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The Painted Veil, by W. Somerset Maugham
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Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.
- Sales Rank: #30166 in Books
- Brand: Maugham, W. Somerset
- Published on: 2006-11-14
- Released on: 2006-11-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x .60" w x 5.18" l, .41 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 246 pages
From Library Journal
Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling. Recommended only for large literature collections. I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
“The modern writer who has influenced me the most.” – George Orwell
From the Inside Flap
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.
Most helpful customer reviews
55 of 56 people found the following review helpful.
Good story. Great writing.
By Ellen Hanson
"The Painted Veil" is the beautifully told story of one self-absorbed woman and what it takes for her to discover joy in loving others. Every novel should have at least one character who changes and grows even half as much as this heroine. (Scene spoiler alert: My favorite scene is the last, when Kitty realizes she's always taken her father for granted, imagines how he must be feeling, and begins - finally - to treat him as a unique individual who has wants and needs separate from hers. When she can finally do this, their love is realized.)
I just saw the 2006 motion picture, and actually enjoyed it more than the book. The screenwriter enriched Somerset Maugham's classic in several ways: Kitty's husband Walter is given more depth such that his growth over the course of the story matches Kitty's. Also enriched is the backdrop. Not only is the Chinese town where much of the story takes place suffering a Cholera epidemic, but the Chinese Nationals are rising up against the British. This plot enhancement cranks up the tension of the story, and allows Walter's character to develop in a more complicated and ultimately satisfying way.
I highly recommend you read the book, then see the movie. You won't be disappointed!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent story about the human condition that is not remotely dated.
By John H.
The Painted Veil once again reinforces to me that there is nothing new under the sun. Maugham's story could have taken place in 2016. I was inspired to read it after seeing the film adaptation, which was an entertaining story in its own right, but completely different in its treatment and outcome. Readers should be prepared for this if they are coming into the story from the same perspective.
The humanity in Maugham's writing is refreshing, the storytelling straightforward, the characters well developed and real. He not only does a splendid job creating a shallow, self-possessed and unlikeable character, but more importantly, convinces the reader to stick with her through the journey of maturity and transformation into a caring human being.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Human character development and spitual growth
By C. Collins
This is a superb book, dealing with multiple themes around human relationships, character development, distinguishing love and infatuation, the transcendental experience, and the meaning of existence. That sounds like a lot but this small book covers a lot of ground.
Through a wide array of characters, Maugham explores the nature of human relationships. There a parental relationships where parents are overbearing and judgmental. Kitty, the protagonist of this novel, has such a relationship with her mother. She eventually marries just to escape her mother's judgments and criticisms. There are also unexamined relationships that are taken for granted and only later are seen in a new light. Such is the case with Kitty and her father. He is a judge and ample supporter for his family. Yet he is a status symbol for her mother and a source of income and support for Kitty. It isn't until Kitty gains in maturity and painful experiences that she eventually is able to even begin a genuine relationship with her father. Social roles of parent, child, mother, son, daughter, and father may often provide a social matrix for interaction but subtle violence and disregard and neglect may characterize the relationships that are seen to the outside world as loving and in fact those who dispense emotional violence and those who absorb emotional violence may never grasp the reality in which they are stuck, and thus characterize their relationships to family as loving when in fact, love is not present.
Growing up in such a home, Kitty seems oblivious to the compromise she creates when she agrees to marry a socially awkward but highly intelligent bacteriologist. He falls for her but she never really reciprocates with the emotional depth of her husband. She is young and self-absorbed and shallow in many ways, yet he loves her.
But Kitty has never given herself fully to another person, she has never been infatuated, she has never been out of control and in constant pain when she is away from her lover. Unfortunately for Kitty, she falls for a married diplomat who is highly self serving and manipulative. Charlie Townsend begins to dominate her every thought and she becomes lost in day-dreams of marriage to Charlie far away from the real world of their marriages. The ancient Greeks believed Jupiter gives mankind wisdom through painful experiences and Kitty is about to be educated. Having discovered that his wife is having an affair with Charlie Townsend, Dr. Walter Fane, is inwardly heart broken but he display a highly controlled exterior. He offers Kitty an ultimatum which has been carefully thought through for it helps reveal to Kitty how shallow is her relationship with Charlie. Walter insists that Kitty join him in a distant city which is being ravaged by cholera. She has no choice but to follow him. Yet this experience is the critical experience of her life as well as Walter's life.
Kitty meets a minor ugly alcoholic British official, Waddington, who eventually becomes her intimate friend and one of her guides toward herself. Waddington quickly picks up that the Fane's relationship is a disaster and he helps Kitty find meaning in her life as an aide in a French Catholic orphanage. He also gradually introduces her to Taoism and the concept of desire and connection being the source of much human pain and suffering. Kitty gradually goes through multiple stages of grief and anger to begin forgetting Charlie Townsend.
At the French Orphanage, Kitty also begins to grow and change in character as she cares for Chinese orphans and interacts with the highly spiritual nuns. Kitty observes that the nuns act calm and loving and gentle and supportive of all humans in all their interactions, but she sees that they are not attached. They are not emotionally bound to the children they serve, there love is a spiritual grace and transference from God to the children. They are willing conduit between God and suffering mankind. Thus they are able to love and let go, they care and then forget, moving onward to the next suffering soul. In this regard Maugham is certainly connecting the sublime nature of Christian non-attachment to the Buddhist and Taoist philosophies of detachment from the world. Kitty has several transcendental experiences, sometimes evoked by great beauty in the natural world or in vast vistas of man's interaction with nature.
Thus Maugham does something outstanding. He conveys how a person may grow in character by pain and self examination as well as how a person learns to integrate or experience the mystery, the unification with the unknown, the wordless and thoughtless mind of God that changes perception.
But like relationships, ever changing and growing, the transcendental experience is never complete or present at all times. Kitty longs for the serenity of the nuns, their spiritual and emotional centeredness, but finds that just like relationships, our glimpses into the mind of God are ever changing.
Maugham has selected to show us that a shallow self absorbed young woman can begin to glimpse the mystery of existence, the flow of pain and desire and attachment out of the human heart. Like the Buddha, she sees a corpse in the road, the reminder of our temporary status on this earth.
The test comes as Kitty realizes that Walter is in pain and that he must forgive her to move beyond the pain. She has moved and grown greatly if she now can empathize with Walter to the point that she sees fully his pain and sees the way beyond his pain. Just as Walter saw her infatuation with Charlie and the steps needed to reveal Charlie's lack of character to Kitty, she now sees that Walter has a broken heart and in his heart bears pain and anger, but more importantly, he is now willing yet to move beyond the pain and anger and move into a state of forgiveness. Kitty has reached the point of maturity that she wants this forgiveness, not for herself but for Walter. She has moved beyond herself absorption, her self definitions, and her own perceptions and like the compassionate Buddha, she sees into Walter's heart and knows how she must be healed.
Unfortunately, life is not predictable and Walter falls deathly ill with cholera. As he dies she urges him to forgive her, something that she needs but also something that she clearly sees that he also needs.
The resolution of the novel shows Kitty dealing with the consequences of her choices, the recognition of her own human frailty and needs, the separation from her mother's bonds, and the initiation of a genuine relationship with her father.
This is an outstanding work of literature, unwinding a profound and complex theme, revealing the nature of relationship to the self, to others, to the Tao beyond. No small achievement.
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