Among these "Big Four", I only knew a little about Zeena Frome. I wathced the movie Ethan Frome before. But I can't be convinced that it is fair to put Zeena in that category. Zeena's intention was only to kick Mattie out, and she hadn't expected that they'd take such an extreme action. Mattie didn't have to kill herself. She could have made better choices, like to work for some other family as a maid or governess (since she was educated), to work for the church maybe since she played piano and sang well, or to marry one of the boys who loved her dearly. Besides, after the incident, Zeena took the responsibility of caring for Mattie instead of leaving her to the wild wolves, or running away herself.
From the story, I didn't see any extremely good or bad women/men but ordinary people. What I did see is the cruelty of life and that fate makes fun of the three little figures. I checked Wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Frome, and the last half paragraph says what I was thinking:
"... The moral concepts, as described by Ammons, come out as cold and as grim as her Starkfield setting. She explains further by comparing the characters of Mattie Silver and Zeena Frome. Ammons states that Mattie will become as frigid and crippled as Zeena if women are kept isolated and dependent. Lilburn wrote that Wharton cripples Mattie but lets her live to reflect the cruelty of culture, not the author."
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