
When I recently posted my review of Maugham's Cakes and Ale someone commented that they preferred Of Human Bondage, which I'd never read. So now I have. It's been described as Maugham's masterpiece, and though I actually preferred The Razor's Edge, which I reviewed last year, I can see why people might think so.
Published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is said to be Maugham's most autobiographical novel. It covers the first thirty or so years of the life of Philip Carey. Born with a club foot, which affects his self-image for most of his life, Philip is orphaned at the age of nine, and sent to live with his Uncle William, the vicar of Blackstable, and Aunt Louisa, his gentle, timid wife. The couple are childless and have no idea how to make a young boy's life enjoyable, let alone fun - his aunt develops a great fondness for him but her husband's strict discipline and coldness prevent her from demonstrating it. He is soon sent as a boarder to the cathedral school of Tercanbury, where his disability makes him an object of scorn. He is expected to go on to Oxford, but opts instead to spend time in Germany. However he is persuaded to return to London and take on an apprenticeship as an accountant, which he hates and does badly at.
Having shown some talent in art, Philip next decides to move to Paris to study. Although he enjoys his time there and makes friends, he realises he has not got the ability to become a professional artist. Instead he returns to London and starts studying medicine. Here he encounters a young shopgirl named Mildred, and falls passionately in love with her despite her scrawny appearance and her total indifference to him. Mildred is happy enough to accept free dinners and trips to the musical hall, but withholds her sexual favours and eventually leaves him for another man. She's been promised marriage but the man turns out to be already married. Soon she is back and increasingly dependent on the besotted Philip, who even supports the child she has had. Philip has meanwhile started an affair with the pleasant, easy-going Norah, but soon realises he is an slave to his irrational passion for Mildred. Many vicissitudes follow, before Philip finally discovers what he had been searching for all along and enters what promises to be a happy and settled life.
Maugham took the title of this novel from the work of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics contain a chapter called 'Of Human Bondage,or the Strength of the Emotions'. Spinoza writes of the impossibility of controlling the emotions, a fact which greatly troubles Philip in the novel. He can rationalise all he likes, ask himself why on earth he is so enslaved to a woman who has no qualities, either physical or mental, which ought to attract him, but he's unable to shake off his passion. Clearly this is something that interested Maugham a great deal, and it's tempting to see Philip's struggles against his desire for Mildred as echoing the author's experience of his own forbidden homosexual desires. Maugham, like Philip, also loved art, and anyone interested in turn of the century French artists will find much to enjoy here.
Cakes and Ale also contains autobiographical material, and maybe other of Maugham's books do too. As I seem to have developed rather a liking for his work I'm going to explore some more of his novels, and I've also just got a copy of Selina Hastings' much praised biography. So you'll probably be hearing more about him before long.