Today, I finished W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. The book is hefty at 766 pages long. At 258,773 words, it’s in the top of its class for verbosity (according to Amazon). I don’t feel too badly that it has taken a while to get through it.
As I mentioned in a previous note, it is fairly tedious to start. This is unfortunate, because readers without sufficient patience may put the book down without getting to the meat of it, which is well worth reading.
In the second half of the book, the main character, Philip, goes through a very interesting series of transformations. He starts out life as a callow youth, and becomes irrevocably attracted to Mildred, a woman with no redeeming features. Although Philip can’t explain the attraction, he is compelled to obey it. He is already living on the edge, financially, and this relationship puts him on the path to ruin – and incidentally makes his life much more intriguing to the reader.
Maugham’s descriptions of the effects of poverty throughout the book are very moving. People commit suicide because they are starving to death; they line up for jobs that are already filled; the pain of homelessness and hunger is exacerbated by the shame that accompanies it. Philip himself experiences this in chapter 99: “Though he had always been poor, the possibility of not having enough to eat had never occurred to him; it was not the sort of thing that happened to the people among whom he lived; and he was as ashamed as if he had some disgraceful disease… he could not quite believe that what was happening to him was true…”.
In chapter 113, Maugham shatters another illusion. “Philip had heard that the poor helped one another, but woman after woman complained to him that she [soon after giving birth] could not get anyone in to clean up and see to the children’s dinner without paying for the service, and she could not afford to pay.” But Maugham does not entirely avoid romanticizing poverty. For example, the family that befriends Philip, the Athelnys, are largely carefree, happy, and marvelously healthy, despite their rather precarious station in life.
It’s all very up-to-date; apparently the effects of poverty don’t change over the ages! Reading this novel has provoked in me an interest to read further about social conditions at the turn of the century. I am aware of some of the history of the changes that were brought about by reforms like the Social Security Act and labor laws in this country, but I’d like to learn more about how things went in Europe. The England of yore sounds very much like a third world country, in many respects. The well-to-do show very little regard for their suffering countrymen.
Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge shares a few themes with Of Human Bondage. There’s the youth who tries to rescue the fallen woman. There’s the lingering question of the meaning of life, and mention is made again of the writings of certain “mystics” in both books; in Of Human Bondage it’s the Spanish mystics, in particular San Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross, as mentioned in chapter 86). There’s some commentary on mysticism in Catholicism. While I think that The Razor’s Edge is better written, more mature, and also more condensed, I have to give Of Human Bondage two thumbs up. This is a must-read. The end is a real zinger, too; it draws a tissue-thin veil of romance over a rather dark and depressing finality.
I’ll record here a few memorable passages to entice you; Maugham has a bit to say about everything:
On education
In chapter 36, Philip begins work at an accounting firm, and we find that education has not changed much. The managing clerk asks him if he has any relevant knowledge, to which Philip replies “I’m afraid not.” The managing clerk responds: “I didn’t suppose you would. They don’t teach you things at school that are much use in business, I’m afraid.”
On healthcare
In chapter 81, a doctor has just diagnosed a young girl as being terminal. After she leaves, he says “Her brother and sister died within three months of the first symptoms. She’ll do the same. If they were rich one might do something. You can’t tell these people to go to St. Moritz. Nothing can be done for them.”
In the paragraph after that, Maugham describes another patient, “a man who was strong and in all the power of his manhood,” who is also doomed to death, “the death which was inevitable because the man was a little wheel in the great machine of a complex civilisation, and had as little power of changing the circumstances as an automatom [sic]. Complete rest was his only chance.” The man says he won’t give up his well-paying job, and leaves the doctor, taking with him a “useless prescription.” The doctor concludes “I give him a year.” Yes, health care has really come far, as well.
On religion
In chapter 88, a father defends the fact that he is raising his children in the church despite the fact that he himself is a non-believer: ”... religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven’t it doesn’t matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them.”
On finance
In chapter 98, Philip has been speculating: “He did not know what to do. If he sold now he would lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty pounds; and that would leave him only eighty pounds to go on with. He wished with all his heart that he had never been such a fool as to dabble on the Stock Exchange….”
On death
In chapter 110, Philip observes of his uncle, the cleric, who is dying: ”...the religion which his uncle had preached all his life was now of no more than formal importance to him…. it was clear that he looked upon death with horror. He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did not want to enter upon that life. In constant pain, chained to his chair and having given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again… he clung to the world he knew.” I’ve seen that behavior myself, and it’s a mystery to me.
On family
In the same chapter, Philip briefly contemplates murder. “Philip clenched his hands as he thought of the money he wanted so badly. ... It would be easy, so desperately easy. He had no feeling for the old man, he had never liked him.”
I love the way that Maugham rips away the façade of civilization and lays bear the ugly, but true-to-life, feelings of his characters. He does have a knack for putting them through some interesting ordeals.
