The Painted Veil

“If he accused her she would deny, and if it came to a pass that she could deny no longer, well, she would fling the truth in his teeth, and he could do what he chose.”

This passage indicates Kitty’s lack of regard for her husband. She can coolly contemplate going through a charade of lies with him and then getting fed up and revealing a truth that would hurt his feelings. The violent image of flinging “the truth in his teeth” exemplifies the extent of her ruthlessness and the fact that she thinks she will get away with her misdemeanor.

“Her beauty depended a good deal on her youth, and Mrs. Garstin realized that she must marry in the first flush of maidenhood. When she came out she was dazzling: her skin was still her greatest beauty, but her eyes with their long lashes were so starry and yet so melting that it gave you a catch at the heart to look into them.”

This passage conveys how Kitty’s worth in the marriage market relies entirely upon her youthful good looks. The idea that she has the type of beauty that depends on youth gives a sense of urgency to her mother’s plans to marry her off, as Mrs. Garstin knows that her daughter’s value will depreciate as the years pass. Still, the expression in Kitty’s eyes indicates that she is also enjoying her own beauty and inflecting it with her own personality.

“Then Doris came out. She had a long nose still, and a poor figure, and she danced badly. In her first season she became engaged to Geoffrey Dennison. He was the only son of a prosperous surgeon who had been given a baronetcy during the war. Geoffrey would inherit a title […] Kitty in a panic married Walter Fane.”

The fact that Kitty marries Walter on the back of events that concern her sister indicates the source of her “panic.” The events that put her younger, less attractive sister ahead of her spur her to marry as soon as possible and put her humiliation to an end.

“When Kitty began to think of him at all she was surprised that he should have such good features when you took them one by one. His expression was slightly sarcastic and now that Kitty knew him better she realized that she was not quite at ease with him. He had no gaiety.”

Kitty’s complete lack of attraction to Walter is evident when she notices that he has good facial features but finds that they do nothing to make him appealing. The charge of seriousness recurs throughout the text, and it is an abundance of “gaiety” in Townsend that attracts Kitty to him.

“She knew him very little then, and now, though they had been married for nearly two years, she knew him but little more.”

Walter remains distant to Kitty even within the intimacy of marriage, and she finds that they are as much strangers to each other as ever. This context makes her ripe for encountering and falling in love with Townsend.

“He was tall, six foot two at least, she thought, and he had a beautiful figure; he was evidently in very good condition and […] he was well-dressed, the best-dressed man in the room, and he wore his clothes well.”

This passage conveys how Townsend strikes a dashing first impression and has the natural advantages of height and a good figure. However, the details of his good conditioning and smart dress indicate that he may be concerned with appearances over realities. Thus, while Kitty is taken in by Townsend, the novel hints that he is superficial.

“She was amazed afterwards […] to discover that she felt in no way different from what she had been before. She had expected that it would cause some, she hardly knew what, fantastic change in her so that she would feel like somebody else; and when she had a chance to look at herself in the glass she was bewildered to see the same woman she had seen the day before.”

Kitty imagines that adultery will change her aspect. Her unchanged appearance is Maugham’s attempt to challenge the stereotype that adulterous women look different from virtuous ones.

“I had no illusions about you […] I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and common-place. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you.”

Here, Walter’s clear-sighted view of Kitty’s flaws is repeatedly punctuated with the contradictory profession of his love for her. His form of unconditional love contrasts with Kitty’s attraction to superficial qualities such as appearance and social ease. Nevertheless, the list of traits that make Kitty shallow, ending in her being “second-rate,” is striking and reveals that Walter’s loyalty is beginning to fade.

“To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.”

This passage illustrates the difference between Kitty’s and Townsend’s experiences of their affair and reflects the double standards of the time, where men got away with affairs while women were held accountable for them. While Kitty was prepared to make great sacrifices to be with Townsend, Townsend never intended for the structure of his life to change.

