Cruelty and Deception
"The Way Up to Heaven" dramatizes and questions the nature of cruelty, specifically between married couples. Mr. Foster's cruelty is subtle and often manifests as carelessness, but in reality the story suggests he is intentionally exacerbating his wife's discomfort as he continually delays them. In this way, the story highlights how Mr. Foster is actually a rather sinister character: he deceives his wife (and others) into interpreting his cruel behavior as ignorance or apathy. By contrast, Mrs. Foster does not appear to harbor any cruel feelings toward her husband, and the narrator even explains that she had been a loyal and loving wife for 30 years. However, when she finally realizes that Mr. Foster's lateness is deliberate—evidenced by the way the present for their daughter was wedged deeply into the car seat "as though with the help of a pushing hand" (32)—she becomes cruel in turn, leaving him to die in a broken elevator. The story laments the couple's deterioration, to be sure, but also suggests through Mrs. Foster's triumphant affect at the end of the story that small but unwarranted cruelties are more condemnable than one major cruel response.
Gender Dynamics
The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Foster is in part defined and constricted by traditional gender roles: Mr. Foster is domineering with a sense of superiority while Mrs. Foster is meek, obedient, and insecure. That each character so thoroughly embodies the conventional attributes of their gender, the story suggests, is precisely what causes their relationship to break down. Mrs. Foster's meekness feeds Mr. Foster's arrogance and vice versa, creating an endless cycle of unspoken tension between them. It is only when Mrs. Foster abandons her gendered role as an obedient wife by leaving Mr. Foster behind that she frees herself of this cycle, while Mr. Foster becomes a casualty of his own gendered behavior.
Class as Dishonesty
The Fosters are a notably wealthy couple. They live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, maintain a butler and other household staff, and most importantly, behave with unyielding upperclass propriety. Mr. Foster disguises his cruel actions toward his wife as mannered kindness, feigning a lack of understanding over Mrs. Foster's anxious state. Similarly, Mrs. Foster refuses to speak truthfully to Mr. Foster or express her discomfort with his lateness. Just before Mr. Foster leaves the car to search for the present, for example, Mrs. Foster's stress reaches its climax and she raises her voice as she implores Mr. Foster to simply leave the present behind. When Mr. Foster questions her, she returns to decorum and allows him to go searching for the present, clearly exuding fear over how her impropriety would upset him. In this way, the story satirizes this kind of elite obsession with decorum by showing how it prevents the Fosters from engaging honestly with one another.
Desire and Fulfillment
In the background of the story is Mrs. Foster's plans to visit her daughter, Ellen, and her grandchildren, whom she has never met before. The narrator notes that she is excited to travel to Paris and even wishes she could live there to be closer to her family, the implication being that Mr. Foster is the one who keeps them in New York. Mrs. Foster's desires themselves, therefore, are unexpressed, and she is unable to find fulfillment until she decides to abandon Mr. Foster in the broken elevator. Her trip to Paris is characterized by the quality time she spends with her grandchildren and the indulgent lifestyle she allows them to have while they are with her, as well as the cool and calm demeanor she exhibits on her trip. Thus, it is only through her abandonment of Mr. Foster that Mrs. Foster's pathology gives way to joy.
