Ethan Frome takes place against a backdrop of the cold, gray, bleakness of a New England winter. Ethan Frome is an isolated farmer trying to scrape out a meager living while also tending to his frigid, demanding and ungrateful wife, Zeena. A ray of hope enters Ethan's life of despair when his wife's cousin Mattie arrives to help. His life is transformed as he falls in love with Mattie, but their fate is doomed by the stifling conventions of the era. Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a classic of American Literature, with compelling characters trapped in circumstances from which they seem unable to escape.