A Note on W. Somerset Maugham

• The intellectual influences in Maugham were many. The first influence is of the pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and then of a music composer Richard Wager and then up many writers. Among the writers, the first and great influence came of Maupassant. other writers were Henry Gibson, Anton Chekhov and Edgar Allan Poe.
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• The pessimism of Schopenhauer fitted the hand in the glove with the subsequent medical training the taught Maugham to view human beings with careful clinical detachment and tight reign of emotion.
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• Medical training also taught that careful observation is essential to an understanding of individual uniqueness. He observes in of "human bondage" that a human life forms a pattern and each pattern has unique elements and Idea adapted from Schopenhauer. But unlike Schopenhauer who believe that one could recognise the pattern only in retrospect, Maugham outlines his belief that an individual can influence his or her life. In coming up he professes to have done so with his own life.
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• His spend much of his literary life sketching the pattern he found in others life and exposing the ironic incongruities that simmered beneath the surface. For the pattern, with its subtle incongruities, is discovered only true careful observation. Maugham once confided that he viewed human beings only as the raw material of the world and elsewhere remarked that his ideas of his stories usually originated with a character that help his attention. 
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• In essence, a Maugham story is an exposition of human incongruity or interesting trait that exists within the pattern, within the ordinary human life. The exceptional is to be found everywhere.
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• Maugham's favourite type of narrative, the exotic portrays the life of the Europeans or American in an alien environment. His best non stories of this type of the Malays story where British nationals struggle against climate, foreign culture and loneliness.
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• Definition of the short story, by Maugham:
• "I should define the short story as a piece of friction that has unity of impression and that can be read at a single sitting. It is a piece of fiction, dealing with a single incident, material or spiritual; it is original, it must partial, excite or impress; and it must have unity of affect or impression. It should move in an even line from its exposition to its close."
•  He started and imitated the prose of Swift and he expressed his admission for Dryden. Simplicity lucidity and euphony (good quality sound) represented his ideal stylistic qualities.
• Maugham makes frequent use of a third person omniscient narrator though in letter stories this technique shades soothing into a characters' point of view. The most pervasive negative technique is the use of the Maugham personal, the character witnesses the action first hand, or here the narrative from a person he meets. He is an urban, worldly-wise traveller who keenly observes what others might miss and direct the readers' attention to something which is significant. He reveals little of himself and little influence of action but he establishes a friendly relationship with readers who enjoy seemingly candid comments. He is sceptical, clinical and keen observant of human-being, free of illusions and ideas, he is often cynical and ironic. He finds rogues and scoundrels more interesting than solid citizens and his tolerance causes him to try to understand rather than condemn human vices.
• The person may intervene with a brief comment or question during the narrative or he may resume a dialogue, but usually remains in the background. The persona's identity as a traveller only increases his reticence and detachment; it places him in the position of an observer reluctant to intervene. The format creates the impression that the reader is hearing a story as the narrator first hears it.
• Maugham's characters are often those, found just on the outside of the society or in an exotic setting. He believes that characters in modern urban societies were eventually worn smooth as pebbles in a stream are smoothed by constant interaction with water and sand. Those outside society or on its fringes have an opportunity to develop their individualism, to cling to and even increase the kinks in their characters.

The novel, Pride and Prejudice, opens with the following sentence

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife."

And the ring of this sentence pervades the whole novel and makes marriage the focus of attention. So marriage remains the central theme of the novel and some three marriages are made, besides the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy round whom the plot of the novel evolves. Each of these marriages is, in one way or the other, related with the main marriage-theme.

 But the marriages are not only made; the marriages that had long ago been made, especially the one of Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet, come into question. The cynically witty Mr. Bennet and his vulgar, stupid wife, always with schemes to marry off her five daughters, show clearly that there is nothing majestic in married life. Their concern for finding husbands for their daughters may be-real, but equally real and contemptible is their irresponsible behaviour.

                                                    To be continued......

When we discuss any work of art, we profit as much by noticing what it is not about as well as what it is about. With no other artist is this negative approach as profitable as Jane Austen; this-- by the fact that any discussion of her novels seems inevitably to begin with her limitations, or the omissions of her art. Without implying her inferiority to other novelists, we may begin our discussion by summing up some of the things not found in Pride and Prejudice and her other novels. 

Through a contemporary of the great Romantics, Jane Austen is essentially a child of the 18th Century, in its Neo-classical aspects. She is witty and ironic observer of human inconsistency and ludicrousness rather than a chronicler of consuming passions. She is concerned with a world in which the problems are of good form rather than that of subsistence.

What we do not see in Austen's novel:

What are some of the things that we have not found in “Pride and Prejudice”?

Death, for one thing, and any of the grander, metaphysical experiences of life. She does not show us any of the great agonies of human experience, or the darker side of life. We see nothing of hunger, poverty, misery; her novels do not deal with any of the grand passions or terrible vices one finds in life; we see nothing of God, and very little of a spiritual sphere of experience. 

What we see in Austen's novel:

We see only a limited range of human society, too. Most of her people are of the kind she knew intimately—the landed gentry, the upper classes, the lower edge of the nobility, the lower clergy, the officer corps of the military. As we have noticed before her novels exclude the lower classes, not only the industrial masses of the big cities, but also the agricultural labourers who must have been numerous around Meryton and Lon bourn. We do not see the political dimensions of the situation; the people of Meryton seem oblivious to the political affairs disturbing- London and the world, and have no political interests -of a local kind. 

 We hardly see in Austen's novel:

 Jane Austen's novels are curiously devoid of any reference to nature itself. It is one of the ironies of English literary history that at a time when the English romantic writers—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelly, Keats and others — were discovering external nature, Jane Austen manages to keep her characters imprisoned indoors, very much the way the eighteenth-century writers did. Hence we have very few passages of description, especially of natural setting. 

The only description of "nature", in "Pride and Prejudice" is the description of Pemberley (Chapter: 43) and it is brief and fairly generalized. The only lesson Elizabeth derives from this natural beauty is "that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!" "The proper study of mankind is man," Jane would say with Alexander Pope.

And the "man" that she observes would be a man indoors, away from nature., of a special kind. She creates characters who any strong passions, the violent emotions which one finds in the fictional creations of Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and other 19th century novelists. 

Her people are all rather reasonable social creatures, occasionally disturbed and upset, but not given to frenzies, displays of irrationality, violent psychological conflicts, or volcanic furies. This does not mean that they are wooden, unemotional puppets: see Elizabeth's reaction to Darcy's letter (Chapter: 36) or her reaction to the elopement (Chapter: 46) when she "burst into tears." Still, when these are admitted, any reader with Dostoyevskyan tastes will be disappointed by the calmness of her characters, including those in love. 

So far, we have been discussing only the elements lacking in her art, and the casual reader may well wonder how a novel may still be great if so much is missing. This is a question which the Janeites must answer periodically, for there are critics who find her works shallow, restricted, narrow. She herself admitted her limitations, saying that "3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work upon." 

Charlotte Bronte called Jane Austen's art a "Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting," and -disapproved. From the beginning Jane Austen had is defenders, however. Sir Walter Scott envied her, saying in his diary, "The big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders common things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied me." 

The intelligent reader is brought face-to-face with the recurring dilemma of novel criticism:  Fielding or Richardson? Scott or Austen? Thomas Wolfe or Hemingway? One may circumvent the dilemma by b asking and reject neither? Is it not possible to like both kinds of novel and reject neither? 

Important Writings (Letters & Reports) 

for M. P. & H. S. students