In Ethan Frome, Why is the setting relevant to the plot? Or how?

The setting of the story Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton is the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts; a place which is cold,
desolate, barren, not festive at all, and limiting due to its weather and lack of
everything.

Within Starkfield is the house of Ethan and
Zeena Frome: Equally desolate, equally barren, limiting, and as depressing as the lives
of each of the characters, themselves.

The way in which
these settings are relevant and essential to the plot, is by instilling in the reader
the atmosphere that is so necessary to understand the oppression of Ethan's life, and to
appreciate the sadness of how it all ended for him. Therefore, Wharton achieves the tone
that is so allegorical of the sadness and loneliness in the lives of each of the
characters.