Book Review: William Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (1915)

William Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (1915)

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Welcome back!

In this blog post, I will be reviewing William Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, a bildungsroman of epic proportions - and one of my favorite novels of all time.

I feel compelled to write this review because I believe in the merits of the book, and because I have read so many reviews of this book which label the book "common" and find in it no revolutionary element to celebrate. In particular, this review is a response to another online column focusing on literary criticism that I, in the normal course, enjoy and with which opinions I generally agree. However, this (unnamed) online column is wrong about Of Human Bondage. I will first state what I think Maugham does well, and then I will attempt to refute the criticisms leveled against him and this, his masterwork.

Broadly, the story follows the life of Philip Carey and the "bonds" he forms with others, and the ways in which his relationships bind and ultimately dictate his future actions and behaviors.

The novel begins when Carey is a boy, and it examines closely his maturation into adulthood. He is depicted as a somewhat sullen child, and he feels detached from his peers - traits and attitudes which Carey believes stem from his clubbed foot; his domestic malaise relating to grievances he has with his uncle; and his diminutive stature. His detachment, however, allows him to analyze society from the outside looking in, and the impressions he forms are always interesting to read. The writing is phenomenal, and Maugham's insights into human nature and the ways in which we present ourselves to others, while on the trite side, are described so euphonically and forcefully that they force us to reconsider them in a new light.

An early example is Maugham's portrayal of a young Carey seeking comfort in religion, and forming for himself his nascent thoughts about God: "It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him [Carey], for he was beginning to realize that he was the creature of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers." (37.) Maugham starts the story slowly and establishes Carey's character through description of his relatable yet naive beliefs about the world. From this original basis, Maugham spends considerable time considering Carey's evolving relationship with himself, God, his peers, a revolving assortment of role models, and women.

And Maugham vexes his early chapters with truisms that serve to introduce Carey at new, progressively more advanced ages. Such as this excerpt, when Carey is twelve, and two years have passed since the last narrative: "The new-born child does not realize that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they being to him more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he understands the facts of his body." (44.) Carey is entering his teenage years; he is no new-born. But the same processes undergone by an infant are at work within him, and the specific meaning of this excerpt as it bears on a 12-year-old Carey are laid out in the chapter that follows.

Carey's preferences, those things that he "liked best in the world," change notably throughout the book after they are established in the initial few chapters. Literature is one example, and it and art are constant motifs throughout the book: "[O]ne mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the present generation." (95.) As Carey turned away from his peers and sought to cultivate for himself excellence in one field or another, he came to view with contempt his schoolmates who excelled at, and valued, sports. "He cast down the fetish of exercise ... [but Carey] did not realize that he was merely putting up in its stead the other fetish of culture." (101 (emphasis supplied).) Carey convinces himself, as nearly everyone does, that a preference for one activity (or discipline or craft, etc.) over another can signify one's superiority over another. Maugham interposes himself here and contends instead that this is effectively swapping one system of values for another. And in Carey's case, he despises sports simply because he is excluded from them, and his preference for learning and "culture" is simply an exercise in justification for his exclusion.

A quote that I love comes when two prospective role models of Carey's meet one another, and the distinct system of values that each come to exemplify for Carey clash with one another. Says an American named Weeks who rhetorically bests a pompous, intelligent flowery in speech but in no way substantive Brit that Carey looks up to:

'I've met him [the Brit] in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and I've met him in pensions in Berlin and Munich. He lives in small hotels in Perugia and Assisi. He stands by the dozens in front of the Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all the benches of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks a little too much wine, and in Germany he drinks a great too much beer. He always admires the right thing, whatever the right thing is, and one of these days he's going to write a great work. Think of it, there are a hundred and forty-seven great works reposing in the bosoms of a hundred and forty-seven great men, and the tragic thing is that not one of those hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be written. And yet the world goes on.'

(Weeks, one of Carey's principal early role models, at 105.)

