Of Human Bondage (1915)

This long novel by W. Somerset Maugham is generally considered his masterpiece and it is indeed very good—as good as I remembered from first reading it over 40 years ago. It’s autobiographical but not really autobiography. Most people, including me, remember it as the story of the tragic, absurd relationship between first-person narrator Philip Carey and a waitress in a teashop named Mildred. The 1934 movie version, for example, stars Bette Davis and focuses exactly on that (Davis is perfect and the picture is worth seeing). I noticed, however, that Mildred does not show up until page 268 of a 607-page edition. It’s easy to see why she is so memorable—she is as terrible a person as you would ever care to meet. The first 267 pages are devoted to Philip’s life from the age of 9, when his mother dies and he is orphaned (his father died years earlier). This is true to Maugham’s life, as is being sent to live with his clergyman uncle and aunt. Philip has a clubfoot that makes him a target of ridicule for other kids growing up and even into adulthood. Maugham had a stutter that produced similar experiences. Philip tries first to become an accountant. Then he wants to be an artist and moves to Paris for two years to study. Ultimately he decides he doesn’t have the talent and gives it up. His uncle never approved of the artist plan and by the time Philip is 21 he is fed up with Philip’s inability to commit to a career. He wanted Philip to work in the church but by this point Philip has given up all faith in God and is an atheist. The magic here is Maugham’s ability to make it all so interesting. It is a strangely compulsively readable novel and pure pleasure all the way. There is somehow pleasure even in the agonies of Mildred. Most of us, men and women too, have likely had relationships like it, though perhaps not as abysmally intense. You may like to know now that he gets shut of Mildred and finds his way to a happy and satisfying end. Maugham actually was a doctor like Philip becomes, but he was also a prolific writer with a shelf-full or so of novels, plays, stories, and essays to his credit, which I understand are often nearly as enjoyable. I’m still not ready to take on The Razor’s Edge due to the terrible Bill Murray movie adaptation, though word of mouth claims the novel is actually good. I’ve got my eye on The Magician, which is about Aleister Crowley, or The Summing Up, which is about writing. But Of Human Bondage is the natural place to start with Maugham. It’s fair to call it a masterpiece. If anything, I liked it even more the second time.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“The Werewolf” (1979)

[spoilers] In the Angela Carter collection The Bloody Chamber, this very short story is the first of three meditations on Little Red Riding Hood to finish the book. It might be the best—short and keeping the details blunt. The “good child” has no name, no red garments. The fairy tale comes to mind only because it involves a girl, a wolf, and the girl’s grandmother. The grandmother has been feeling under the weather and the girl is dispatched to bring her oatcakes and honey. On the way there she is attacked by a wolf, which she fends off with a knife like a badass. “Here, take your father’s hunting knife, you know how to use it.” That’s a voice in her head, no doubt her mother’s. She faces the wolf head-on, drops her things, squares up, and takes the knife. “[S]he made a great swipe at it ... and slashed off its right forepaw.” The wolf goes “lolloping off disconsolately.... The child wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron, wrapped up the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes and went on toward her grandmother’s house.” The spoiler alert goes right here because the ending surprised me, although you may have already guessed it. The grandmother seems to be sicker than ever. She is burning with fever. The girl takes the cloth with the wolf’s paw to make a cold compress for Grandmother’s forehead. But the paw is now a human hand. And soon the girl discovers that Grandmother is now missing a hand. Grandmother is the werewolf! The girl calls for help, the neighbors show, recognize her for a witch, and “drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out into the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as the edge of the forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell down dead.” And that’s the end of the story, except for one last paragraph: “Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.” Amazingly savage, amazingly straightforward about it, and all matter-of-fact. I just didn’t see any of these plot developments coming and it took my breath away.

Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats
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