When Ethan sees her before her trip to Bettsbridge, she sits in "the pale light reflected from the banks of snow," which makes "her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless." In contrast, the imagery associated with Mattie is associated with summer and natural life. The imagery associated with Zeena is bleak and cold also. For example, in the beginning of the novel, Wharton gives readers the feeling of the bitterness and hardness of the winter by setting the constellation, Orion, in a "sky of iron." When Ethan and Mattie enter the Frome household after walking home, the kitchen has "the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the night." This image is appropriate to the living death that Ethan and Mattie experience in the years after their accident. Metaphors compare two unlike things without using words of comparison (such as like or as). The figurative language used by Wharton includes metaphors and similes. Her descriptions serve a definite stylistic and structural purpose. In Ethan Frome, Wharton's descriptive imagery is one of the most important features of her simple and efficient prose style. Wharton establishes patterns of imagery by using figurative language - language meant to be taken figuratively as well as literally.
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