A Comparison Of The Women Of Wharton

A Comparison Of The Women Of Wharton And Deledda Essay, Research Paper A Comparison of the Women of Wharton and Deledda Two writers, both women, both from different backgrounds. Edith Wharton was high society. Grazia Deledda was a commoner from another country. Though both wrote almost exclusively to their won regions, their portrayal of women was quite similar. In Wharton?s Ethan Frome she has two women, both distinct from one another. In Deledda?s La Madre, two women also make up the bulk of the story. But there are many more similarities in these works. Released only nine years apart both novels deal with a struggle of the heart, of the faith, and a struggle of their moral soundness. And in both stories the women are portrayed on opposite sides of the conflict. In this

paper I intend to show an apparent bond between these stories? characters, and the gamut ran between the female personae. Published in 1911, Ethan Frome is considered one of the best contemporary short novels of its time. Ethan Frome illuminated Wharton?s familiar writing style with a spark of imagination. In this story, as I expressed in the opening paragraph, lie two women. The first is Zenobia Frome, or Zeena for short. In her late twenties, she suffers from a compounded sickness that was thought to be brought on by her taking care of Ethan?s mother and her absorption of life?s burdens. In this story she is the conflicting character. The other woman is a young Mattie Silver, the cousin of Zeena and the housemaid of the Fromes. Mattie is about twenty-one years old and not too

much of a house keeper since she is small and weak and somewhat clumsy. But nevertheless she caught the eye of Ethan Frome who would fetch her on nights of town revelry, and with that grew a forbidden love. This is the conflict of the story. In 1920, Grazia Deledda published La Madre. Maria Maddalena is the mother of the priest who, throughout the book, falls to the wayside under temptation. She is a very old-fashioned woman as is the whole town. Overprotective of her son, she helps build up the climactic theme of faith. The other woman is Agnes, a well-to-do townswoman who is the object of the priest?s backslidden affair. Unlike Ethan Frome, in this story the characters of conflict shift between the two women. Now let?s look at the comparable likeness of the women in both

stories. To look at Maria Maddalena and Zeena Frome in the same frame would not be a far stretch. Both are very controlling and try to rule the lives of the men around them. Zeena portrays constant supervision over Ethan even when she is not physically around. Maria also kept a constant supervision in her son?s life. This was maybe the main reason why Paul did not fold under temptation, whereas Zeena?s domineering actions did not bring any good to her situation. Zeena played the part of a wife/mother. She was very controlling and possessive, putting objects in higher regard than those around her, as shown in the scene where she finds the broken pickle dish. “Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been him, possibilities

sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena?s narrow-mindedness and ignorance” (Wharton 53). This quote sums up the state of the relationship between Ethan and Zeena, grim and despondent. Now, in my eyes, Maria Maddalena was the lesser of two evils. Constantly pressuring her son, she too was very domineering and overprotective. Although her son Paul could see her reasons for worry, he realized that it was much too dramatic, which probably just worsened the problem. I trust that if one?s mother said she had spoken with a ghost about the current problems of oneself, that alone would be a great psychological strain. I believe that you could interchange these two characters and not make a great deal of change. The same can be said for Agnes and Mattie. Agnes was a paradox of sorts. So