The Painted Veil

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 26

Chapters 27-57

Chapters 58-80

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

England as Home

The idea of England as home is a constant motif throughout the text. While the British colonists set up a bureaucracy in Hong Kong and give themselves titles (such as colonial governor and secretary) that convey their authority over the place, they consistently refer to England as their home. This implies that their spiritual and social touchstone is England and that Hong Kong is a place where they are temporary visitors rather than invested residents. The contradictions of this arrangement, whereby the British rule while their hearts are elsewhere, is evident in their racist dehumanization of and general lack of interest in their colonial subjects, in addition to their attachment to the class hierarchies of England.

Kitty in particular exemplifies the latter, as she finds herself irritated that her husband’s relatively lowly profession should determine her class. She is frustrated that she is looked down upon and thought “a little common” by people like Dorothy, whose father was once a colonial governor but now lives in an unprepossessing house in Earl’s Court, whereas her own family is rising socially and living in more fashionable South Kensington (11). While Kitty clings to the English class system, from the distance of Hong Kong, people she looks down on view her as their inferior. The novel thus shows the relative and thereby artificial nature of class and other social hierarchies, hinting at the arbitrary and potentially fragile claims of the British on Chinese territory.

Following Kitty’s sojourn in Meitan-fu and the events that lead to her return to England, she no longer considers her country of origin her home. She tells her father, “I’m used to strange places. London means nothing to me any more. I couldn’t breathe here” (279). Here, Kitty repudiates the hierarchies and social customs that she grew up with. She herself has become alienated from them and finds that she is better suited to “strange places” that will aid her on her journey of self-discovery.

The Painted Veil

The veil is a consistent but subtle motif in Maugham’s novel and symbolizes the distance between our perceptions and reality. The novel’s title alludes to the opening lines of a sonnet by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which urges the reader to “lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call life” (Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Lift Not the Painted Veil.” 1824. Reprint. The Reader, 6 Feb. 2017. Accessed 17 Jul. 2022). The sonnet goes on to express that while our perception of life is an illusion, lifting the veil in a quest for truth is futile.

The novel’s abbreviation of the sonnet to three words indicates that it is mostly interested in how characters respond to the world’s illusions. Misunderstanding and occluded sight are common in the novel, especially in Kitty’s tendency to succumb to Townsend’s illusory charms even as Walter’s inability to spin beautiful illusions leaves her perennially cold to him. However, the painted veil also refers to the British colonial experience of “the Orient”—a now outdated catch-all for continental Asia—which is not a clear vision but one distorted by the mists of imagination and greed.

Mists feature prominently in Kitty’s experience of Meitan-fu and give the illusion of landscapes suspended without gravity. Misty dawns appear the work of a “magician,” as they seem “too airy, fantastic and unsubstantial to be the work of human hands” (112). The sight causes a transformation in Kitty—a resignation of material joys in favor of spiritual awakening—as “it seem[s] to her as though her body [is] a shell that lay[s] at her feet and she [is] pure spirit” (112). She does not fully understand the misty sights before her but allows them to penetrate and change her, as the more material (and materialistic) life of Hong Kong seems a gaudy “veil” of untruths now that she is on a quest for authenticity. However, when Kitty leaves Meitan-fu, her experiences there seem “like a story that she was reading; […] it seem[s] to concern her so little” (239). Thus, although Kitty feels changed by her experience, she also feels strangely irrelevant to what has happened in that epidemic-ridden place. This exposes both the fact that Kitty has been part of a narrative far larger than herself and also her misplacement there as a Protestant British woman who has a merely arbitrary relationship to the landscape and culture that she has immersed herself in.

Cholera

Cholera, a bacterial disease that is acquired by ingesting contaminated food and water, is a prominent motif in the novel. It is also a symbol of corruption and adversity; a person’s ability to face and resist the disease indicates their courage and resilience. Maugham puts forth a view of white superiority in the face of cholera, as both the British colonists and the French nuns believe that “these Chinese have no resistance” to the disease (155). Meitan-fu’s Chinese inhabitants are also shown to engage in practices, such as eating fresh salad, that make them more susceptible to catching cholera. It is therefore up to the novel’s white saviors to save the locals from their lack of resilience and foolishness, legitimizing colonial rule by implying that the Chinese cannot successfully govern and take care of themselves.

The white characters’ attitudes toward the disease also reveal their essential selves behind the façade of image and personality. For example, Charles Townsend’s remark that going to cholera-struck Meitan-fu is “a damned sporting” act of virtue but “not a thing [he]’d fancy” indicates that behind his bravado (93), he is cowardly and unwilling to get his hands dirty for the good of others. In contrast, Walter and the nuns are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cholera victims, indicating their noble, martyr-like characters. However, Walter’s decision to sacrifice his wife to the threat of cholera indicates his darker side. The novel is ambiguous as to whether his intention is to kill Kitty for her infidelity or merely to teach her a lesson.

Walter acknowledges that despite Kitty’s reckless imitation of the Chinese in eating fresh salad, she has “thrived” in Meitan-fu and has even managed to begin gestating a child (190). This indicates that despite her initial terror and cowardice, Kitty is the character most able to adapt to circumstances. As a white woman living in the 1920s, a period that granted women greater independence, she withstands the cholera epidemic and changes for the better from risking her life and identity while she is there. In contrast, Walter and the nuns, who are more set in their ways, are more likely to fall prey to the disease.