Zeena’s analysis

When we refer to a character, the first thing we see is his/her name. Zenobia, litteraly means “Zeus’s life” from Greek. The spelling of Zeus in the greek language is “Zeno” and the greek “Bio” refers to life. The name is something important and the narrator never refers to her surname, only to her social level. She is called with Ethan surname, so the writer wants to highlight men’s role really important. 

We don’t know so much about her. We know she is the wife of Ethan Frome and she is a nurse. We donn’t know about her family: she married Ethan only for not being alone. So here come to light on of the most theme in the novel, the loneliness. She is a victim, and the only way she gets reader attention is for his profession.

The way she is described makes certain that we view her in a negative light. She has an unpleasant physical appearance, she seems older. The narrator gives us this description to convince us that Matty is better than Zeena. Matty  has a pretty voice, her name is sweeter (Silver means “argento”) and she is always smiling, Zena instead of her, has a voice described as obnoxious “flat whine”, she is ill (illness is one of the most relevant themes in the novel). 

So the narrator uses a functional characterization.