A Study Of Modernist Features In The Painted Veil

William Somerset Maugham(1874-1965) was a renowned British novelist, playwright and short story writer. With ceaseless effort, he has created a number of excellent works during his life, including nearly twenty novels, thirty-two plays, more than one hundred short stories, and many travel notes, essays and memoirs. He was known as “one of the most popular writers in the 20 th century”. The Painted Veil is written in 1925. It is the only novel which is based on the plot instead of characters. This novel has been interpreted by experts and scholars from different angles, but relatively few researchers study the modernist features in the novel.In traditional comments, William Somerset Maugham was labeled as a naturalistic and traditional realistic novelist by critics. There is no denying that these factors are reflected in different degrees in Maugham’s works. However, Maugham’s artistic features integrated realism with modernism. The author of this thesis holds that Maugham does not belong to the traditional realistic writers and his novel The Painted Veil is closer to the style of modernist novels. Therefore, the main point of this thesis is to analyze the modernist features of Maugham’s novel. In this paper, the author chooses The Painted Veil as the text research object and aims to analyze the modernist features of the novel mainly through two aspects. On one hand, this thesis intends to discuss the modernistic themes those are contained in the novel, including the theme of loneliness, disillusionment and death; On the other hand, it attempts to analyze the employment of the modernistic techniques in the novel, such as stream of consciousness, shifts of point of view and symbolism.The modernist features can be divided into two categories: modernist themes and modernist techniques. In terms of themes, The Painted Veil is centered on the following themes: alienation, disillusionment, death and search for identification and exploration of the meaning of life. As for writing techniques, Maugham employed the stream of consciousness, including the free association, shift of time and space, the transition of the narrative point of view, which plays an important part in revealing the characters’ inner world and has become the most effective means of Maugham’s depiction of characters. In addition, the use of symbols contributes to the themes and helps to heighten the atmosphere in the novel.The thesis consists of five parts, namely, introduction, three chapters and conclusion.The Introduction is about Maugham’s significant status in the British literary history and his work The Painted Veil. It also includes a summary of previous research on Maugham and the novel both at home and abroad. Besides, it illustrates the purpose and significance of this thesis.Chapter One functions as the theoretical foundation of the thesis, which expounds the origin and development of modernism and generalizes the relation between Maugham and modernist literature. This chapter can be divided into three parts. The first part gives a brief introduction of the origin and development of modernism. The second part is about the summary of the features of the modernist novels. The last part is a general analysis of the great effect of modernism on Maugham’s creation. Modernism is regarded as one of the most influential ideological trends in the 20 th century. Usually, modernism is considered to be a reaction produced by enormous social change and characterized by abandoning traditional themes and skills. Maugham’s creation was profoundly impacted by the social situation in turmoil before and after the two World Wars in the early 20 th century, the alienation of human nature resulted from the unprecedented development of industrial civilization and the rise of modernism.Chapter Two illustrates the modernist themes in the novel, including people’s loneliness, disillusionment, alienation between man and man, death and so forth. Modernist themes can be reflected in modernist novel as people’s sense of alienation, anxiety and disillusionment, the pursuit of people’s spiritual world and reflection of a lonely and painful self.Chapter Three analyzes modernist techniques used in the novel. First of all, this part analyzes the author’s attempts to use stream of consciousness in the novel in order to display complex inner journey of the protagonists. Secondly, it analyzes Maugham’s employment of the transformation of the narrative point of view to shape characters and reveal the themes. In addition, it discusses the application of symbolism in the novel, not only adds uncertainty to the work, but also endows it with the modernist features.The last part serves as the conclusion. Based on the origin and characteristics of the modernist literature, this thesis interprets modernist features in Maugham’s The Painted Veil through analysis of the modernist themes as well as modernist techniques in the novel, so as to get a thorough understanding of Maugham and his works.