A Study On Images Of China In Maugham's Works

Maugham is a famous British novelist and playwright in the 20th century He traveled a lot and based on his travels he created many works which are dinged with a strong exotic flavor. Many of his works are related to China such as On a Chinese Screen, The Painted Veil and East of Suez etc. This thesis adopts the theory of imagology of comparative literature and Said's theory of Orientalism to analyze the images of China in Maugham's works. On the basis of close reading, the thesis sketches the images of China in his works and anatomizes the causes behind the images, the projection of the writer's desires and the relationship between the writer and the social collective imagination etc.The images of China in Maugham's works are very complicated. On the one hand, China is described as an ancient, beautiful and exotic dreamland fraught with exquisite objects, admiring arts, charming scenery and unique customs etc. China in his eyes was the palaces and relics of Han and Wei Dynasties, the glories of Tang and Song Dynasties and an ancient country depicted in the archaic traditional thread-bound books. This type of image is classified into the utopian image. The causes of the utopian images of China are the writer's personal preference, the influence of the social collective imagination and the commercial aim. Moreover, it reveals the writer's dissatisfaction with Britain's reality and his intention to seek for certain kind of spiritual condolence from the idealized dreamland and to experience the long-lost and"unpolluted"Chinese pastoral life. On the other hand, China is more often than not depicted as poor, backward, filthy, epidemic-plagued and stagnating and as a big"opium den"and Chinese people were born to be addicted to smoking opium. This type of image is classified into the ideological image. Though Maugham claimed to present the"true"image of China to his readers, he didn't free himself from the shackle of the deep-rooted Orientalism in Western society. To create such a depraved image of China not only disguises the crime of British opium trade and the opium wars but also provides the so-called justice for their colonial domination. The images of Chinese people are generally negative. Chinese people are described as barbaric, inferior, infanticide-oriented, and prone to commit crime and pose a threat to the Europeans potentially. The European expatriates in Maugham's works also extremely hated the Chinese people. Since the Opium War, the Western imperialists, with the Britain as the leader, invaded, dominated and infiltrated into China in military, economy and culture, which nurtured the Europeans'sense of superiority and conceit. And this also proves that the foreign image is closely related to politics, economy and culture.In fact, when we uncover"the painted veil"on the images of China, we will find that the utopian image of China and the ideological image of China are coherent. They all reveal Maugham's inner psychology, namely, China should remain an ancient country with backward science and technology, which can provide a utopian spiritual dreamland. China's modernity and development will pose a threat to Britain and thus British people's sense of superiority will disappear.