1. When
I had been there a little longer, and had seen this phase of crystal
clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms
of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village
and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support;
I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months’ siege
like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.
This quotation is from the introduction,
in which the narrator describes his experience of a Starkfield winter.
His metaphorical comparison of Starkfield’s struggle against the
harsh winter and a “starved garrison” struggling against a besieging
army establishes one of Ethan Frome’s principal
themes: the bleak, harsh physical environment surrounding the characters
acts as an oppressive power, forcing a sort of spiritual surrender
and emotional listlessness. When one of the old inhabitants of Starkfield
says that Ethan Frome has “been in Starkfield too many winters,”
he means that Ethan has lived for too long in what amounts to a
state of siege by the climate. The novel suggests that when snow
buries Starkfield each year, the emotions, dreams, and initiative
of sensitive souls like Ethan also become buried, destroyed by the
“long stretches of -sunless cold.”
