One of the things I love most about Maugham is how well he portrays the human condition. Even the shallowest of characters are richly rounded. In my mind’s eye, The Painted Veil captures the human capacity to love what is not good for them, scoff at what is, and allows us readers to see first hand how incapable many of us are at coping with the realities of life. How wonderful life would be for us all if it were fiction.The Painted Veil tells the story of Kitty Fane, a simple minded, vein, and frivolous woman; and Walter, the man who loves her. Though Kitty does not return Walter’s love, she agrees to marry him as it seems her time in society has quite run out. Walter whisks her away to exciting Hong Kong, where he is stationed in a government funded lab. It is here that Kitty meets Charlie Townsend, the lawyer dejour. The two begin an illicit affair. However, as it always is with such things, the two are found out when Walter makes an unannounced visit home to deliver Kitty a gift. What follows is one of my top ten favorite bits of dialogue in literature to date."I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor."It amazes me that anyone can wound so deeply simply by admitting their own defeat. Needless to say, this is where Kitty’s life of luxury comes to an end. Rather than cause a scandal, Walter affords Kitty a choice. She can convince Charlie to leave his wife and marry her, in which case, Walter would agree to divorce her quietly, or she can accompany him to cholera stricken Mei-Tan-Fu where he has just volunteered to work. Kitty, in all her naïveté beseeches Charlie, believing that he meant all the loving things he said to her over the course of their affair. Naturally, Charlie lives up to his cowardly nature and refuses Kitty, leaving her with no other course of action than to leave with Walter. It is here that the true gloriousness that is this story occurs.With the blinders of Charlie’s true nature finally off, Kitty continues to love him. I suppose this is where many readers become fed up with Kitty, but I rather admired her for allowing herself to continue her feelings for a man that will inevitably disappoint. It is tragically human of her and is the one trait that binds her to Walter, for truly, isn’t he guilty of the same crime? Though Walter never again looks upon Kitty with affection, I can’t help but feel that he loved her until the end. Or perhaps he felt towards Kitty the same pity she felt towards him. His last words implied as much. (In case you are wondering, his last words were “The dog it was died” and just in case you don’t know what that means, here is the poem he was referencing)…An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; And if you find it wondrous short, It cannot hold you long. In Islington there was a man, Of whom the world might say That still a godly race he ran, Whene'er he went to pray. A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad, When he put on his clothes. And in that town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, And curs of low degree. This dog and man at first were friends; But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad and bit the man. Around from all the neighbouring streets The wondering neighbours ran, And swore the dog had lost his wits, To bite so good a man. The wound it seemed both sore and sad To every Christian eye; And while they swore the dog was mad, They swore the man would die. But soon a wonder came to light, That showed the rogues they lied: The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died. Just as we can never be sure if Walter’s last words were his way of expressing forgiveness or his way of casting his final stone, we will never be certain of Kitty's transformation. It’s my opinion that the shallow Kitty died with Walter and the book ends at the start of her awakening. Nonetheless, this is a powerful and lovely story that will certainly get the emotional and mental wheels turning.
