SGiannangeli - Zeena's characterisation 

Each character can be described by different categories: its actions, habits, thoughts, physical appearance, identity and life experience. The reader gets to know about a character’s features through the narrator: so, the reader’s idea of every character depends on what the narrator wants to show to him.

In the chapters of the novel “Meet Ethan Frome” the reader sees the events through the protagonist’s point of view, who is introduced as a positive and great character by the first-person narrator of the prologue and epilogue, so, all along the novel the reader is affected by this vision of the story, so that he’s able to identify with Ethan but he does not completely understand the other characters, especially Zeena.

Zeena’s character, the protagonist’s wife, is an incredibly complex, elaborate and quite difficult to understand one. She is a character with a specific life experience that changed and influenced her behaviour and personality. The reader is pushed to dislike her character, because of Ethan’s main vision: she is the concrete obstacle to Ethan and Mattie’s happy ending. The reader rarely gets to know directly what Zeena’s thoughts are, he finds out about her only by her actions, physical description and dialogues, but she never expresses what her opinion and feelings are about his husband’s actions. In order to fully understand this character, the intelligent reader must go over the narrator’s point of view and try to identify with her.

From Ethan’s (and Mattie) point of view Zeena appears as a selfish, unsatisfied and cold woman who exploits her husband and does not understand him. She keeps complaining about her conditions but Ethan does not take her seriously, so neither the reader does.

Trying to put yourself in Zeena’s shoes, the reader can understand that what she does and say has got a meaning. She feels betrayed by her husband: he does not consider her and gives his all his attentions to the young and beautiful Mattie. Zeena tries to catch his attention by emphasizing her suffering, but doesn’t get nothing. She feels old, lonely and forgotten by the man who “promised” to take care of her.

At the end of the story, when it comes to help her injured husband and the disabled Mattie, Zeena seems to feel extremely better: they need her, she feels now important and responsible for these people.

Zeena is an example of how the narrator and character’s perspective can influence the reader: you may think of her as a cruel woman at first, but maybe there’s a deeper reason behind her actions.