With only one exception, all the members of my
book-club (myself included) gave W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage a very high rating, and
for good reason. It is not an exaggeration to say that the book is a
masterpiece: it conveys a compelling story that evokes powerful emotions,
filled with characters and events that are realistic and familiar to most
thoughtful readers, and that adds penetrating insight into many aspects of
life—from the lofty heights of moral philosophy, to the existential elements of
love and loss, to the more mundane and prosaic elements of everyday
relationships. My book-club meeting which discussed Of Human Bondage was a good reminder that the text can be
interpreted from a number of angles, but here I will focus on one in
particular: the significance of the social and cultural institutions and
practices that feel oppressive and that make many yearn for freedom, which
brings the tendency to idealize circumstances different from one’s own. Once
one escapes the various forms of bondage and obtains the desired object, the
reality clashes with the ideal, leading to disillusionment and the renewed
feeling of being oppressed by circumstances. Philip Carey, the main character
of the book, learns this lesson again and again, in particular through his
experiences of work and romance. In the process, however, he matures into a
talented, thoughtful, caring, and successful person, highlighting that those
kinds of travails, and the thrills and sorrows they entail, are an essential
aspect of genuine human flourishing.
Philip Carey did not have a very auspicious beginning.
Both his parents die young, forcing him to be raised in the home of his aunt
and uncle, a childless couple who live in a small town three hours from London.
Philip’s uncle, Mister Carey, displays the stereotypically British tendency to
be utterly unsentimental and suspicious of emotion, which creates emotional
distance between the two. Mister Carey also happens to be a minister in the
Unitarian faith (in the early 20th century, Unitarianism was an
evangelical form of Christianity, not the secular-liberal belief system it is
today). Hence Philip grew up in a fundamentalist protestant household largely
devoid of emotion. Meanwhile, Philip has a disabling physical deformity—club
foot—that prevents him from excelling in sports, makes him the object of
bullying and ridicule, and is psychologically traumatizing.
When Philip discovers literature, he learns that
reading is an effective way to escape the distress of his life. Other
tendencies also emerge when he becomes a voracious reader, like the
idealization of people, places, and things that he does not possess, and the
desire to escape the stifling confines of his circumstances. He also becomes
academically brilliant, but he rejects the life envisioned by his caregivers of
obtaining an Oxford scholarship and becoming a servant of the Church like his
uncle. Meanwhile, at 20 years old Philip has his first sexual experience with
the much older Miss Wilkinson, who quickly falls in love with him. While he
courts her, he idealizes romance, thinking that it would bring genuine joy and
happiness. He discovers that those feelings are fleeting. After the consummation,
Philip becomes repulsed by her “old” age (40!), and must manage the fall out of
her falling in love with him. The frustrations involved motivate Philip to
escape to London where can begin his work as an accountant, a profession which
promised a comfortable middle class life.
The thrill of being in a big city soon wears off when
he experiences a sense of solitude and the frustrations of doing a job he
hates. He develops a deep antipathy for his co-workers, and cannot imagine the
monotony of being an accountant for the rest of his life. At the same time,
Philip romanticizes Paris as the cure to his frustrations, in part because of
the scintillating tales of the city heard from Miss Wilkinson, and partly from
the French novels he read. Philip therefore makes a leap and moves to Paris to
become a painter. In that city he enters the world of Parisian bohemians and
intellectuals, and befriends many interesting characters from whom he learns
important lessons of life. Perhaps the most important is Fanny Price. Like
Philip, she strives to be an artist, and has been attending the painting school
for two years. Despite much effort, practice, and determination, she has not
developed talent, and refuses when the instructor at the school suggests that
she abandon the endeavour. The cost of the school drives her to extreme
poverty, and the failure to succeed adds to the misery which becomes unbearable
and ends in suicide. From Fanny, Philip learns that success is not a matter of
will, determination, or confidence in one’s abilities, and that true talent
cannot be taught. Ergo, some are not suited for particular professions, and at
times, it may be necessary to accept this brute fact rather than pursue
unrealistic dreams. Philip applies this lesson to himself: when the instructor
at the school suggests to Philip that he, too, was not meant for the craft, he
decides to follow this sage advice and pursues medicine—perhaps not
coincidently, the same profession his deceased father practiced.
This takes him back to London, where Philip has the
most formative experience in both work and romance. On the former, Philip
discovers, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he has the capacities to be an
exceptional and outstanding doctor. He possesses those attributes that matter greatly
in the profession: the scientific and analytical mindset that is necessary to
learn and apply accumulated knowledge to specific cases, and the caring
personality that motivates him to help patients even at the lowest rungs of
society, and that gives the sick a sense of trust in him. While succeeding at
medical school, he meets someone who turns his life around: Mildred, the woman
for whom Philip develops a pathological and obsessive love. She does not feel
the same, but yet she leads him on. To Philip’s dismay, his rational and
analytical mind is no defense against this damaging relationship. He knows she doesn’t
love him, and yet hopes that her feelings may change despite all the evidence
to the contrary. For her he is willing to spend much of his meagre savings,
neglect his studies, and expose himself to harm, while she treats him with
contempt and indifference. This destructive relationship reaches a crescendo
when Mildred falls in love with Miller, one of her customers at the restaurant
where she is employed, and they run away together. One hopes that the sordid
affair ends here, but it is only a brief interlude before even greater
tragedies occur.
