Enclosedness

Maggie was always single, always withheld. . . . It was during this winter that Ursula suffered and enjoyed most keenly Maggie's fundamental sadness of enclosedness.

We must ask, first, whether our privacy — call it our distance or enclosedness or unknowability with respect to others — is elected or inevitable.

I was thinking about the moment when that enclosedness, which can be protective, tips over into something menacing and unpleasant.