n put you out, and asked Michael Eady to let me ride over on his wagon to the Flats, when he sends to meet the train that brings his groceries. I'd 'a' had two hours to wait in the station, but I'd sooner 'a' done it, even with this cold, than to have you say-"

"Of course Jotham'll drive you over," Ethan roused himself to answer. He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena talked to him, and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife. She sat opposite the window, and the pale light reflected from the banks of snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless, sharpened the three parallel creases between ear and cheek, and drew querulous lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth. Though she was but seven years her husband's senior, and he was only twenty-eight, she was already an old woman.

Ethan tried to say something befitting the occasion, but there was only one thought in his mind: the fact that, for the first time since Mattie had come to live with them, Zeena was to be away for a night. He wondered if the girl were thinking of it too....

He knew that Zeena must be wondering why he did not offer to drive her to the Flats and let Jotham Powell take the lumber to Starkfield, and at first he could not think of a pretext for not doing so; then he said: "I'd take you over myself, only I've got to collect the cash for the lumber."

As soon as the words were spoken he regretted them, not only because they were untrue- there being no prospect of his receiving cash payment from Hale- but also because he knew from experience the imprudence of letting Zeena think he was in funds on the eve of one of her therapeutic excursions. At the moment, however, his one desire was to avoid the long drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk.

Zeena made no reply: she did not seem to hear what he had said. She had already pushed her plate aside, and was measuring out a draught from a large bottle at her elbow.

"It ain't done me a speck of good, but I guess I might as well use it up," she remarked; adding, as she pushed the empty bottle toward Mattie: "If you can get the taste out it'll do for pickles."

Frequently Asked Questions about Chapter III from Ethan Frome

What happens in Chapter III of Ethan Frome?

Chapter III begins with Ethan Frome hauling lumber on a brilliant winter morning while replaying the previous evening in his mind, regretting that he did not kiss Mattie Silver. A long flashback details Mattie's backstory: her father Orin Silver died in financial disgrace, her mother died from the shock, and Mattie was left destitute at twenty. Failed attempts at stenography and retail work broke her health, and she was eventually placed with the Fromes as unpaid help. When Ethan returns home, he finds Zeena dressed for travel—she announces she is going overnight to Bettsbridge to see a new doctor. Realizing he and Mattie will be alone, Ethan lies about needing to collect a cash payment so that the hired man, Jotham Powell, will drive Zeena instead.

Why does Ethan lie to Zeena in Chapter III?

Ethan tells Zeena he must collect a cash payment from Andrew Hale for a lumber delivery so that Jotham Powell will have to drive her to the train station instead. In truth, there is no prospect of receiving cash from Hale. Ethan's real motive is to avoid the long, silent drive behind their slow horse and, more importantly, to stay at the farm with Mattie. This is the first time in the novel that Ethan deliberately deceives his wife, marking a turning point where his desire for Mattie begins to override his sense of moral duty. Wharton deepens the irony by having Ethan immediately regret the lie—not because it is dishonest, but because mentioning available money might encourage Zeena to spend more on expensive remedies.

What is Mattie Silver's backstory in Ethan Frome?

Mattie Silver is the daughter of Orin Silver, a cousin of Zenobia Frome. Orin left the hills of New England for Connecticut, married a Stamford girl, and took over her father's drug business. He was a man of "far-reaching aims" who died before he could justify his extravagant means—his accounts revealed financial ruin. His wife died from the shock of the disclosure, and Mattie was left alone at twenty with only fifty dollars from selling her piano. She tried hat-trimming, stenography, book-keeping, and department-store work, but each pursuit broke her health. Her relatives, having lost their own savings in her father's schemes, offered only advice. When Zeena needed household help, the family saw a chance to extract compensation, and Mattie was sent to Starkfield—effectively indentured to the Fromes.

How does Wharton use the winter landscape as a symbol in Chapter III?

Edith Wharton employs pathetic fallacy throughout Chapter III to mirror Ethan's inner state. The morning is "as clear as crystal" with a sunrise that "burned red in a pure sky," reflecting the clarity and intensity of Ethan's desire for Mattie. Mattie's face becomes "part of the sun's red and of the pure glitter on the snow"—she is literally fused with the vivid landscape. This contrasts sharply with Zeena, whose face appears "drawn and bloodless" in the pale snow-light, with "querulous lines" sharpened by the reflection. The winter setting thus functions as a dual symbol: it represents both the beauty and warmth that Ethan associates with Mattie and the cold entrapment that defines his marriage and economic situation in Starkfield.

How is Zeena characterized in Chapter III of Ethan Frome?

Zeena is portrayed as both pitiable and quietly domineering. Though only seven years older than Ethan—making her about thirty-five—she is described as "already an old woman," with three parallel creases between ear and cheek, a thin nose, and querulous lines around her mouth. Her "silent fault-finding" is described as deeply "penetrating," and her obsessive pursuit of medical cures creates a persistent financial drain: previous trips have yielded expensive remedies and a twenty-dollar electric battery she never learned to use. Wharton gives Zeena a revealing verbal habit—she launches into long, plaintive justifications before anyone has objected, suggesting both insecurity and a practiced manipulation. The chapter's final detail, Zeena pushing her empty medicine bottle toward Mattie and suggesting it "do for pickles," captures her character perfectly: practical, dismissive, and unconsciously reducing Mattie to a servant.

What role does economic hardship play in Chapter III of Ethan Frome?

Economic hardship functions as the engine of entrapment for every character in Chapter III. Mattie Silver's entire trajectory—from her father's financial ruin to her failed attempts at self-sufficiency to her indentured servitude with the Fromes—is driven by poverty. Ethan is shackled to a "barren farm and failing saw-mill" that cannot generate enough income to change his circumstances, and Zeena's medical expeditions represent a financial hemorrhage he cannot afford but cannot prevent. The five-dollar bonnet and twenty-dollar electric battery are specific, pointed details that Wharton uses to quantify the economic pressure. Even Ethan's lie is financially self-defeating: by claiming he has cash to collect, he risks emboldening Zeena to spend more on remedies. The chapter makes clear that poverty is not merely a backdrop but an active force constraining every character's choices and trapping them in their respective roles.