The Illusion of Life...

In The Painted Veil, after Walter's death, Kitty and Waddington make their way up to the village temple. While there, they ponder some pretty heavy questions related to faith and the purpose of life. Kitty wonders whether the nuns simply believe that life is an illusion they must proceed through to get to a heavenly eternity and then worries that if there is, in fact, no afterlife, then their life has been without purpose.

Waddington responds by saying, "I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is an illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the 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). 

I want you to reflect on this passage for your blog post this week. What does Waddington mean here? How can relate this back to the title of the novel? In what ways might we see this idea apply to Kitty's experiences in China?

The Arrogant Imperialist

The Nigerian playwright and poet, Wole Soyinka, once said, "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness."

As we continue our reading of W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, we watch our main characters travel from the relatively comfortable Westernized society of Imperial Hong Kong into the more rural interior of China's mainland. While much of the plot is driven around the drama of Walter and Kitty's marriage, we can't ignore that this novel is written from the colonial perspective of an "invader".

Does Soyinka's quote hold true for what you are seeing so far in the novel? Is Kitty moving from a place of arrogance to openness? Does the changing physical landscape have anything to do with this? So far, how do you see the setting of the novel impacting the plot?

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