Throughout Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the color red emerges to mirror the character’s anxientes -- marriages, sexuality, and shame. The novella begins in the desolate town of Starkfield, a cold quiet town, filled with Ethan’s miserable life events. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his carriage. That person is Ethan Frome, who is a local fixture of the community, having been a lifelong resident. Frome is described as "the most striking figure in Starkfield", "the ruin of a man" with a "careless powerful look…in spite