“He knew that you were vain, cowardly and self-seeking. He wanted me to see it with my own eyes. He knew that you’d run like a hare at the approach of danger. He knew how grossly deceived I was in thinking that you were in love with me, because he knew that you were incapable of loving any one but yourself. He knew you’d sacrifice me without a pang to save your own skin.”

Kitty realizes that Walter has orchestrated this ultimatum with Townsend to prove Townsend’s lack of attachment. She punctuates her catalog of Townsend’s worthless traits with a “he knew,” thus bringing Walter into a relationship she previously thought she was in control of. This is in direct contrast to her earlier feeling that she would get away with the affair.

“She had no inkling what was in his mind. He could not really desire her death. He had loved her so desperately. She knew what love was now and she remembered a thousand signs of his adoration. […] Did you cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?” 

Kitty finds it difficult to square the memory of Walter’s love for her with the idea that he now desires her death. She judges that if his love for her was analogous to her own for Townsend, he would not simply send her to die. However, because she is frightened, she entertains the possibility that one might cease to love if they have been treated cruelly. 

“The morning drew on and the sun touched the mist so that it shone whitely like the ghost of snow on a dying star. Though on the river it was light so that you could discern palely the lines of the crowded junks and the thick forest of their masts, in front it was a shining wall the eye could not pierce.” 

This passage conveys the mystique of China (and “the East” broadly) to Western colonizers. The idea of a light mist that obscures the view, which is further blocked by a “forest” of ship masts, conveys the Orientalist view that the East is impenetrable and deliberately inscrutable. However, this supposed mysteriousness also indicates the vulnerability of the colonial project and of Westerners’ attempts to control lands they do not really know.

“The tears ran down Kitty’s face and she gazed, her hands clasped to her breast and her mouth, for she was breathless, open a little. She had never felt so light of heart and it seemed to her as though her body were a shell that lay at her feet and she pure spirit. Here was Beauty. She took it as the believer takes in his mouth the wafer which is God.”

Kitty gives up trying to understand the landscape and lets its beauty affect her and make her vulnerable. In her devastated, heartbroken state, she has been rendered “open” to new influences and seeks to forsake the material for the spiritual life of things she does not comprehend. The metaphor of taking Communion brings Kitty’s experience into a Western context by evoking the religion Maugham’s original readers would most likely know.

“He doesn’t look human. When you look at him you can hardly persuade yourself that he’s ever been alive. It’s hard to think that not so very many years ago he was just a little boy tearing down the hill and flying a kite.”

As Waddington and Kitty contemplate a cholera victim’s corpse, they experience a strange mixture of disgust and pity. At first, Waddington remarks that death has disfigured the man to the extent that his humanity is no longer visible. This illuminates Waddington’s subconscious attempt to distance himself from his own mortality. However, he then imagines the victim in the lively state of boyhood and the upwards-looking gesture of flying a kite, establishing the terrifying power of death to cut down human potential.

“But once within the convent it had seemed to her that she was transported into another world situated strangely neither in space nor time. Those bare rooms and the white corridors, austere and simple, seemed to possess the spirit of something remote and mystical.”

Kitty’s appreciation for the spartan nature of the convent indicates the transference of her values from the material to the spiritual. The idea of a place that is “neither in space nor time” suggests that Kitty craves inner peace analogous to the tranquil convent in the middle of a cholera epidemic. Still, the fact that Kitty experiences the convent’s aura as “remote” indicates that she also finds its kind of comfort foreign.

“It’s not fair to blame me because I was silly and frivolous and vulgar. I was brought up like that. All the girls I know are like that…It’s like reproaching some one who has no ear for music because he’s bored at a symphony concert […] I never tried to deceive you by pretending to be anything I wasn’t. I was just pretty and gay. You don’t ask for a pearl necklace […] at a booth in a fair; you ask for a tin trumpet and a toy balloon.’”

Kitty points out to Walter the unfairness of expecting that she should be anything other than the product of her upbringing. The simile of reproaching someone who does not have a learned ear for music indicates Kitty’s belief that her flaws are from a deficiency in her education, which prepared her for nothing but being “pretty and gay.” The metaphor of a fair booth indicates her changing values, as she now likens her superficial charms to “tin” and “toys”—things that are low quality or merely replicas of something real.

