The Painted Veil (novel)

The Painted Veil

First edition (UK)
Author	W. Somerset Maugham
Country	United Kingdom
Publisher	Heinemann (UK) George H. Doran (US)
Publication date	1925

The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet, which begins "Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life".

The novel was first published in serialised form in five issues of Cosmopolitan (November 1924 – March 1925). Beginning in May 1925, it was serialised in the United Kingdom in eight parts in Nash's Magazine.

The biographer Richard Cordell notes that the book was influenced by Maugham's study of science and his work as a houseman at St Thomas' Hospital. In the preface to his book, Maugham tells how the main characters were originally called Lane, but that this was subsequently changed to "Fane", following the success of a libel case against the publishers by a Hong Kong couple with the name of Lane. The couple were awarded £250. To avoid similar problems after A. G. M. Fletcher, the then Assistant Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong, also threatened legal action, the name of the colony was changed to Tching-Yen. Later editions reverted to Hong Kong but the name Fane was kept for all editions.

Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character.

Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself by living a social high life, during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a "brilliant match" for her. By age 25, Kitty has flirted with and declined marriage proposals from dozens of prospective husbands. Her mother, convinced that her eldest daughter has "missed her market", urges Kitty to settle for the rather “odd” Walter Fane, a bacteriologist and physician, who declares his love for Kitty. In a panic that her much younger, and less attractive, sister, Doris, will upstage her by marrying first, Kitty consents to Walter's ardent marriage proposition with the words, "I suppose so". Shortly before Doris’s much grander wedding, Kitty and Walter depart as newlyweds to his post in Hong Kong.

Just weeks after settling in the Far East, Kitty meets Charlie Townsend, the Assistant Colonial Secretary. He is tall, handsome, urbane and extremely charming, and they begin an affair. Almost two years later, Walter, unsuspecting, and still devoted to his wife, observes Kitty and Charlie during an assignation, and the lovers, suspecting they’ve been discovered, reassure themselves that Walter will not intervene in the matter. Charlie promises Kitty that, come what may, he will stand by her. Aware that the cuckolded Walter is his administrative inferior, Charlie feels confident that the bacteriologist will avoid scandal to protect his career and reputation. For her part, Kitty, who has never felt real affection for her husband, grasps that, in fact, he is fully aware of her infidelity (though he initially refrains from confronting her) and she begins to despise his apparent cowardice. She discerns, however, an ominous change in his demeanour, masked by his scrupulous, punctilious behaviour.