The Painted Veil

This week in British Literature we are beginning W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel, The Painted Veil. The story of a British couple living in Hong Kong at the height of the cholera epidemic, Maugham's novel has much to say about sin, redemption, and the power of forgiveness. It is also a fascinating look inside a prominent British colony and the relationship between the colonists and those who have been colonized.

The title for the novel comes from the first line of a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. For this week's blog post, I want students to continue sharpening their poetry analysis skills by offering their own analysis of what this poem is about while also trying to see how they might already relate the content of the poem to what they have read of the novel so far. Below is the poem:

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