“They’re wonderful and so kind; and yet—I hardly know how to explain it—there is a wall between them and me […] It is as though they possessed a secret which made all the difference in their lives and which I was unworthy to share. It is not faith; it is something deeper and more—more significant: they walk in a different world from ours and we shall always be strangers to them.”

Kitty tries to verbalize the distance she feels from the nuns. While she deeply admires their kind and selfless ways, she finds that she does not feel she belongs among them because she is ignorant of the invisible force that governs their life. She dismisses the idea that the force could be religious faith, arguing that it is a “deeper” outlook that places the nuns in a different time and space from her. This confirms that the convent can only be a place of temporary respite for Kitty.

“She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of man.”

Following Walter’s death from cholera, Waddington lights a cigarette and Kitty likens the smoke “lost in the air” to the life of man. This image conveys her belief in the ephemerality and wandering state of human existence. She finds it surreal to contemplate that her husband, this man who had power over her, has now dissipated like smoke.

“It would be ugly and vulgar even to let any one see in her heart; but she had gone through too much to make pretenses to herself. It seemed to her that this at least the last few weeks had taught her, that if it is necessary sometimes to lie to others it is always despicable to lie to oneself.”

While Kitty thinks with embarrassment about divulging how little she loved Walter publicly, her spiritual growth in Meitan-fu has taught her the importance of being honest with herself. Although she cannot aspire to the nuns’ saintliness, she finds a degree of self-possession and self-esteem in integrity.

“She was conscious of her delight in the sober luxury of the drawing-room. She sat in an armchair, there were lovely flowers here and there, on the walls were pleasing pictures; the room was shaded and cool, it was friendly and homelike. She remembered with a faint shudder the bare and empty parlor of the missionary’s bungalow; the rattan chairs and the kitchen table with its cotton cloth, the stained shelves with all those cheap editions of novels […] Oh it had been so uncomfortable.”

Kitty luxuriates in the Western comforts of Dorothy’s home, complete with flowers and an armchair. It is the complete contrast of the utilitarian missionary’s bungalow she has left in Meitan-fu. However, while the Townsends’ home may be comfortable, the Western materialism it represents makes Kitty complacent enough to relapse into becoming Townsend’s lover. In contrast, the homely missionary’s bungalow forced her to seek spiritual beauty.

“She discovered that her imagination had played an odd trick on her: he did not in the least look as she had pictured him […] His hair was not grey at all, oh, there were a few white hairs on the temple, but they were becoming; and his face was not red, but sunburned […] and he wasn’t stout and he wasn’t old: in fact he was almost slim and his figure was admirable—could you blame him if he was a trifle vain of it.”

This passage encapsulates Kitty’s ongoing inability to see Townsend clearly. While at first glance she thinks him fat and aged, his continuing sexual power over her makes her reassess her harsh judgement. Although Kitty thinks this reassessment is empirical, it conveys to the reader that she is in danger of being seduced by him again.

“What was he doing with her now? She did not know. She was not a woman, her personality was dissolved, she was nothing but desire.”

Maugham shows how sexual desire can have the same effect as spirituality, erasing a person’s individual character by its force. The idea of dissolved personality and no longer being a woman indicates a dissolution of the values Kitty’s ego holds dear and a surrender to a force that is larger than her.

“What had happened seemed to have happened in another world. She was like a person who has been stricken with sudden madness and recovering is distressed and ashamed at the grotesque things he vaguely remembers to have done when he was not himself. But because he knows he was not himself he feels that in his own eyes at least he can claim indulgence.”

On the ship back to England Kitty can judge what happened with Townsend as a temporary relapse rather than an absolute downfall. While she earlier feared that she would lose her self-possession, she now judges the tryst as a moment of “sudden madness” when she was not herself. The use of the male pronoun indicates the universalizing nature of her discovery, as in a patriarchal society the male stood in for the default human. Maugham presents the secular modern view that a person’s own opinion of themself and personal responsibility for one’s growth are paramount.