Ethan Frome: By the time the Narrator meets Ethan, he is a grizzled old man with a tortured expression on his face. Ethan is a sensitive character with a deep appreciation for nature, and who is drawn to the beauty and vitality of Mattie Silver, his wife's younger cousin. Though Ethan would rather leave Starkfield, poverty and the responsibility to care for his wife force him to stay. Towards the end of the novel, Ethan becomes overwhelmed and decides to try suicide instead of face the consequences of any other decisions he has made. He survives and spends the next 24 years caring for Mattie and Zeena. .
"He was too young, too strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes. Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman?".
The Narrator: The first person narrator who appears in the opening and in chapter ten. He takes no part in the story itself and remains nameless. He meets Ethan when he becomes his sleigh driver after his arrival in Starkfield, twenty-four years after Ethan's "smash-up." During their stay, he begins to collect bits and pieces of Ethan's story, which fascinates him. By chance he stays at Ethan's house when a snow storm hits the town. It is in the house that the narrator finally understands the tragedy of a man that is Ethan Frome.
Zenobia Frome: Zeena, as she is also known, is Ethan's sickly wife who always speaks in a whine. She appears prematurely aged in is subject to a temper. Several years before the story takes place, Zeena helped care for Ethan's dying mother. When his mother died, Ethan married Zeena out of fear of being lonely in the winter. Zeena quickly fell ill herself, and all plans for leaving Starkfield vanished. Despite her weakness and almost hypochondriac-like illness, she is the dominant figure in the Frome household. She remains with Ethan until the end of the novel, still as sick as ever.
