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'The Fullness of Life' is a short story by Edith Wharton that asks big questions. It was written when she was young and it bursts with vigorous descriptive language.
It begins rather strangely, with a visceral description of the death of a woman. But this is the beginning, not the end, so what follows is a speculative story about a meeting between the recently deceased and the ‘spirit of life’ who welcomes her to a new plane of existence. This forces her to reflect on the life she has just left. Many nods of recognition usually accompany the woman’s relief that she will no longer need to tolerate the creaking of her husbands boots, or his slamming the door when he leaves the house.
She goes on to talk about how she never felt understood by her husband. Her husband, it seems, was content to sit on the periphery of intimacy. The woman never got the closeness or the understanding that her soul desired.
“She was very unfulfilled in life.” One participant observed in a group. “Because she was waiting for him to fulfil her,” another member replied. “She’s got to live her own life, find fulfilment in her life.” A solemn hush descends on the group. I look up and everyone is thinking something at the same time, glazed eyes focused on some mental distance. “Perhaps fulfilment is not something that you get quickly.” Says a quieter member of the group. “Perhaps it takes a lifetime to achieve, and you need all of the bad times. That makes up part of the picture.”
The story raises questions about happiness. Whether it can be sought at all. Does the woman in the story have an idealized notion of what a relationship should be? Does she hold illusions about she can expect from another human being? Or is she right to want to feel the kind of love for someone that she has read about in Dante? Is she right to keep half an eye out for a soul mate?
These points divide groups. Some think her unhappiness is within herself, and that whichever relationship she entered into she would eventually become unhappy because no human person could match the ideal she has in her head. Others think that she should leave her husband and push forward in a search for greater fulfilment. While recognising that this would have taken immense courage in the time that Edith Wharton wrote the story.
“It was hard enough when I got divorced” says a woman in the group who has not yet spoken. “People think your happiness is not important. It’s much more important to fulfil your duty, not yourself.” A new energy in the group emerges from this self-revelation. “I wanted to leave my husband” says another woman. “And he was miserable too, but for some reason none of us had the courage to do it. There was no abuse or anything, but we both just lived separate lives. It was like it was never bad enough to force either of us to make a decision.”
Settling down means just that perhaps? You make a choice and live with it. That’s what the woman seems to feel she did. Is that what life is? Is there more? If so, where is it?
When asked why she didn’t leave, the woman who spoke made a very interesting comment. She said “It’s not as if there is a guarantee that anything else would have been any better, and I knew my husband. I knew his faults, he knew mine.”
So the idea of leaving a relationship may be a gamble. There seems to be implicit within this, a fear of living life alone. Could almost any situation with any other person could be made bearable if the alternative is enforced solitude?
Is it wisdom to know that the grass may look greener, but it’s not always so? Is that wisdom, or is it a self-limiting belief? Is it understanding of oneself and life, or is it the persuasive devil of fear preventing you from taking action to improve your life?
This is a decision each person must come to themselves, a reconciliation each of us must make alone. It seems that, whichever choice you make, regret awaits you. If you leave, you have the regret (and guilt) of not having stayed to work something through. You lose your self-image as someone who sticks around, who can be reliable.
If you stay, you have the regret of never knowing if you could have had more, the sorrow of unfulfilled potential. Whichever decision you make, the other one will always shine brightly in your mind. That is our lot as humans. It is the price we pay for the fact that we have choice and agency over our behaviour. We always know we could have chosen something different.
You can read 'The Fullness of Life' by Edith Wharton online here
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