I saw the 2006 movie “The Painted Veil” on TV some years ago and somehow couldn’t quite forget Edward Norton playing the always tense and melancholic Walter Fane, who actually has a sensitive and loving heart beneath what appears to be a cold and distant outer shell.Recently in an online chat with other readers at Goodreads, I was asked to name my favorite movie which was adapted from a novel and I answered “The Painted Veil” just because I loved the movie very much as I remembered it. But I had never read the novel before. So I decided to read the novel. When I finished reading it, I felt the novel impresses me even more than the movie.The novel moves me on several levels.The most elementary, or shallow, layer, is in the theme of unrequited love. As hackneyed such a theme as it is, here within the storyline there still lurks something that disturbs the heart profoundly. Walter, being perfect as he is as a human being (although not in Kitty’s eyes, which makes it ironical), doesn’t mind giving without expecting return in his one-sided love relationship with Kitty. Well aware of Kitty’s shallowness of character, frivolity and fatuousness, he is willing to love and dote on her with all his heart. His love for Kitty is unconditional, until he finds out her infidelity, which shatters him with no hope for salvation. But because his fantasy of love is so pure and his devotion so unrestrained, he is, whether conscious of it or not, apt to meet with utter disappointment in the end. Sand castles are built to be erased. When he decides to go to cholera-stricken Mei-tan-fu in China, dragging Kitty along, he is determined to inflict on himself (and Kitty too, initially) the ultimate punishment.As Kitty thought aloud in the novel, “Because he had dressed a doll in gorgeous robes and set her in a sanctuary to worship her, and then discovered that the doll was filled with sawdust, he could neither forgive himself nor her. His soul was lacerated. It was all make-believe that he had lived on, and when the truth shattered it, he thought reality itself was shattered. It was true enough, he would not forgive her because he could not forgive himself.”What Walter stirs in me is not so much pity for him as sympathy with his helpless reliance on mirages of love for survival. It is his deadly weakness, to be sure. But isn’t there a part of us that tends to believe what we want to believe? The pathos of the story lies in Walter’s inability to free himself of his over-indulgence in fantasyland.The second layer of the story is the gradual conversion process of Kitty Fane from the worthless, self-indulgent and frivolous woman to the independent-thinking and compassionate individual who is at last free from the values she was brought up to believe in. Indeed, Kitty is justified to blame her mother Mrs. Garstin for her tortuous learning curve in life. It was Mrs. Garstin who nudged her into marrying Walter just for the sake of material comfort and nothing else. In Mrs. Garstin’s mind, a woman would be foolish not to use her beauty as a bargaining chip in exchange for a qualified provider of means. This brings to mind Ruth, the supercilious mother of Rose, in the movie “Titanic”, who insists that Rose should marry into high society. In both cases, the mothers are too callous to even have a clue what disastrous consequences might result from their forcing their daughters into unhappy and loveless marriages.In “The Painted Veil”, Kitty is lucky to come upon soul-cleansing encounters in Mei-tan-fu where she stares death in the face every day and witnesses the selfless kind acts of the French nuns, which at the same time moves her and shames her to the core about the worthless life she leads. Fortunate for her, her chance for salvation comes knocking on the door and her life is changed forever. Her only regret is the tragic loss of Walter to the pestilence.The third layer, which is tied to the second, is the championing of the idea that women should strive to be free and independent individuals and learn not to rely on men, which idea, given the timeframe of the novel, is a bold concept. It is Kitty’s own painful life experiences that lead her to that awakening. She has come a long way indeed, after first being betrayed by the selfish and narcissistic Charlie Townsend, who she erroneously trusts to be the love of her life, then suffering the silent alienation by her husband Walter while adjusting to an isolated life in inhospitable Mei-tan-fu, then discovering that she’s with child, then losing Walter tragically to cholera and, lastly, subjecting herself once more to degradation at the seduction of Townsend.In the last Chapter, Kitty said to her father: “Let me be frank just this once, father. I’ve been foolish and wicked and hateful. I’ve been terribly punished. I’m determined to save my daughter from all that. I want her to be fearless and frank. I want her to be a person independent of others because she is possessed of herself, and I want her to take life like a free man and make a better job of it than I have.”We all make mistakes in our lives, sometimes serious ones. Everyone deserves a second chance. Kitty is no exception.
What do You think about The Painted Veil (2006)?
