In this case, the shadowiest of clues is giving my the novel’s title and its epigraph:
“...the painted veil which those who live call Life.”
It’s a line from Shelley, and in the context of the novel that follows it is clearly a reference to the comforts of an unexamined life, and the attendant risks associated with lifting it.
Our protagonist is Kitty Fane, the young and unserious wife of the older and very serious scientist Walter, who, growing bored while stationed in the Far East with her husband, demands more from life and has an affair with an attractive and erudite diplomat named Charles Townsend. When her husband discovers her infidelity, he forces Kitty to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in rural China. There, stripped of the British society of her youth she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life.
In other words, to lift the veil.
Here’s an example of some of her soul searching, brought on by the contrast between her previous hedonism and the overpowering poverty, sickness, and death that surrounds her. In this scene, her husband Walter has himself just died of the cholera he worked so hard to cure, and Kitty is speaking to a fellow British traveler named Waddington.
“Do you think the soul is immortal?” she asked.
He did not seem surprised at the question.
“How should I know?”
“Just now, when they washed Walter, before they put him into the coffin, I looked at him. He looked very young. Too young to die. Do you remember that beggar that we saw the first time you took me for a walk? I was frightened not because he was dead, but because her looked as though he’d never been a human being. He was just a dead animal. And now again, with Walter, it looked so like a machine that has run down. That’s what is so frightening, And if it is only a machine how futile is all this suffering and the heart pains and the misery.”
He did not answer, but his eyes traveled over the landscape at their feet. The wide expanse on that gay and sunny morning filled the heart with exultation. The trim little rice-fields stretched as far as the eye could see and in many of them the blue-clad peasants with their buffaloes were working industriously. It was a peaceful and happy scene. Kitty broke the silence.
“I can’t tell you how deeply moved I’ve been by all I’ve seen at the convent. They’re wonderful, those nuns, they make me feel utterly worthless. They give up everything, their home, their country, love, children, freedom; and all the little things which I sometimes think must be harder still to give up, flowers and green fields, going for a walk on an autumn day, books and music, comfort, everything they give up, everything. And they do it so that they may devote themselves to a life of sacrifice and poverty, obedience, killing work, and prayer. To all of them this world is really and truly a place of exile. Life is a cross which they willingly bear, but in their hearts all the time is the desire -- oh, it’s so much stronger than desire, it’s a longing, an eager, passionate longing for the death which shall lead them to life everlasting.”
Kitty clasped her hands and looked at him with anguish.
“Well?”
“Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They’ve given up all for nothing. They’ve been cheated. They’re dupes.”
Waddington reflected for a little while.
“I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is 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.”
This, I think, is Maugham’s own philosophy of life coming through. I’ve seen it in too many of his other works to think otherwise. The life of the artist, struggling against the reality of his own death, and succeeding only in the struggle, not the in the achievement. But for Kitty…
Kitty sighed. What he said seemed hard. She wanted more.
“Have you ever been to a symphony concert?” he continued.
“Yes,” she smiled. “I know nothing of music, but I’m rather fond of it.”
“Each member of the orchestra plays his own little instrument, and what do you think he knows of the complicated harmonies which unroll themselves on the indifferent air? He is concerned only with his own small share. But he knows that the symphony is lovely, and though there’s none to hear it, it is lovely still, and he is content to play his part.”
“You spoke of Tao the other day,” said Kitty, after a pause. “Tell me what it is.”
Waddington gave her a little look, hesitated an instant, and then with a faint smile on his comic face answered:
“It is the Way and the Waygoer. It is the eternal road along which walk all beings, but no being made it, for itself is being. It is everything and nothing. From it all things spring, all things conform to it, and to it at last all things return. It is a square without angles, a sound which ears cannot hear, and an image without form. It is a vast net and though its meshes are as wide as the sea it lets nothing through. It is the sanctuary where all things find refuge. It is nowhere, but without looking out of the window you may see it. Desire not to desire, it teaches, and leave all things to take their course. He that humbles himself shall be preserved entire. He that bends shall be made straight. Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking-place of failure; but who can tell when the turning point will come? He who strives after tenderness can become even as a little child. Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks and safety to him who defends. Mighty is he who conquers himself.”
“Does it mean anything?”
“Sometimes, when I’ve had half a dozen whiskies and look at the stars, I think perhaps it does.”
Waddington cannot take the Tao seriously -- not unless he’s drunk and looking dreamily at the stars. Neither can Kitty. And in their places I would argue that neither can Maugham. Desire not to desire, it teaches, but the artist must desire to create, to achieve, to transcend, or he cannot be an artist.
In the end, The Painted Veil is a novel that flirts with eastern philosophy, but which doesn’t embrace it. In a final scene between Kitty and her lover Charles Townsend, she better summarizes the plight of man in her contempt of him and the very instincts that drove her.
“Hang it all, [Townsend said,] I’m not a stick or a stone. It’s so unreasonable, the way you look at it; it’s so morbid. I thought after yesterday you’d feel a little more kindly to me. After all, we’re only human.”
“I don’t feel human. I feel like an animal. A pig or a rabbit or a dog. Oh, I don’t blame you, I was just as bad. I yielded to you because I wanted you. But it wasn’t the real me. I’m not that hateful, beastly, lustful woman. I disown her. It wasn’t me that lay on that bed panting for you when my husband was hardly cold in his grave and your wife had been so kind to me, so indescribably kind. It was only the animal in me, dark and fearful like an evil spirit, and I disown, and hate, and despise it. And ever since, when I’ve thought of it, my gorge rises and I feel that I must vomit.”
He frowned a little and gave a short, uneasy snigger.
“Well, I’m fairly broadminded, but sometimes you say things that positively shock me.”
“I should be sorry to do that. You’d better go now. You’re a very unimportant little man and I’m silly to talk to you seriously.”
Indeed. In much of the society that Maugham writes about, there are many unimportant little men, for whom it is silly if we stoop to take them seriously. Although Kitty does not like what she sees after lifting the veil, at least she has done so and can move forward on whatever sounder footing she has found there.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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