[W. Rabbit]

Edith Wharton fashioned the novel after her own life-story. It is much like an autobiography. Her husband was a very sick man and much older than her(like Zeena). Their marriage was not a happy one. Like Ethan, Edith had an earlier lover, Morton Fullerton(Mattie).Like Ethan, Edith was convinced tht, due to the failure of her marriage, she was a prisoner of life. She created the setting from her own observations while living in Lenox Massachusetts and she paints it as a frozen prison. Even the name that she gives to the town betrays her tone towards the characters. Stark means rigid in or as if in death, so Starkfield is death trap.