The Painted Veil

Maugham's The Painted Veil is one of those novels I picked up on a whim from a used bookstore on the West Coast. Like Razor's Edge, it almost seems to have Orientalist themes (Tao, China, the inscrutable East), but is centered on the life of a frivolous young woman whose ordeal forces her to reconsider her life and relationships. And if one thought it would become a sort of Chinese Love in the Time of Cholera, one is sorely mistaken. There is no magic realism here. Instead, Maugham's short novel exposes the bankruptcy of English social climbing (Kitty Fane's mother) and colonial social hierarchies (British Hong Kong, Charles Townsend). Through Kitty's attempt to find some meaning and sense of freedom, along her own Way, the 1925 novel also addresses some of the fundamental problems of relations between the sexes. 

Yes, women can vote and have made a variety of advances, but the proper English woman was still expected to marry well and remain dependent on a male breadwinner. Kitty's struggle to avoid being a burden after Walter's death illustrates this dilemma quite well. The other major women characters in the novel likewise experience the limitations placed upon their gender, especially Kitty's mother and Dorothy, the wife of Kitty's lover. Both of them are in no small manner largely behind the success of their husbands, but it is only through their men that their status is assured. Maugham appears to have understood this very well, and hints at a future change when Kitty promises to raise her unborn daughter as a free woman. Intriguingly, it is through the selfless French nuns in Mei-Tan-Fu that Kitty begins to see some way out of the rather meaningless life she led before as a young bourgeois woman.  

Now, what is the importance of China in this novel? Empire and colonialism are persistent themes in the novel, and with the exception of Colonel Yu and the owner of a curio shop, none of the Chinese characters are named. Most are "boys," or servants and amahs. Hong Kong, with its vain and unintelligent colonial officials (particularly Charles Townsend, the lover of Kitty), appears to consist of nothing but polo, balls, dinner, and putting on airs. Empire has bred a society at home and abroad lacking in the virtues and larger meaning of life. However, when going to the heart of a cholera epidemic in mainland China, the encounter with death, "traditional civilization," and sacrifice provides an opportunity for Kitty to develop while coming to some degree of peace with Walter. Allusions to the Tao, the ability of Waddington and the French nuns to embrace locals, and think beyond the West seems to inspire Kitty to think of how trivial her infidelity and prior life was. In short, China becomes an opportunity for the protagonist to discover herself, albeit only the first step on that journey.