Ethane Frome
... was a different person during that time. Ethan even remembers her laughing (a rare occurrence for Zeena) “at him for not knowing the simplest sickbed duties” (ch 4). Zeena could not have been the same cold person back then because she came to help. After Ethan’s mother passed away, it was then time for Zeena to leave. Ethan, struck by the fear of being alone again asks her to stay and marry him. She obliges and stays in Starkfield thinking that she and her new husband were going to sell the farm and move. “She had let her husband see from the first that life on an isolated farm was not what she had expected when she married” (ch 4). But complications with selling the farm kept them in Starkfield thus beginning her spiral downward into sickness which in turn makes her into the bitch/devourer that she is portrayed as throughout the novel. Mattie assumes the role of a Maiden/Victim because that is the way she always ends up. She ends up in Starkfield because there was nowhere else for her to go after the death of her father. She shows up to help take care of Zeena, but does so looking like a frail young girl with no h...