This was a book that asked a lot of me, too much when it came to me appreciating what it had to offer. Mostly, the story came across like a soap opera starring a vain, self-centered, dissatisfied woman who took what she wanted, regardless of the pain she might cause. And most of the supporting characters were no better than she, either weak and self-loathing, or indifferent to others. And this was a problem for me because I usually need at least one character to attach myself to when getting through a book. That character doesn't need to be admirable, but preferably, the character shouldn't be utterly wretched, either. I only got through this book by hoping there would be some growth in these characters. But when the end came, I can't say I was convinced it happened. At best, I will say there was self awareness on some of the characters' parts where their deficiencies were concerned. But such knowledge isn't enough unless a person does something positive with it. Before I wrote this review, I read the sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley from which this book takes its title, hoping to find something in it that I might have missed in this story, giving it depth. And the sonnet did help with my understanding of the book and its intent, but it did nothing to increase my enjoyment of the story or my appreciation of how the author chose to play out the themes. It all begins with an affair between two married people, a locked door with the knob rattling during one of their assignations. Kitty Fane and Charlie Townsend, British and living in Hong Kong in the 1920's, wonder if their yearlong affair has finally been discovered by Kitty's husband, Walter, a respected bacteriologist. They don't have long to wonder when days later Walter tells Kitty he is leaving for the interior where a cholera epidemic has devastated the population of that region and killed a number of those sent there to aid them. And the kicker is, he isn't going alone when offering his help. She will accompany him. It's either that, or Walter will divorce her and cause a scandal. There is one other alternative her husband offers Kitty that has her seeking help from her lover who lets her down, just as her husband knew he would. So reluctantly, Kitty agrees to accompany Walter on what she believes is a suicide mission. What follows is a chronicle of Kitty's life during the epidemic, as seen through her eyes. And this was another problem for me. I never got to know the other characters and never learned what they thought or felt unless they spoke of it, which wasn't often. There wasn't any room for anyone else in this story besides Kitty, with her contemplating herself continuously or her evaluating others by way of how they affected her. Kitty's view of her husband, whose earlier passion for her embarrassed her and whose fine features did nothing to make him less ugly to her, and her view of Asians as ugly yellow people, didn't help matters, either. Most of the time, while absorbing this story as an audiobook, I was incredulous as to what I was hearing, every little vile thought that crossed Kitty's mind forced upon me in vivid detail. And how ironic it was since Kitty was a beautiful woman who was more ugly inside than any person she considered ugly in appearance. So where did all this self-absorption of Kitty and her disdain for others take her and the reader? Not far enough and not anywhere I wanted to go. The veil of life may have been lifted by the end of the book to reveal what lay beneath the vanished surface--the unvarnished truth. But truth only matters in the hands of people who can recognize all of it and apply it, instead of just picking and choosing what works for them. On a positive note, this book was excellent as an audiobook, narrated by Kate Reading whose great voice range and even pacing helped me continue with a story that did not appeal to me.
—Donna
To be honest it was only the last few chapters of this book that really redeemed it for me and pushed it up to three stars from two. Before that, had it not been for a lovely turn of phrase now and then, and the articulate expression of the writing, I really might have thought this done by a /fantastically/ average old fashioned romance novel writer. The story is a quite run-of-the-mill morality tale, one that fills our shelves even more vapidly nowadays in the chick-lit genre. Shallow, frivolous girl learns the error of her ways, grows to appreciate men she thought she couldn't before. Good lord did I hate Kitty Fane for the majority of the novel. I couldn't stop from rolling my eyes again and again at her, everything she "discovered" was so incredibly trite, and sorry Maugham, rather tritely expressed minus out some lovely imagery that was occasionally employed. I can't even make the 'oh, this was published 80 years ago' excuse for it. This plotline has to have been tired by the 1850s. Come /on/, now. I kept reading because I was sure, /sure/, that Maugham would build up to something, that he couldn't let me down after The Razor's Edge. It really took right until the end and only because I can personally relate to Kitty's final realizations, which are very self-actualizing and rather surprisingly feminist in nature. Finally the modernist in Maugham comes out, and he leaves behind his weepy soap opera in favor of some real discussion.What did keep the novel at least mildly interesting until that point was the secondary character Waddington, who is rather colorful, and the mysterious portrait of Kitty's husband, Walter. I know several men like Walter, so I was really able to sympathize with him. The character drawing of Kitty's despicable lover Charles Townsend just right at the end was very interesting. We all know someone like Townsend. That person who must, /must/ make sure that you love them, and that they appear justified in all they do, however self-interested they are, so they can put themselves on a pedastal and see that everyone else does too. Though I really have to say, there is a good deal of casual racism in this novel towards the Chinese. While some of it is certainly part of characters, some of it appears to come from Maugham. And I swear to God, nobody could have done a more trite portrayal of nuns. If one more author gives a nun a "merry face," I will absolutely scream.Ahem, overall: meh. I'd really only recommend it to women, and those of a sentimental disposition. It's short enough that some might actually make it to the end.
