| Term Paper Title | A Comparison Of The Women Of Wharton And Deledda |
| # of Words | 1045 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 4.18 |
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 q...Read entire document
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