Chekhov, Joyce, Trevor : 3 modes of the short story

The great William Trevor story Sacred Statues, in his "Selected Stories," further picks up on the theme I posted on yesterday - the mysterious way in which the protagonists in Trevor's latest, most recent stories arrive at some kind of perception, about themselves or about their world, at the end of the story. In earlier Trevor stories the concluding mood, the final note, was what I've been calling some kind of accommodation to the difficulties of life, a settling for less, an uneasiness - what I've called a Chekhovian mood. In the most recent stories this tone or mode shifts slightly and at the conclusion the characters don't settle for less but perceive that there is something more, an elusive and spiritual quality beyond their grasp or control or full comprehension. This mood is closer to Joycean, and it's something like an epiphany but without the full realization. Sacred Statues, about a couple, early 30s, with 3 (?) children, struggling in rural Ireland, the husband had given up a good job as a joiner in order to pursue his passion as a sculptor (making sacred statues for churches), but is now in near poverty - he seeks out the elderly woman who encouraged him and supported him as he first pursued his dream, but now he has no money and cannot help. His wife has an idea that she could bear a child and secretly "sell" the baby to a childless couple in town. None of these plans work; at the end the husband will take a job on a road crew and give up his statuary. The wife stands and looks at the statuary in the last scene and then comes the startling, simple conclusion to the story: The world, not she, had failed.