—Kelly
À semelhança de todas as mulheres da época, a mãe de Kitty educou-a para triunfar na sociedade. Um bom casamento – com um homem rico e com destaque social – era o sonho de todas as famílias. Era uma beldade e foi ensinada a seduzir para conquistar. Mimada e caprichosa foi descartando todos os pretendentes até perceber que tinha 25 anos, (estávamos na primeira metade do séc. xx) a sua irmã mais nova estava noiva, e Kitty corria o risco de ficar solteirona. Inadmissível para uma jovem de boas famílias, inconcebível para os pais que não tinha a menor intenção de a sustentar. E era nestes termos que se desenvolviam os relacionamentos familiares; sem grandes afetos num ambiente de frieza e distância. Pelo pai não tinham a menor consideração, esperavam dele que pagasse as despesas e votavam-lhe a algum desprezo por não ter alcançado o sucesso esperado. Perante este cenário, Kitty enveredou pelo caminho mais fácil: casou com o primeiro que lhe apareceu. Não o amava nem o admirava, e ele, tremendamente apaixonada contentou-se em idolatra-la. Era inteligente e discreto, o oposto da sua jovem mulher que rapidamente se cansou dele. Muito mais tarde ela viria a dizer: "Nós nem ao menos somos gratos às pessoas que nos amam. Quando não as queremos, elas só nos aborrecem.”Estavam reunidas as condições para o inevitável adultério.O amante era o oposto do marido: atraente e sedutor, movia-se em sociedade com desenvoltura e partilhavam os mesmos gostos. Tinha um defeito: era casado, e, como descobriu mais tarde, também um sacana sem escrúpulos, que vivia de aparências e dependia da relação com a esposa para cumprir os seus objetivos profissionais.Até aqui a ordem dos acontecimentos não surpreende, o imprevisto, dá-se a partir daqui.Kitty subestimou o marido. Quando este – médico e bacteriologista de profissão – descobriu a traição, o seu amor incondicional transformou-se num ódio profundo e urdiu uma vingança inesperada: levou-a com ele para Mei-tan-fu na China, uma cidade a braços com o maior surto de cólera de sempre, e entregou a vingança nas mãos da providência.Kitty não teve outro remédio senão sujeitar-se a perder todo o conforto em que tinha vivido até ali, e a isolar-se em casa tentando escapar à visão dos cadáveres espalhados pelas ruas.A partir daqui a ação é mais lenta, enquanto o marido se refugia no trabalho, começa a verdadeira transformação de Kitty. Aos poucos liberta-se do medo da epidemia e enfrenta novos desafios; dedica-se às crianças do orfanato e mergulha numa realidade até ali desconhecida; é o levantar do véu sobre a sua vida passada e a descoberta do seu interior e de novas motivações. Quando tudo parece caminhar na direção de um final feliz, dá-se a grande reviravolta e o autor mostra-nos toda a complexidade das personagens, a ambivalência do ser humano em luta pela resolução dos seus conflitos; erros, arrependimentos, recaídas incompreensíveis - a dicotomia do ser humano na sua relação com a vida, morte, amor, traição. Não é uma história acerca de pessoas boas e más, mas uma história humana e realista escrita de forma simples, que revela um autor observador e conhecedor dos labirintos da alma humana.Infelizmente, achei o final algo brusco; fiquei com a sensação de que o livro foi acabado à pressa…
—Carmo Santos
