ETHAN FROME KEYHOLE ESSAY The novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton tells the story of Ethan Frome and the tragedy he faces in his life. The story mainly focuses on the relationships between and among Ethan, his wife, and his wife’s cousin, with whom he is in love. Wharton uses different literary devices to develop the plot, including irony as one of the most effective. The use of irony in the novel, especially in the climatic sledding scene, greatly adds to the development of the tragedy. The sled ride which Ethan and Mattie take at the end of the story is full of irony. They often talk of going sledding together. In the first conversation that the two have in the novel, s