Ethan Frome saw the potential that he possessed. He realized the things he was capable of doing and being, but was constantly stunted by his own inhibitions and backward country environment. There were many conflicts concerning his possibilities and limitations that corroded him and caused inner turmoil. When Mattie Silver came to stay at his house, he realized a spirit that radiated from her. It reminded him of himself. He sub-consciously perceived her as an embodiment of all the ideals he thwarted upon himself. Mattie became the vehicle Ethan used to try to bring forth his ideal image and “self’ to reality.
Ethan had tried to elicit the natural and free man from himself. He manifested a clear genuine curiosity for the sciences. He went to a technical college to nurture and sustain his energy. Unfortunately, this effort to educate himself ended when his father died. “He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal to natural beauty... His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility... But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it.” (25). Even though he was so intrigued by what he had learned, he gave up all of
aiety in others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse” (51).
Although, this illusion dissipated soon after Ethan began to have a grip on it. He thrived on the ability to make Mattie think that she needed him. He liked that dependency because he felt like he was making that inner self need him. Ethan had felt the opposite of that for so long; he had felt as though he needed it and could not get it. When Mattie had to leave, he felt abandoned by that “self”. He did not know how to live without that manifestation of his ideals breathing right next to him. He would be left alone and thrust into the reality of no ideal self.. and a realization that he was what he was and those exact traits he had dreamed of were things he did not possess. He had asked Mattie, “What’s the good of us going anywheres [sic] without the other one now?” (121). Death seemed like the only solution... to kill that image... and ignore his fate of always being Ethan and not his ideals. He hated the disunion of the two. Self defeat was easy to him since it satisfied his low self esteem. When Mattie/ “ideal Ethan” became another nagging Zeena, it was almost a comfort since he had killed the vibrancy he was so jealous of and thought he could never have. It was dead and no longer had to torture him with its unavailability.
Mattie was used by Ethan to try to extract his ultimate natural spirit. To him, she was that “self”. His happiness in controlling her was only a perverted method to manipulate his ideals and bring them closer to embodying them himself. People struggle through life trying to find themselves in others when there is nothing to look for. If people stopped trying to be everything but themselves, that natural beauty would surface by itself. The only time that people have to employ processes like Ethan Frome’s is when they forget t
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