Ethan Frome: Fantasy is an Escape From Winter Ethan Frome, the title character of Edith Wharton's tragic novel, lives in his own world of silence, where he replaces his scarcity of words with images and fantasies. There is striking symbolism in the imagery, predominantly that of winter which connotes frigidity, detachment, bleakness and seclusion. Twenty-eight year old Ethan feels trapped in his hometown of Starkfield, Massachusetts. He marries thirty-four year old Zeena after the death of his mother, "in an unsuccessful attempt to escape the silence, isolation, and loneliness of life" (Lawson 71). Several years after their marriage, c