# Ethan Frome — Character guide

> Key figures in Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.

- [Ethan Frome](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/ethan_frome.md): Twenty-four years after the 'smash-up' that bent his body, Ethan still drives to the post-office each noon for a paper he never reads and patent-medicine envelopes addressed to his wife. Once he dreamed of engineering an
- [Mattie Silver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/mattie_silver.md): Mattie arrives as unpaid help in a household where no one has laughed in years, and her presence turns the kitchen warm — geraniums, a dozing cat, a girl singing over the dishes. She is gay, careless, and wholly dependen
- [Zeena Frome](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/zeena_frome.md): Zeena came to nurse Ethan's mother and stayed to marry him, trading her native village for a farm she considers beneath her. Her 'sickliness' — studied, catalogued, and endlessly medicated — has become both her identity 
- [Denis Eady](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/denis_eady.md): Denis Eady belongs to the world of sleigh-bells and dances that Mattie can still reach, and his attentions at the church social mark him as a rival Ethan cannot compete with on any practical ground. He is not a villain; 
- [Mrs. Ned Hale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/mrs_ned_hale.md): Mrs. Hale is one of the few people Zeena will visit, drawn by a shared fascination with symptoms and remedies, and one of the few who sees Ethan clearly enough to pity him. Her house is where the town's gossip and its ge
- [Jotham Powell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/jotham_powell.md): Jotham works for Ethan only when there is hauling to be done, and his unhurried presence marks the rhythm of farm life — wet snow, cut knees, a sorrel that will not hurry. He is sent to meet Zeena at the Flats and to hel
- [Andrew Hale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/andrew_hale.md): Hale belongs to the small circle of Starkfield men whose work and word still carry weight, hiring hands like Ethan for carpentry and framing the town's practical affairs. His dealings with Frome are cordial but bounded b
- [Harmon Gow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/harmon_gow.md): Having driven the Bettsbridge line in pre-trolley days, Harmon carries the village's memory in his cheek of tobacco and his laconic asides. He supplies the narrator with the phrase that becomes the book's cold nucleus — 
- [Ruth Varnum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/ruth_varnum.md): A young woman from Starkfield, briefly mentioned in social contexts.
- [Dr. Buck](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/dr_buck.md): The local doctor who attends to Zeena Frome.
- [Michael Eady](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/michael_eady.md): Denis Eady's father, a wealthy Irish immigrant storekeeper.
- [Puss](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters/puss.md): The Fromes' cat, a minor presence in the household.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ethan_frome_se/characters