Unveiling William Somerset Maugham’s Colonialist Ideology

As a writer who was keen on travelling, William Somerset Maugham once madehis longest journey through the South Pacific and Asia. He has created many novelsand plays with the east as the background based on his travel experiences. Because ofhis sympathy for the people in the colonized countries shown in those works,Maugham is a widely recognized anti-colonialist writer. As a native English writer,can Maugham completely get rid of the influence of the penetration of the Britishcolonialism and become sympathetic toward the people in the colonized country?In light of narratology, this thesis focuses on The Painted Veil, one ofMaugham’s long novels set in China, to explore his colonialist ideology revealedfrom the narrative focalization, the narrative voice and the narrative frequency that heemploys in the novel to indicate that Maugham can not escape the influence of thepenetration of the British colonialist ideology.This thesis is mainly composed of three parts. The introduction part introducesMaugham’s literature achievement and the criticism on The Painted Veil home andabroad. The body of this thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapteranalyzes the various narrative focalizations that put Chinese people at positions to bewatched and judged to indicate Maugham’s western superiority complex. The secondchapter studies Maugham’s authorial voice and the voices of the western characters todisclose Maugham’s pride as a westerner and his prejudices toward Chinese people.The third chapter illustrates the repeated colonialist narrative and the inadequatenarrative of the impressiveness of China to reveal Maugham’s scornfulness to Chinesepeople and his negation of the modernity of China. The conclusion part indicates thatMaugham adopts colonialist narrative in The Painted Veil to help with the expansionof British colonialism under the influence of British colonialist ideology.