Best known for her novels that provided an unromanticized view of the unforgiving strictures of aristocratic New York society (House of Mirth, Ethan Fromm, The Age of Innocence), Edith Wharton (1862-1937) also authored several short stories. Most of Wharton's works centered on fictional women who might have been her social contemporaries, women equally bound by the rules of society but who fought for self-realization and independence. In real life, Wharton escaped from a disappointing thirty-year marriage that she entered into as a very young woman. Flouting the rules that had restricted her, Wharton managed to find her identity through writing. A gifted storyteller, she produced works that displayed a penchant for wit, satire and irony.

In Wharton's "The Fulness of Life," a married but discontented woman (much like herself) seeks her soulmate in the afterlife. One of her few romanticized visions. Read The Fulness of Life.