Although Ethan believes that the course of his own marriage
is fated by the marriage of his ancestor, the narrative plays upon
the relationship between past and present within Ethan’s own life. When
Ethan attempts to rebel against his situation, his feelings for Mattie
develop in a curious replay of his earlier courtship of Zeena. First,
Ethan felt he needed Zeena, a family cousin who came to care for
his mother. Now, Ethan finds himself falling for Mattie, a family cousin
who has come to care for his wife. The narrative plays upon this
parallel when Ethan comes home from his business transaction to
find the porch door locked, just as he did the previous night—only
this time it is Mattie and not Zeena who comes to the door.
The illusion of a man-and-wife evening is set into motion
but with a difference, symbolized by the crimson ribbon in Mattie’s
hair. In its coloring, the ribbon refers back to the daring cherry-colored scarf
that Mattie wears at the dance hall. It alludes to the scarlet letter
that Hester Prynne wears to symbolize her transgression in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s classic Puritan novel The Scarlet Letter.
When the couple sits down to dinner, Wharton begins to
describe the nooks and crannies of social artifice. The festive,
rather impulsive-seeming, and sexually symbolic dishes Mattie has
prepared—blueberries, pickles, doughnuts—indicate Mattie’s awareness
of the evening’s clearly illicit nature. Nevertheless, Ethan and
Mattie conduct the opening motions of their first supper alone with
all of the elaborate gestures and rituals that might occur in the
most fashionable cosmopolitan salon. Their stiff formality is shattered—literally—when
the cat breaks Zeena’s favorite wedding present, symbolizing the
way that Mattie may break up Zeena and Ethan’s marriage. Ethan’s
response to the broken dish is also symbolic. Rather than securing
the shattered dish permanently with glue or simply throwing away
the pieces and admitting that the dish has been broken, Ethan arranges
the fragments into a delicate balance, postponing disaster. The
dish, and his marriage, appear unbroken, but they may in fact fall
to pieces with the slightest disturbance.
