THERE ARE THREE

RULES FOR WRITING A

NOVEL.

UNFORTUNATELY, NO

ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY

ARE.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM CH (25 JANUARY 1874 – 16 DECEMBER 1965)

WAS A BRITISH PLAYWRIGHT, NOVELIST AND SHORT STORY WRITER. HE

WAS AMONG THE MOST POPULAR WRITERS OF HIS ERA AND REPUTEDLY

THE HIGHEST PAID AUTHOR DURING THE 1930S.

•Born in Paris, France•Died in Nice, France•Gender male•Genre Literature & Fiction, Short Stories, Classics

• William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.

• His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in 'Of Human Bondage' , Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.

• During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.

Education

Attended at The King’s School,Canterbury

Studied literature, philosophy & German at Heidelberg University

Studied medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital,inLambeth,London

qualified as Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London in 1897 although he never practiced

Marriage and familyO Although homosexual, (had a sexual affair with John Ellingham

Brooks) Maugham entered into a relationship with Syrie Wellcome,

the wife of Henry Wellcome, an American-born English

pharmaceutical magnate. They had a daughter named Mary

Elizabeth Maugham, (1915–1998).Henry Wellcome sued his wife for

divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.

O In May 1917, Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married. Syrie

Maugham became a noted interior decorator who in the 1920s

popularized "the all-white room." Their daughter was familiarly

called Liza and her surname was changed to Maugham.

O The marriage was unhappy, and Syrie divorced him in 1929, finding

his relationship and travels with Frederick Gerald Haxton too

difficult to live with.

Significant works Liza of Lambeth's – The book created a great deal of controversy as

it dealt with Liza, a fun-loving factory worker, and her affair with Jim,

a married man.

Lady Frederick - a comedy about money and marriage

A cartoon by Bernard Partridge in Punch - showed a worried

Shakespeare in front of the playbills.

Of Human Bondage - is considered to have many autobiographical

elements. Maugham gave Philip Carey a club foot (rather than his

stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of

Whitstable; and Carey is a medic.

Ashenden: Or the British Agent - a collection of short stories about

a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy. This character is considered to

have influenced Ian Fleming's later series of James Bond novels

On A Chinese Screen - dedicated to Syrie.This was a collection of

58 ultra-short story sketches, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, intending to expand the sketches later as a book

The Letter

The Casuarina Tree

An Appointment in Samarra - is based on an ancient Babylonian

myth: Death is both the narrator and a central character. The American writer John O'Hara credited Maugham's novel as a creative inspiration for his own novel Appointment in Samarra

The Razor's Edge - was a departure for him in many ways. While

much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of the First World War who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, traveling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck a chord with readers during the Second World War

Cakes and Ale - contains what were taken as thinly veiled and

unflattering characterizations of the authors Thomas Hardy (who had

died two years previously) and Hugh Walpole

Rain - charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to

convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its

reputation

Footprints in the Jungle

The Outstation

The Magician - is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley

The Moon and Sixpence

The Moon and Sixpence,

told in episodic form by a

first-person narrator, in a

series of glimpses into the

mind and soul of the

central character Charles

Strickland, a middle-aged

English stockbroker, who

abandons his wife and

children abruptly to pursue

his desire to become an

artist. The story is said to

be loosely based on the life

of the painter Paul

Gauguin.

*Settings* London

*When Crabbe meets the Stricklands,

they are living in London, in a nice

apartment.

* Paris

* Charles Strickland goes to Paris to

study painting and stays there for six

years.

* Rome

* Crabbe meets Dirk Stroeve in Rome,

where Dirk paints Italian peasants

against the beautiful scenery. Later,

Dirk continues painting Rome, even

after moving to Paris.

*Marseilles

*After leaving Paris, Strickland goes to

Marseilles for a while.

*Tahiti

*All his life, Strickland has longed to live in a quiet island paradise, so he settles in Tahiti when he can finally get a ship to take him there.

*Papeete

*Papeete is a small village in Tahiti, where Strickland meets Ata. It is the nearest village to Ata's house.

*Ata's Hut

*Ata and Strickland live in a tiny, two-room hut in the jungle, along with several others. When Strickland is dying, he paints the entire hut with his masterpiece.

