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Pleasure and Reality in Edith Wharton's the Fulness Of Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology ISSN No : 1006-7930 PLEASURE AND REALITY IN EDITH WHARTON’S THE FULNESS OF LIFE Mr. V. R. YASU BHARATHI, Ph.D Research Scholar (Full-Time), P.G & Research Department of English, V.O. Chidambaram College, Thoothukudi – 628008. Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli Dr. V. CHANTHIRAMATHI, Research Guide, P.G & Research Department of English, V.O. Chidambaram College, Thoothukudi – 628008 Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on the psychological aspects in the short story of Edith Wharton’s The Fulness of Life. The revelation of the unnamed lifeless woman about her past life to her own spirit is the plot of The Fulness of Life. This paper analyses how the author’s Id, Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle, is revealed through the protagonist of the story. This paper attempts to explore the pleasures expected by the unnamed lady and the reality she had to face. This paper follows MLA Eighth Edition for Research Methodology. Key Words- Edith Wharton, Short-Story, Freud’s Psychology, id and ego, expectation and reality. ----------------------------- Literature is considered as reflection of life. It also speaks about many segments and dimensions found among human being. The writer, work background and the purpose of work are to be known to analyze each and every character and circumstances found in the works. Psychology is one such background interrelated by the authors to achieve their intense purpose of writing. In literature there are many forms of writing, classified mainly as poetry, drama and prose. Short story, in this classification, comes under prose. Short story has an origin even in the epics such as Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey, etc. Later, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have short stories in verse version. In the essay, Thomas Le Moineau(1846), Edger Allen Poe gives the classic definition for short story as the form of Volume XII, Issue VIII, 2020 Page No: 1222 Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology ISSN No : 1006-7930 writing that one should be able to read in one reading. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines the term as: A fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own, as novellas sometimes and novels unusually are. A short story will normally concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters, more economically than a novel’s sustained exploration of social background. M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, state about short story in, A Glossary of Literary Terms that: A short story is a brief work of prose fiction, and most of the terms for analyzing the component elements, the types, and the narrative techniques of the novel are applicable to the short story as well. The short story differs from the – anecdote- the unelaborated narration of a single incident- in that like the novel, it organizes the action, thought, and dialogue of its characters into the artful pattern of a plot, directed towards particular audience effects on an audience (364) In American, during the time between 1865-1905 periodicals jumped to the reach of six thousand. On this rise of new readers, they had to make many contents on periodicals in a form of essays, fictions and poetry. Because of this impact, American literature had a special contribution to a literary form of short-story. This results in many short story writers namely, Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849), Herman Melville (1819-1891), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864), O. Henry (1862-1910), Stephen Crane (1871-1900),William Faulkner (1897-1962), Eudora Welty (1909-2001), John Cheever (1912-1982), John Updike (1932-2009), and Saul Bellow (1915-2005). American short story was classified based on themes related to thae period. Realism (1865-1900) was focused on the reality of the society and reality of social structure; socio- economical issues are focused during this period; and Naturalism (1900-1910) were focused on dehumanizing ethos. World War I had a great influence on literature also. It led to a concept of American Modernism (1910-1945) focusing on isolation of human, discussion on science and religion and also influenced by narrative method of stream of consciousness. Post-War period (1945-1963) is considered as a golden time for short story, because of the arrival of new methods avoiding old style of writing. Confessional Period(1963-1980), influenced discrimination among Afro- American Citizens and it also deals with the themes like use of Volume XII, Issue VIII, 2020 Page No: 1223 Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology ISSN No : 1006-7930 nuclear weapons, poets confession on their intense of writing, etc. Post- Modern Period (1980- till present) deals with variety of themes from past to present based on both reality and fantasy. Edith Wharton (1862-1967) was an American novelist, short story writer, poetess, garden designer and an interior designer. Edith Wharton sketched nearly eighty short-stories, seventeen novels, seven novelettes, many poems and even non-fictional works for interior design and gardening. Edith Wharton was born in an elite family of old New York, during the time of civil war of America in 1852. ‘Pussy Jones’ is Edith Wharton’s pet name. During her childhood, she over come typhoid fever at age of ten. Due to their country civil war, her family traveled over the Atlantic more than sixty times. She was familiar with both countries and languages of Italy, Germany, French, and Spain. Edith Wharton completed her first novella Fast and Loose in her age of fifteen in the year 1877. She was well-known with old world of Europe. Edith Wharton was married to Edward Robbins Wharton. Her career as the writer, “began with the publishing, in ‘Scribner’s Magazine’, of two of three stories”(74) as she mentioned in her auto biography work A Background. Edith Wharton was the first woman to receive a Pulitzer prize on 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence(1920) . Edith Wharton’s short story collections are named in, The Great Inclination (1899),Crucial Instances(1901), The Descent of Man(1904), The Hermit and the Wild Women(1908), Tales of Men and Ghost(1910), Xingu and Other Stories(1906), Here and Beyond(1926), Certain People(1930) Human Nature(1933), The World Over(1936), Ghosts(1937). She was known for her psychological insights with realist tradition of manners. Her works mostly focus on privileged society with social satirical note. Her works explore both positive and negative side of old New York on the basis of morality, elite lifestyle, education, and taste. She also raised questions on marriage in most of her works. This paper, in this context, tries to apply Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle id and the reality in Edith Wharton’s short story, The Fulness of Life. The story portrays the pleasures expected by the unnamed lady and the reality she had to face. The Fulness of life was one of thw stories written in 1891 and published on 1893. The clash among Freud’s id, ego and super-ego is highly intended in Edith Wharton’s works. Focusing on theory, Sigmund Freud, on 1911, redesigned the primary progress and secondary process dichotomy into the pleasure principle and reality principle based on ego functions. By discharging tension, inborn tendency of the organism to avoid pain and to seek pleasure is pleasure principle. Volume XII, Issue VIII, 2020 Page No: 1224 Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology ISSN No : 1006-7930 Edger Allen Poe makes a statement on short-story, “A short story must have a single mood and every statement built towards it.” Every statement in The Fulness of life, is also built on the single mood of the unnamed dead woman confessing her early marriage in the past life to her spirit during their meeting in the next world. During the period of writing and publishing, the writer was with her husband with double minded relationship. It may be because of this reason that the personal id of the writer is expressed throughout the work. The Story The Fulness of Life is taken from The Ghost Story of Edith Wharton The real story begins with the conversation between unnamed woman and her Spirit of Life. “And what do you call the fullness of life?”(162), questions her Spirit of Life and her answer is , “Oh, I can’t tell you, if you don’t know” (162) and later she gives a answer that, “Many words are supposed to define it- love and sympathy are those in commonest use, but I am not even sure that they are the right ones and so few people really know what they mean.” (162). This answer of dead lady is expressed with a pleasure principle of Freud by avoiding pain and tension and seeking pleasure. For the question of the Spirit on marriage, the dead lady answers, “my marriage was very incomplete affair” (162,) and for the question regarding the husband and wife intimacy, the reply is: Oh, I was fond of him, and we were counted a very happy couple. But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
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