I just finished a post about how fantasy can ruin a person's reality. I was inspired by a movie I watched just the other night entitled "Another Life". Produced by the BBC, it tells the real-life story of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson. Both executed on the same day in 1923, Fred and Edie were a tragic couple whose respective fantasies caused not only the death of Edie's husband...but Edie's execution as well.
I am reminded of the saying "Everything in moderation" when I think of how much Edie liked to read and fantasize about her own future. A voracious reader, Edie used that era's equivalent of graphic novels (Think "Fifty Shades of Gray" here ladies!) to drive and fuel her desire for a life of hot sex, an adoring and devoted man, and one adventure after another. (Or should I say an adoring and devoted man, hot sex, and one adventure after another! LOL!)
Given that Edie (in real life) made more money working than both her husband and father, she was nobody's "b" if you catch my drift. Free-thinking, free-spirited, and fantasy-driven...Edie really did want it all. As her husband realized this, he became more sullen and controlling towards Edie. Before that, it was clear that he "adored" Edie and was devoted to her as best as he knew how---however woefully lacking that adoration and devotion manifested itself in their bedroom. The rest is pretty predictable; Edie felt she was being "used" by her husband to satisfy only himself sexually. Edie felt she was stuck with a socially awkward and intellectually inferior life partner. Edit needed a change. And when he happend to come by in the form of twenty year-old Frederick Bywaters, Edie was ready.
Fred was nine years younger than Edie and an old friend of her youngest brother. Once the connection was made, Fred and Edie threw caution to the wind in spite of Fred dating Edie's younger sister at the same time. The lovers were eventually caught by Mr. Edie and Fred took off on the next ship for what turned out to be a year.
Here is where the story gets twisted. Over the course of that year, Edie send Fred approximately 60 "love" letters. These letters spoke often of wanting Mr. Edie "gone" and how much happier Edie would be without him if and when Fred returned. I read those letters. They sounded like the musings of a self-absorbed teenager (Edie was 28 at the time). Even though ADHD was nowhere near being a legitimate mental health diagnosis back then, ADHD was written all over those letters. Edie jumps from one topic to another like a jack rabbit. She might as well, in my opinion, been writing in a diary as her actual references to Fred and anything he may have previously written her were few and far between. In short, Edie was a flaming narcissist with ADHD and a twist of sex addiction on top of her fantasy-driving thinking.
Fred, on the other hand, was an angry young man who felt he kept drawing the short straw in life. Mr. Edie didn't even have to serve in the Great War as he had "heart trouble". Fred, on the other hand, was stuck in the merchant marine and being forced to lead a hand-to-mouth existence while the object of his desire was making more money selling hats than any man he knew! As he read Edie's letters, he took her fantasy-driven musings literally. He needed to get rid of Mr. Edie. Somehow and in some way, he needed to make it all "better" for himself by removing that fly in his own ointment.
When Fred returned on leave, he followed the couple as they were returning from a play. He jumped Mr. Edie and stabbed him to death. Edie herself was shocked and distraught as she saw it was Fred who had stabbed her husband. When Edie's letters were discovered after going through Fred's belongings after his arrest...the courts determined that she had "planned" Mr. Edie's death along with Fred. Nothing in the letters indicated this to me as I read them. If anything, they indicated how immature Edie was to get caught up in a love affair with someone who was equally immature but in a very different way.
When Fred and Edie were hanged on the same day in 1923, it was determined that she must have been pregnant at the time of her death. (I'm sparing you the details there.) As such, Edith Thompson's death was fuel for the anti-capital punishment movement throughout England and the world at that time.
In my own opinion, this case should have been fuel for every word ever said or written which leads anyone to believe that they deserve something for nothing. That merit and/or favor is a right and not a gift (or a curse!). That getting what one wants is always "good" no matter how much reality shows otherwise.
Fantasy versus reality. I guess it's just one of those realities we will all struggle with for as long as we are here on earth to struggle with it....
I am reminded of the saying "Everything in moderation" when I think of how much Edie liked to read and fantasize about her own future. A voracious reader, Edie used that era's equivalent of graphic novels (Think "Fifty Shades of Gray" here ladies!) to drive and fuel her desire for a life of hot sex, an adoring and devoted man, and one adventure after another. (Or should I say an adoring and devoted man, hot sex, and one adventure after another! LOL!)
Given that Edie (in real life) made more money working than both her husband and father, she was nobody's "b" if you catch my drift. Free-thinking, free-spirited, and fantasy-driven...Edie really did want it all. As her husband realized this, he became more sullen and controlling towards Edie. Before that, it was clear that he "adored" Edie and was devoted to her as best as he knew how---however woefully lacking that adoration and devotion manifested itself in their bedroom. The rest is pretty predictable; Edie felt she was being "used" by her husband to satisfy only himself sexually. Edie felt she was stuck with a socially awkward and intellectually inferior life partner. Edit needed a change. And when he happend to come by in the form of twenty year-old Frederick Bywaters, Edie was ready.
Fred was nine years younger than Edie and an old friend of her youngest brother. Once the connection was made, Fred and Edie threw caution to the wind in spite of Fred dating Edie's younger sister at the same time. The lovers were eventually caught by Mr. Edie and Fred took off on the next ship for what turned out to be a year.
Here is where the story gets twisted. Over the course of that year, Edie send Fred approximately 60 "love" letters. These letters spoke often of wanting Mr. Edie "gone" and how much happier Edie would be without him if and when Fred returned. I read those letters. They sounded like the musings of a self-absorbed teenager (Edie was 28 at the time). Even though ADHD was nowhere near being a legitimate mental health diagnosis back then, ADHD was written all over those letters. Edie jumps from one topic to another like a jack rabbit. She might as well, in my opinion, been writing in a diary as her actual references to Fred and anything he may have previously written her were few and far between. In short, Edie was a flaming narcissist with ADHD and a twist of sex addiction on top of her fantasy-driving thinking.
Fred, on the other hand, was an angry young man who felt he kept drawing the short straw in life. Mr. Edie didn't even have to serve in the Great War as he had "heart trouble". Fred, on the other hand, was stuck in the merchant marine and being forced to lead a hand-to-mouth existence while the object of his desire was making more money selling hats than any man he knew! As he read Edie's letters, he took her fantasy-driven musings literally. He needed to get rid of Mr. Edie. Somehow and in some way, he needed to make it all "better" for himself by removing that fly in his own ointment.
When Fred returned on leave, he followed the couple as they were returning from a play. He jumped Mr. Edie and stabbed him to death. Edie herself was shocked and distraught as she saw it was Fred who had stabbed her husband. When Edie's letters were discovered after going through Fred's belongings after his arrest...the courts determined that she had "planned" Mr. Edie's death along with Fred. Nothing in the letters indicated this to me as I read them. If anything, they indicated how immature Edie was to get caught up in a love affair with someone who was equally immature but in a very different way.
When Fred and Edie were hanged on the same day in 1923, it was determined that she must have been pregnant at the time of her death. (I'm sparing you the details there.) As such, Edith Thompson's death was fuel for the anti-capital punishment movement throughout England and the world at that time.
In my own opinion, this case should have been fuel for every word ever said or written which leads anyone to believe that they deserve something for nothing. That merit and/or favor is a right and not a gift (or a curse!). That getting what one wants is always "good" no matter how much reality shows otherwise.
Fantasy versus reality. I guess it's just one of those realities we will all struggle with for as long as we are here on earth to struggle with it....