A few thoughts on W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage"

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 20^th 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 20^th 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.