W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil
Begin: 04/20/07
End: 04/24/07
Quality: Six out of Ten
Reason: Book Club.
Genre: Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1925
Fog Index: 8.6/82% are harder.
Flesch Index: 74.6/89% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.3/84% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/86% have more.
Number: First.
Synopsis: Kitty Fane is the wife of a bacteriologist in Hong Kong. She is not only bored by her husband, she despises him a little. The story opens on her and her lover, Charlie Townsend. Her husband takes her to a cholera ridden city in mainland China. And it is their where she discover quite a lot about not only herself, but also her husband and her lover.
Thoughts:

I have a couple of things that I would like to get across from this novel.

First of all, I have to say, that I really took a great disliking to Kitty Fane when I first picked this book up. This very well may have something to do with the large joint that I had smoked before starting on this book. I am not really sure. I just know that especially in that first scene, I wanted to take Ms. Fane across my knee. She was so shallow and self-absorbed and narcissistic.

My distaste for Kitty was also tempered and fueled by the sense of my own connection with her. I have a modest fear of becoming a shallow, self-absorbed and narcissistic faggot. It is something which I try to guard against and so I think when I come across characters which openly hold those characteristics, it irritates me.

I really wish that Maugham had spent more time on Walter. The novel is solely focused on Kitty, but I found Walter to be interesting. I also (and this probably seems odd since I just compared myself to Kitty) found myself connecting to Walter quite a bit. I feel, in some ways, that I am that hyper intelligent and sensitive man who doesn’t really know what to do socially and has little to no ambition.

I found the Kitty’s character arc in this story very interesting. She starts out as just a love starved shallow women but through a number of episodes becomes really quite the person of character. We find her at the end of the story, talking to her father, wanting a better fate for her daughter, wanting her daughter to really be a person of substance and independent. She goes from Kitty the social climber, in the beginning, to Kitty the ardent feminist in the end.

Okay. I think that is all I have to say for the moment. I have a few other thoughts but they are still floating half-formed behind my medulla oblongata and I don’t really feel like fishing them out at the moment.

Here are some quotes.

“You really are the most vain and fatuous ass that it’s ever been my bad luck to run across,” she said. (232)

“Freedom! That was the thought that sung in her heart so that even though the furniture was so dim, it was irrescent like the mist over a river where the morning sun fell upon it. Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit, and with freedom, courage, and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.” (210)

“Don’t you know that I’m a human being, unhappy and alone, and I want comfort and sympathy and encouragement; oh , can’t you turn a minute away from God and give me a little compassion; not the Christian compassion that you have for all suffering things, but just human compassion for me?” (204)

“I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possibly to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” (196)

“Let me be frank just this once, Father. I’ve been foolish and wicked and hateful. I’ve been terribly punished. I’m determined to save my daughter from all that. I want her to be fearless and frank. I want her to be a person, independent of others because she is possessed of herself, and I want her to take life like a free man and make a better job of it than I have.” (245)


Sonnet the title was taken from....


"Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,-behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it-he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher, found it not."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley


Walter refers to this on his death bed. Goldsmith's Elegy

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied:
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.