Published: 1925 (Heinemann)
Summary: W Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil is one of those novels that, while not having any real “shock value” or plot twists which are needed to sustain a certain readership, sustain the reader’s attention with perpetual sadness and disappointment. Not the disappointment in a character you learn to love, but disappointment in the fact that she gets so close to you loving her story only for her to fall into every predictable pratfall of someone her ilk so that by the end you could care less where she goes and what happens to her children. But as I will briefly explain below, THAT IS THE POINT!
The premise is simple, Kitty Garstin is spoiled and relatively unloved by her family, a woman who is vivacious and beautiful, but inconsiderate and vain. Her family is of decent stature in Old Blighty, but it is courting season and she needs a husband, STAT! What will happen to the family if this plucky firebrand doesn’t choose a soulmate at a cocktail hour! After years of rejecting every man who walks in the door, her dumpy little sister, Doris, has the audacity to find a husband before Kitty. A little desperation is all Kitty needs to bag any boring and half-handsome man who walks in the door.
Enter Walter, a boring and half-handsome bacteriologist who is so nervous to propose to Kitty that she doesn’t even think he acknowledges presence, let alone plans to marry her. So of course, they get married, and move to Hong Kong because of colonialism and science, baby!
Most of the novel is set here in Hong Kong and mainland China. Kitty alerts the reader that she is not happy with Walter’s boring and relatively unfeeling presence, so she has taken a lover. Charlie Townsend, married with kids, is the number two in charge in the Hong Kong government, but number one in Kitty’s heart. They engage in a torrid love affair that ends when Walter finds them doing the deed at their home. Kitty blames her affair on Walter for being such a boring and unlovable person, and asks Charlie if he would divorce his wife, Dorothy, after she divorces Walter. Charlie, although handsome and refined, is only looking out for number one and also loves that he gets to play polo and tennis while his dotting wife takes care of the family. Thus, when Kitty explains her plan to Charlie he soundly rejects it and wants to continue their affair in private, unaware that Kitty had made a deal with Walter that if Charlie would divorce Dorothy that Walter would grant a divorce to Kitty with the caveat that if Charlie rejects her then she will have to move with Walter away from Hong Kong. If this sounds like boring melodrama on ABC at 11:30am during your lunch break, it is! But, the novel gets good right around here.
WALTER IS BANISHING HIS SELF-LOATHING AND BORING SCIENTIST ASS TO CHOLERA-INFESTED MAINLAND CHINA, AND BY GOD KITTY IS GOING TO!! Now are most unhappy couple are whisked way to the mainland on a suicide mission for Walter’s work. He feels it is his mission to rid this place of cholera, and if he dies it is totally fine because he is a sad cuckold whose wife hates him. Kitty detests him more than he even realizes, but does feel guilty for cheating and scorned due to Charlie’s rejection. She needs her eat, pray, love moment only they pull up to where the cholera epidemic is popping off and dead bodies are strewn about the place. Walter gets busy to work leaving Kitty wondering how she will grow as a person and learn to love herself. She goes to a convent and meets very nice, but stern nuns, who try to push her away but Kitty is so moved that she volunteers there to pass the time. She also makes friends with their liaison, Mr. Waddington, who makes Kitty feel better by explaining that their (surprise!) shared acquaintance, Charlie Townsend, is a phony social-climber who isn’t as charming inside as he seems on the face of it. Kitty starts to realize that maybe her association with men is not what she should be gauging her self-worth around. Kitty, slowly engaging in this process of self-discovery, gets within a small sliver of actualization and redemption.
But just when you think this novel is turning a fulfilling corner, Kitty finds out she is pregnant and suspects it is Charlie’s baby, as does Walter who confronts her to his chagrin. To make matters worse, Walter has been experimenting with cholera (ON HIMSELF!!) and falls ill., Even on his deathbed Kitty can hardly say a good word about him or that she ever loved him. Kitty plays the role of a grieving widow well, gets rejected for long-term employment at the nunnery, and is whisked back to Hong Kong, fetus in tow. This whirlwind lament of a story finishes with Kitty being offered by Dorothy to stay in the Lion’s Den, the Townsend residence. Dorothy is unaware of the previous affair and implications of Kitty’s baby bump, while Charlie makes the moves on Kitty one last time. AND IT WORKS! Kitty sleeps with Charlie after previously banishing his memory to the seventh circle of hell, leaving her in the same place she started with before she even went to mainland China with Walter. She did not learn her lesson at all, her mother dies as she heads back to England, and at the end of the novel her father (who she never really loved), is moving to the Bahamas and she is going with him to raise her baby in a tropical paradise. If this sounds confusing and a little WAA-WAA…. it is. However, what you read the book for is the pursuit of enlightenment, not the attainment of it. Kitty is not really likable as a character, she comes off as whiny and naive, but there are moments where you can’t help but root for her to figure it out and find self-actualization.
I think Maugham wants us to root for Kitty, beyond all her bluster and incessant whining about the inadequacy of everyone in her life, and root for a woman who is messy and complicated but also sincere, even if that sincerity is misplaced and ultimately wrought with tragedy. Maugham’s last wish for Kitty is that she find inner-peace, I just wish she did this in the first 245 pages, not just a hint on the last page.
Rating: 3.6/5
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