The Painted Veil

William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 – December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors achieving recognition as the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could.Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work.It seems equally likely that Maugham was underrated because he wrote in such a direct style. There was nothing in a book by Maugham that the reading public needed explained to them by critics. Maugham thought clearly, wrote lucidly, and expressed acerbic and sometimes cynical opinions in handsome, civilized prose. He wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and won critical acclaim. In this context, his writing was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way"[16].Maugham's homosexual leanings also shaped his fiction, in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for distinguished authors of his time. "Liza of Lambeth," "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge" all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he traveled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied in 1938: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."Maugham's public account of his abilities remained modest; toward the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club[17]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, it began its exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.

出版者:Vintage; Reprint edition

作者:W. Somerset Maugham

页数:256

出版时间:2004-2-10

价格:USD 13.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9781400034215

图书标签:毛姆W.SomersetMaugham小说英国文学英文原版女性英文爱情

Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling.

读后感

一直以为这只是一个以神秘东方背景为卖点的爱情故事，一对互不了解却匆匆结合的夫妇，军阀混战时期一个霍乱横行的中国南方小城，异国他乡，生与死的考验，绝望中的互相理解与抚慰，爱情的温暖战胜死亡的寒冷，一点也不像毛姆。但是我错了，竟然让好莱坞先入为主。 毛姆...  

在看这本书的前90%的过程，我都在想凯蒂怎么可以如此的愚蠢，可是看到最后，我瞬间想通了，释然了。 这世界上形形色色的人，每个人有着不同的价值观世界观人生观，这些观点与他们的生活环境、从小到大的教育息息相关，怎么能够奢求每个人都和自己的想法一样呢。这本书讲述的故...  

一直以为这只是一个以神秘东方背景为卖点的爱情故事，一对互不了解却匆匆结合的夫妇，军阀混战时期一个霍乱横行的中国南方小城，异国他乡，生与死的考验，绝望中的互相理解与抚慰，爱情的温暖战胜死亡的寒冷，一点也不像毛姆。但是我错了，竟然让好莱坞先入为主。 毛姆...  

妻子因为寂寞而出轨，丈夫为了报复携妻深入疫区，不料引发一场蝴蝶效应。结局可以想见，谁也讨不了好去。丈夫机关算尽、反误了卿卿性命，妻子的命运如何呢？是与情人重归于好，还是另觅高枝，抑或远走他乡？《面纱》讲述了一个关于男女的古老命题：偷情与反偷情。在作家萨默塞...  

如果说旅行对于写作者来说，是一次难得的机遇，那么这个机遇对于当时的毛姆来说，真的是一次修心之旅。是旅行让他见识了这个世界不同国家的地方，也让他找到了不同的灵感，写下了许多优秀作品。 在毛姆所在的年代，不论是当时的英国还是法国亦或者远在大洋彼岸的中国，都是混乱...  

用户评价

结尾有点仓促。”The dog it was that died“听起来像是苦涩的自嘲，Walter是原谅Kitty了吧，可是他原谅自己了么。Kitty到最后对Walter有的也只是pity没有爱这真是毛姆会有的写法

这种“无法逃避的命运”的话题真是被毛姆偏爱啊，所以其实全书也是Kitty揭开面纱的过程吧。说真的最后实在是过于诚实了。

2019年第二本英文书：先看了电影，这次才下决心看书。电影试听觉效果很不错，但书更深刻，它涉及了女性的自我认知和自我解放。书的开头和结尾都讨论到kitty的原生家庭，她通过思考与父母的关系，认识到她之所以成为现在的自己的原因。她从一开始的轻浮无知，到对自己失望，但逐渐接纳了自己。凯蒂从walter和修女身上认识到人类的神性（但这种神性不一定是她推崇的，因为神性抹煞人最基础的友爱、情爱，她觉得是遥远而不真实的），又从她和查理偷情这件事看到了兽性（并不只是野蛮，也有控制不住的欲望），然后回归了正确的自我认知，对未来孩子充满希冀（希望是个女儿，教她成长为有自己尊严，不需依托任何男人的独立女性）。我觉得毛姆作为一个男性作家，对女性的认识能达到这种层面非常高了。

毛姆笔触真的很冷静犀利，但是书中的人物一个都不喜欢。感觉毛姆笔下的男人都是一个类型啊。

I like how Maugham exposes the weakness of humanity without mercy. Kitty tried so hard to be free, to have control of herself and to be a better self but all in vain. She just could not escape the confinement of her upbringing. Truth is few people can. Maugham was such a humanity observer and he did not try to beautify it.