Edith Wharton’s two short stories “Roman Fever” and “The Fullness of Life” are two very different types of stories. Roman Fever is a realist, but fictional account of two women who have known each other from the days of the youth. “The Fullness of Life” is a transcendent, story of mythical proportions which lends itself to tracing it’s influence back to Greek and Roman mythical stories. Despite the diverging nature of the stories, both of them have similar characters in one sense. This essay analyzes the similarities of character and difference in setting, and the similarity of theme running the current of both stories.
Both of these stories fit the category to which many of Wharton’s stories belong: domestic stories. As critic Diane Wakoski describes these stories, “Edith Wharton communications the emotional and political state of characters by describing their homes or ideas about home.” (Wakoski, 1). The gender of these characters in both stories as women contributes to the narrative and makes the important issue not just the stories unfolding but the larger view of where these women stand in life and what power is available to them given the rigors that society has placed upon their gender roles.
In “Roman Fever” the setting is a restaurant with a good view in Rome. The women seem so similar, that at first it is difficult for a reader to tell one from the other. It is clear from the description that both had vibrant youths in the same setting, and now as widows have returned and brought their daughters with them who are enjoying a similar lifestyle they once did as attractive young women. Both of the women’s daughters are friends.
For Mrs. Ansley, the passage of time has put such an immense barrier between then and now, that she cannot even really imagine it ever having taken place her remember what it was like to be who she was. She remarks, “I”ve come to the conclusion that I don’t in the least know what they are .” (Wharton, 2). She follows this up with a statement that is perhaps out of life for women who have known each other for more than twenty-five years, “And perhaps we didn’t know much about each other.” This foreshadows the subsequent revelation that Mrs. Ansley’s husband had an affair with Mrs. Slade prior to her marriage to him. Barbara, the daughter of Mrs. Ansley is apparently quite an exquisite and desirable young person, and she displays an envy when looking at Barbara and how she outshines her own daughter.
The revelation comes slowly in a conversation prompted by Mrs Slade, she makes a discovery which is going to forever change her view not just of the present, but also of the past. These are perhaps the worst blows one can receive, not the ones that alter the present or change the future, but alter decades of life. That her engaged had an affair with Mrs. Ansley before the marriage, also was something that Mrs. Slade through her petty jealousy brought upon herself, by setting up a meeting at the Coliseum in the hopes that Mrs. Ansley would get a cold and there would be no one there to meet her. What she had not intended to have happened was what did: Delphin, Mr. Slade’s husband to be, met with Mrs. Ansley. Now, decades later, their daughters are resuming their own roles as players in a game they have long since left.
Both women are nostalgic for a better time that they can no longer access. In the second story the character is also a woman who is dissatisfied with life who has taken her own life because things never turned out as they dreamed. Her ideal lies in what could have been while for Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley it lies in what was but has been lost do the passage of time.
The women in all there of the stories are struggling with the reality that there are certain wants they have that can never be sated. No one can go back in time to relive their choices. As the speaker in “The Fullness of Life” says about the woman, “She stood, as it seemed, on a threshold, yet no tangible gateway in front of her.” Yet in this second story, the woman is given a chance the other two women are not. The Spirit of Life though allows the woman a chance to connect with a soul that is just like hers, one who can understand
In terms of language, The prose in “The Fullness of Life” is much heavier than “Roman Fever” and the prose also comes across of more poetic, often using alliteration in describing the scene. Examples include, the “Uniform blue black-ness” and “Like a tepid tide it rose around here, gliding ever higher and higher, folding in its velvety embrace.”
Some of this may do to the fact that while “Roman Fever” takes place in Rome, “The Fullness of Life” first takes place at the end of a woman’s life on earth and then in a spiritual realm, standing before the Spirit of Life.”
The women in “Roman Fever” have both lost their husbands, while in “The Fulness of Life” the woman’s husband was not as she hoped that he would be and she has lost herself due to the despair that she believed she could never have the sort of husband she was looking for. The Angel of Life mentions to her that she was fond of her husband and she agrees, that that was how she felt about him but that she will be unable to ever go further than that.
She says, “You have hit upon the exact word’ I was fond of it and we were counted a very happy couple” (Wharton, 3). She sees a depth in herself, and ability to see the world as deeply artist, nuanced and she describes her soul as a house with a hall and drawing room, but also containing locked doors of a secret self that she has never been able to share or connected with anyone else.
Her husband, she says, never made it past the family sitting room. “I have never loved anyone, in that say,” she says sadly. Her former hopes for what love would be have been unmasked and her domestic life is one that she finds so unbearable as to take her own life.
But after she is offered a glimpse at a soul like hers, a soul mate with whom she will be given a chance to spend all of eternity with, she wavers to misgivings about what exactly this will mean. Rather than looking at the guiding theme she has been considering of loving and being loved at the deepest level she changes her focus as to what is importance and begins focusing on the idea of home. She realizes that home for her is her husband, and that if she were to spend time with someone else, than she would, in a sense forever lose her home. Further compounding her decision, she is told by the Spirit of Life that her husband loves her in a way that he sees her as his soul mate, and the thought of her husband going through eternity without her suddenly dislodges her.
In the end she chooses to wait for the soul of her husband to come rather than waiting.
Both of these stories in this sense are about women waiting. The two women in “Roman Fever” are, in a sense, waiting out their lives. Their value has been defined not by some internal worth, but by the men who chose them and their careers. With them no longer in the picture, they have little to do with themselves and so they wait and relive the past rather than embarking to carry on with life and make new memories. In “The Fullness of Life” the woman has been waiting all of her life for an idea that never materialized for her and now with her life over, she is still waiting, this time again for her husband to come, even though she has left the former world where he existed but where he existed for her on a shallow level.
The setting, while very different, are intricle to both stories. In “Roman Fever” the setting kindles memories from the past. In “The Fullness of Life” the setting gives the woman a way to view the past. All three are fighting against cards dealt in life, which were dealt to them, they feel unfairly.
Works Cited
Jones, Suzanne W. “Edith Wharton’s “secret sensitiveness,” The decoration of houses, and her fiction”, Journal of Modern Literature, 21 (2), Date: Winter 1997,pp. 177-200
"Schoolwork: Edith Wharton’s Domestic Settings Essay | Zakira's Roses." Zakira's Roses | Dreams and Theories. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://zakira.wordpress.com/schoolwork-edith-whartons-domestic-settings-essay/>.
Wharton, Edith. “The Fullness of Life.” The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, vol. 1. US: Charles Sorihner’s, 1968, pp 12-20, pp 632-654.
Wharton, Edith. “Roman Fever.” The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, vol. 1. US: Charles Sorihner’s, 1968,