Dang. Carey's Brit is wealthy and fashionable, and he and his finely tailored suits are admirers of the "greatest" thinkers and writers and artists, simply because others admire them and label them great. He pontificates unoriginally on a wide manner of subjects and impresses the naive and unexperienced (in this case, Carey); but a more worldly person, Weeks (the speaker in the above passage), identifies them for what they are. And the experienced person will meet one hundred and forty-seven of these unoriginal but original-seeming individuals in his or her time.

Weeks further interrogates Carey's beliefs, and asks that he (Carey) distinguish between (i) those values he possesses because they are in fashion and (ii) those values he possesses on their own merits.

Weeks, on religious convictions: "'Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is practically incredible.'" (112.) Time, not merely a certain relationship, binds. As does fear; particularly, for Carey, fear of an uncertain or unknown future which one cannot perfectly control: "[U]p there behind the blue sky, a jealous God who would punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these times his reason could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of a physical torment which would last endlessly, he felt quite sick with fear and burst into a violent sweat." (115.) Carey has met Weeks, he has met Weeks' foils in their various forms, and he now sets out in the world, equipped with values, culture, and a capacity for reason by way of which he can ascertain which values and aspects of culture he ought to abide, and which are false - paraded around Europe by one hundred and forty-seven identical charlatans.

Now, he is no longer quite so young as he was. "It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come into contact with the real they are bruised and wounded." (117.) This quote is important, because the remainder of the book can be seen as a quixotic quest for ideals that are real.

Other reviews of this novel focus on Carey's infatuations or affairs: with Miss Wilkinson, with Mildred. And while these are interesting, well-written, and instructive to the extent that Carey's changing attitudes with respect to these women evince his change as a person, I have written too much about the early section of the book to delve deeply into his amours. Instead, I will touch deeply on the end of the book and on Of Human Bondage's unkind critical reception:

The book culminates with a portrait of a more evolved Carey viewing the same world in which he grew up with a still detached, but maturity-imbued lens. He has had adventure, and he has seen life and death, as he wished for when he was young. He yearned for it: but now that he has achieved it, the effect on him is less than he had have hoped for, and of a different character entirely. And he has seen art, and lived artfully, but the vivid and beautiful world he meets in his more advanced age is not how he imagined it would be:

The sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of the day; there was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on the north side were like palaces in an enchanted island. A group of barges were moored in midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet, troubling somehow and awe-inspiring; but quickly everything grew pale, and cold, and grey. Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold stole across the sky, and the sky was iridescent. Philip could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on the bed, wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it like a stricken beast.

(570.) I love this passage, as I love the end of this book: a series of imagery-laden bolts of lightning, illuminating unrepeatable passages of (sometimes questionable) wisdom and (when done well) incomparable prose. (I include the above two parenthetical caveats because not everything in this book is exceptional. But when Maugham catches fire, Of Human Bondage becomes hard to put down.)

The one valid criticism of this book is that some specifics of Carey's evolution are set out a bit too explicitly. For instance, after a long period in Paris - during which Carey comes to realize he will never be a famous, or even an exhibited, artist, as he once aspired to be - he settles. And the influence art exerts upon his life diminishes, and other priorities come to the fore: "He and Lawson had nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant." (576.) Perhaps a touch banal; and criticisms which run in this vein are not wrong. But do the critics read on? Because to my mind, Maugham justifies his (only somewhat) hackneyed prose in the very next sentence: "He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial." (Id.)

In the second half of the book, Carey confronts the fact of his own mediocrity; and he becomes aware of his flaws, such as his doomed love for Mildred and the resources he put forth for her, even when it was obvious that he would be spurned. Irrationality, beauty, and the confrontation of one's own lack of anything particularly exceptional are themes explored here to terrific effect. These, coupled with exceptional prose, make this a top-tier book.

I rate it a 9 out of 10.

Thanks for reading, and, as always, I welcome reader engagement! Please write to me at will.b.eaton.00@gmail.com to discuss this book, other books, writing, or any other subject matter you believe would be of interest to me.

(Main Image: An early cover of Of Human Bondage as published by Pocketbook.)