After Mildred leaves, Philip devotes himself to his
studies again, and eventually gets over her. Meanwhile, he has another love
affair, this time with Norah. Norah and Philip are perfect for each other: like
him, she is caring, smart, and supportive. They are friends first, giving them
time to know each other, and when the relationship is consummated, it enriches
rather than harms the friendship. There is no awkwardness, even in their
moments of silence. This seemingly happy picture cracks at the seams when
Mildred returns to the scene, and frustratingly (for the reader) Philip decides
to break with Norah so he can try again with Mildred, and he does this despite
knowing that Mildred is not right for him. This knowledge cannot overcome that dark
and mysterious part of him that desires Mildred. Even more puzzling is he
recognizes that his desire for Mildred is irrational and portends trouble, and
yet Philip is seemingly powerless to do otherwise. The juxtaposition of his
relationship with Norah and with Mildred is not coincidental; many readers will
be familiar with the tendency to fall in love with the wrong person and to have
little or no romantic feelings for the right one.
To no one’s surprise, not even to Philip’s, the
relationship with Mildred ends in tears when she runs away with Philip’s best
friend Griffin. Philip is driven to intense jealousy and despair to the point
of getting thoughts of murder and suicide. The story does not end here. After
not seeing her for a long time, Philip encounters Mildred working as a
prostitute on the streets of London, living in destitution. He offers to rent
her one of the rooms in his apartment. At this point, the reader cannot help
but feel a sense of impending doom, but the way it arrives is unexpected. After
living together for a while, Mildred decides that she desires Philip, but he
does not feel the same namely because of the memories of emotional torture he
experienced with her. When he rejects her sexual advances, she loses control
and smashes his furniture and apartment and leaves. When he meets her again,
she is sick and dying of syphilis (which was lethal in the early 20th
century), while working again as a prostitute. He tells her that she is putting
her clients at risk, and she replies that “men have not been good to her and so
they deserve it”.
That was their last conversation, and Philip’s life
moves in a new direction when he meets the family of one his grateful patients,
Athenly. The latter is a colorful character who is utterly devoted to and loved
by his wife and eight children. During their weekly Sunday dinners, Philip
learns about the happiness that family can bring even if it trumps other
desirable things, like travelling or a successful career. When Philip loses all
his savings from a bad investment, he experiences the homelessness and
starvation that many of his patients are familiar with, and must drop out of
the final phase of medical school. He is too proud to ask the Athenlys for
help, but they offer it and help him get back on his feet. Meanwhile, Sally,
Athenly’s oldest daughter, develops an interest in Philip, which is finally
consummated in the countryside when the two of them go for a walk. There is a
sense of inevitability to their tryst, since the chemistry is mutual,
spontaneous, and unforced. At this point, Philip must make a choice between
carrying out his plans of travelling the world and practising medicine in
exotic places, or settling down with Sally in a small English town where his
medical practice will be modest. Philip opts for the latter, and perhaps finds
his happiness, but the book ends there, and the reader is left wondering
whether his relationship with Sally endures.
Philip’s relationship with Christianity is an
essential element of the book and has important implications for moral
philosophy. He had a strong religious faith as a child and early
adolescent—unsurprisingly in light of his fundamentalist protestant upbringing.
Philip’s faith is shattered when God does not answer his prayer to heal his
club foot, which did not accord with the biblical passage that genuine faith
can move mountains. This clash between Christian ideals and the brute reality
of his disability could not be resolved in Philip’s eminently rational mind,
and his faith is lost. But although he discards Christian supernatural beliefs,
he preserves, or rather continues to practice, Christian virtues of humility,
service, modesty, and love for one’s fellows. The conceptual tension is brought
to the fore when he meets Cronshaw, a brilliant artist, who reminds Philip that
abstract morality, even the supposedly secular kind, is actually the legacy of
religion. Once that legacy is discarded, we are left with brute materiality governed by
instinct and relations of power. Philip ultimately rejects Cronshaw’s
observations, and the problem is never really resolved, although Athenly seems
to provide a solution. Like Philip, Athenly is an unbeliever, and yet he raises
his eight children in the Christian faith. When Philip asks him how he could
impart beliefs to his children that he does not believe in, Athenly’s response
is “a man is more likely to be a good man if he learned goodness through the
love of God rather than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer”.
The sections on moral philosophy are compelling and
important, especially for readers who find these kinds of existential questions
interesting. But this aspect of the book is relatively less important than
those which delve into the joys and frustrations of work and romance, and in
particular the tension between our ideals and reality, and the ways we
negotiate and manage the emotions, positive and negative, that are involved in
these tensions. This blog post cannot do justice to the intense emotional
rawness that suffuse Philip’s experiences in these areas of life. It is clear
that W. Somerset Maugham had direct experiences with all the emotions that
Philip feels, and was gifted with the capacity to reflect and analyze the
deepest and most irrational parts of the human soul.
