Nature—especially the harsh Massachusetts winter—is among Ethan Frome’s most prominent motifs. The novel takes place entirely in winter, and the prolonged cold and snow are closely tied to death, as the narrator notes: “[W]hen winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome’s young manhood” (10). The winter weather kills plants and wildlife, while also placing the town in a state of suspended animation, and, over time, chipping away at residents’ psyches. This is what Harmon means when he says that Ethan has “been in Starkfield too many winters” (9).

The association between winter and death also works in the opposite direction. In this sense, the cold is simply the outward manifestation of Ethan’s lifeless marriage, farm, and dreams. Mattie, who briefly revives Ethan’s hope of a better life, is tellingly associated with warmer weather—when Ethan reveals that he was watching Mattie at the dance, “[h]er wonder and his laughter r[u]n together like spring rills in a thaw” (29)—until the couple’s attempted suicide kills this dream, too.

It would be a mistake to view Ethan Frome’s depiction of nature as wholly negative, however.