Hypocrite Or Prostitute

This thesis aims to analyze the female characters, either featured by sensuality or marked with hypocrisy, in Maugham's works.It has been a long established notion that Maugham is a misogynist who doesn't fare well with women in his life. Take his ex-wife Syrie and his daughter for example. His grudge against Syrie lasts years even after she has passed away, and the legal case primarily involving money issue between him and his daughter serves as a strong piece of evidence of his disposition to suspect women's motives.Maugham's unpleasant experiences with women make him a target of feminists; accordingly, his writings are susceptible to criticism of feminism analysis. This thesis, selecting The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale, The Razor's Edge, approaches his unfavorable attitudes towards women from the perspective of psychoanalysis. One is Freud's writers'daydreaming theory and the other is Jung's collective subconscious psychology. The distinctive resemblance between female figures in his life and those in his fictions speaks of the effects of the writer's daydreaming and helps us understand how Maugham goes so far on his way drifting from women. Moreover, predominance of lascivious but straightforward women in his writings, oddly portrayed as positive forces, can be explained by the collective subconscious psychology which associates the ancient tradition or beliefs that are passed down through generations with Maugham's denunciation of women.This thesis, on leverage of two psychoanalyses, undertakes to anatomize female characters in Maugham's works from a relatively new perspective, and explores how his attitudes toward women gradually take form.