Summary
I don’t see’s there’s much difference
between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; ’cept
that down there they’re all quiet, and the women have got to hold
their tongues.
See Important Quotations Explained
Entering Frome’s kitchen, the narrator is unable to tell
which of the two women in the room had been speaking upon the men’s arrival.
Both are slight and gray-haired, and one starts preparing the evening
meal as the other sits huddled in the corner by the stove. The narrator
observes the marked poverty and squalor of the place, and Frome
notes the coldness of the room with a tone of -apology. The woman
in the corner attempts to explain, blaming the other woman for having
only just started the fire. The narrator then recognizes the whining
voice he heard previously as the voice of the seated woman. As the
other woman comes back around to the table to set a pie in place,
Frome introduces her to the narrator as his wife and then proceeds
to introduce the seated woman as Miss Mattie Silver.
The next morning, the narrator returns to his lodgings,
to the great relief of Mrs. Hale, who had given him up for dead.
Mrs. Hale and her mother, Mrs. Varnum, are most surprised to learn
of Frome’s exceeding generosity toward the narrator, and they react with
downright amazement at his announcement that he has spent the night
at the Frome household. The narrator senses a strong hint of curiosity
in the two women regarding Frome’s hospitality. Mrs. Hale submits
that she has spent a great deal of time visiting the Fromes, but
for the last twenty years hardly anyone but herself and their doctors
has ever set foot in the household.
After supper, Mrs. Varnum retires for the evening, and
Mrs. Hale and the narrator sit in the parlor for a further conversation
about the Fromes. Mrs. Hale begins to recount the terrible aftermath
of the smash-up, but the mere memory of Mattie’s convalescence suffices
to bring her to tears. Gathering her wits, Mrs. Hale continues with
her tale, describing to the narrator Zeena’s mysteriously silent reaction
to the events and her gracious decision to receive Mattie back into
their household as soon as she could be moved.
Responding to the narrator’s gentle queries, Mrs. Hale
explains that Mattie has lived with the Fromes ever since and that
Zeena has done much of the caretaking for the three of them. Expressing
pity for them and marveling at their resilience, Mrs. Hale seems
to have concluded her account; however, she then collects herself
to make one final remark. Removing her spectacles and leaning toward
the narrator in confidence, she declares in a lowered voice that
Mattie would have been better off dying after the accident, for,
as it stands, “I don’t see’s there’s much difference between the
Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; ’cept
that down there they’re all quiet, and the women have got to hold
their tongues.”
Analysis
In this brief epilogue, Wharton summons us back to the
present, resuming the narrator’s description of his visit to the
Frome household. The result is an abrupt and curtailed view of Frome’s
plight, of which we now hold a background understanding. As she
did in the novel’s opening scenes, Wharton once again delays the
revelation of character, describing the individuals at hand before
she names them. From the neutral narrator’s description, it is initially
difficult to tell which woman is which, and when we hear that one
speaks in a “whine,” the word Wharton uses earlier to describe Zeena’s
voice, we assume that this complainer is Zeena—only to realize,
with a trace of horror, that the voice belongs to Mattie.
Thus, everything comes full circle, and the cyclical nature
of life on the farm is embodied in the terrible fate of Ethan and
the women. Instead of finding escape in suicide, he and Mattie have
ended up in a state of living death, in which all Mattie’s vitality
has been leeched away, and she has transformed into a carbon copy
of her former opposite, Zeena. Zeena herself, appropriately enough,
has been restored to greater health by the necessity of caring for
her disabled husband and cousin—as if she can be healthy only when
others suffer. Certain aspects of the characters have remained constant throughout.
Always quiet and inscrutable, Zeena remains impossible to interpret,
and the reader is left ignorant of her opinions about the situation.
“Nobody knows Zeena’s thoughts,” Mrs. Hale says, and the text confirms
that her “pale opaque eyes . . . revealed nothing and reflected
nothing.” Nonetheless, one can imagine her taking a kind of perverse
delight in the failure of Ethan and Mattie’s attempt to escape her,
as well as in the brutal justice of their fate.
Once again we witness the recurrence of the theme of physical surroundings
as destiny. Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie all have become trapped—by
snow and poverty and their disabilities—in the decaying farmhouse,
and they will be trapped there forever, as Mrs. Hale’s closing words
remind us: they will join the other Fromes in the graveyard, alongside
the headstone of the earlier Ethan Frome and his wife, Endurance.
And indeed, for Ethan himself, endurance is all that remains: his
attempt at rebellion and escape has failed, and he ends where he
began, trapped by illness, poverty, and winter in Starkfield, waiting
for death.
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