STRUCTURE: FLASH BACK,FLASHFORWARDERA: LATE XIX CENTURY AND EARLY XX CENTURYCHARACTERS:

Charles Strickland – main character of the novel, a middle-

aged English strokebroker who abandons his comfortable life

for to pursue his desire to become an artist

Mrs. Amy Strickland – Strickland’s first wife in London

Ata – Strickland’s second wife in Tahiti

Rose Waterford – the narrator stays in her house and and she

declares to the narrator about Strickland’s abandonement his

wife and children

Colonel MacAndrew –Amy’s brother-in-law

Dirk Stroeve – a fat nonsense friend of the narrator's, who

immediately recognises Strickland's genius

Blanche Stroeve – Dirk’s wife but then falls in love with Strickland

Capt. Nichols – meets Strickland in Marseilles and causes him to go

to Tahiti

Tough Bill - a huge mulatto, with heavy fist who gives the stranded

mariner food and shelter him but he is beaten by Strickland for 2

times

Dr. Coutras –treats Strickland and helps to Ata to bury his corpse

under a mango tree

Tiare Johnson –a middle-aged lady who the proprietress of the Hotel

de la Fleur

Capitan Brunot – takes narrator to Dr.Coutras because he has

witnessed Strickland’s death

Mood: pessimistical

Theme: It is well-known for being inspired by the story of the

famous post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin, but Maugham isn’t

as concerned here about telling Gauguin’s life-story as he is in

exploring the nature of someone who could be driven to leave the

comfort of society by an obsession to create art. Strickland is

essentially a sociopath. He cares for no one or nothing other than

painting. He lives with hunger and illness to achieve this end, and

despises anyone who tries to help him. The message delivered us by

this novel is nobody or nothing would prevent the love of creating.

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.” “As lovers, the difference between men and women is

that women can love all day long, but men only at times.”

“When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.”

“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.”

“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.”

“There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.”

Quotes

“She loved three things — a joke, a

glass of wine, and a handsome man.” “I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love

with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.”

“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”

“Life isn't long enough for love and art.” The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.” “They say a woman always remembers her first lover with

affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.”

“Perhaps that is the wisdom of life, to tread in your father's

steps, and look neither to the right nor to the left.”

“art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.”

“To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults.”

“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”

“Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.”

PLOT SUMMARY

The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator,

who is first introduced to Strickland through the latter's wife.

Strickland strikes him (the narrator) as unremarkable. Certain

chapters entirely comprise stories or narrations of others, which

the narrator recalls from memory (selectively editing or

elaborating on certain aspects of dialogue, particularly

Strickland's, as Strickland is said by the narrator to be limited in

his use of verbiage and tended to use gestures in his

expression).

Strickland is a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London

sometime in late 19th or early 20th century. Early in the novel, he

leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris. He lives a

destitute but defiantly content life there as an artist (specifically

a painter), lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both

illness and hunger. Strickland, in his drive to express through

his art what appears to continually possess and compel him on

the inside, cares nothing for physical discomfort and is

indifferent to his surroundings.

He is generously supported, while in Paris, by a commercially successful

but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk Stroeve, a friend of the narrator's,

who immediately recognises Strickland's genius. After helping

Strickland recover from a life-threatening condition, Stroeve is repaid

by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for Strickland. Strickland

later discards the wife; all he really sought from Blanche was a model

to paint, not serious companionship, and it is hinted in the novel's

dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the risk anyway.

Blanche then commits suicide – yet another human casualty in

Strickland's single-minded pursuit of art and beauty; the first ones

being his own established life and those of his wife and children.

After the Paris episode, the story continues in Tahiti. Strickland has

already died, and the narrator attempts to piece together his life there

from recollections of others. He finds that Strickland had taken up a

native woman, had two children by her, one of whom dies, and started

painting profusely. We learn that Strickland had settled for a short

while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti, where

he lived for a few years before finally dying of leprosy. Strickland left

behind numerous paintings, but his magnum opus, which he painted

on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burnt

after his death by his wife per his dying orders.

If I were the author I would finish the novel not burning the pictures by his wife. I would describe that his pictures had been famous all over the world, launched at all museums. Or I would finish the novel where he marries with Ata and be happy, I wouldn’t depict his death and end the novel sorrowfully.

The title of novel means a person’s love of creating, his unobtainable genius’s light as the moon and comparing it with the corny philistinism of wealth that not to deserve a sixpence.

My lovely character in the novel is Ata who C.Strickland’s second wife. I like her because she is a very honest ,loyal, beautiful woman. She never leaves her husband though he suffered from the leprosy and makes her promise which has given to her husband to burn all his paintings after his death. If she wanted she could sell this paintings and would be rich.