On Maugham Spiritual World

W. S. Maugham is a well-known and popular British writer in the twentiethcentury. In recent several decades, Maugham’s works gain increasing currency amongChinese readers, especially for his autobiographical novel Of human bondage.Maugham emphasizes story-telling in his works; he also likes to discuss about themeaning of life. The whole thesis tries to construct Maugham’s spiritual worldthrough focus on the ideas displayed in his three important novels which are Ofhuman bondage, The razor’s edge and Moon and Sixpence.On the purpose of elaboration of Maugham’s ideas, the thesis is to be dividedinto three parts. The first part is about Maugham’s belief of negative freedom.Maugham believes that there is no absolute freedom but negative freedom ascorresponding to the novel’s name: Of human bondage. As far as the three novelsbefore mentioned concerned, human beings’ freedom are restricted by three things.The first one is money, which has already been an essential to modern society. Thesecond one is irrational power, which assumes in the form of erotic desires andenormous creative desires. Maugham holds an opinion that rationality cannotcontrol our behaviors but irrational powers can. The third thing is Oedipus complexwhich limits unconsciously our choices of spouses.In the second part, Maugham’s belief of spiritual solitude will be elaborated; toexplain how Maugham deconstruct and reconstruct the things that are traditionallyconsidered to be reliable. For instance, there is always an everlastingmisunderstanding and deficiency that intervenes between interpersonalrelationships; Christianity which has always been a strong spiritual support forwesterners is no longer useful and valuable after two World Wars. These points ofview, besides the marks of the time, derive from Maugham’s own life and readingexperiences; he is an admirer for philosophers like Spinoza, Schopenhauer. Inaddition, he thinks that salvation of westerners may lie in the East.I managed to summarize in the third part Maugham’s philosophy of life andanalyze how to live properly for modern people in his eyes. Taking the protagonists of the three novels as examples, we could see how Maugham’s view of life changed inaccordance with the chronicle of the completion of the novels; Maugham was moreinclined to have his protagonists go outside the West to the East to find the essenceof life. They not only live there, but carry back the wisdom of the East by which theyhope to save westerners from mists of sadness and bewilderment.In conclusion, Maugham’s spiritual world is on one hand pessimistic; on theother hand, he is loathsome to be so as seen from his pondering on salvation withunfreedom and ephemerality of life as a prerequisite.The close reading method will be applied to this thesis to dig out Maugham’svalues underling in his novels, autobiographies and memoirs. Meanwhile, the timebackground and the views that gave inspirations to Maugham will also be taken inconsideration for straightening out the origins and structure, basis of his spiritualworld. With this exploration, we may have a view on the ideological trend of westernliterary society in twentieth century as a whole.