n “The Force of Circumstance” by Somerset Maugham, Doris, a young Englishwoman, marries Guy, a colonial officer stationed in the remote outpost of Sembulu. Despite their love and her efforts to make their home pleasant, Doris discovers the presence of a Malay woman and child, who turn out to be Guy’s former concubine and son from before their marriage. Guy’s casual dismissal of his past and the child’s future disturbs Doris, highlighting the cultural and moral conflicts of their colonial life. Feeling betrayed and unable to reconcile with the reality of Guy’s previous life, Doris ultimately ……………
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Jungle loins lol
This hasn’t aged well
Sad, but predictable. One option not explored was for the couple to return to England to live and restart their life together.
Rings true. Heartbreaking
I rather enjoyed the ending …. Doris’ intransigence was killing me……
**Spoilers**
This is a S. Maugham I hadn’t read before….What a pity, as it is truly a *master class* in characterization…Maugham sketches them with a deft hand, gradually building storylines and adding plot twists—until he just sits back, and lets his characters speak…
Layer by layer, Maugham reveals the husband’s deception—and the growing awareness of the newlywed wife—born into a world of class- and race-consciousness, suddenly confronted with a fait accomplis : her new husband’s 3 mixed-race children and ex-partner…It’s a situation with which she simply has no tools to cope …
The husband is revealed to be a rather weak, selfish and morally ambiguous man : unable to tolerate solitude, he rationalized his decision to take a native mistress ( “Everyone does it”), while simultaneously, describing that same mistress & their children as unfeeling, inanimate objects—to be used, and disposed of, as he saw fit. His children are alien beings, toward whom he has no paternal affection, and listening as he confesses to his wife, one rather wonders just “who” he is trying to convince….
As for the newlywed wife, we are taken on a sad journey, from perfect joy in her new husband and life—to utter despair. We are allowed to see through her eyes : how alien the natives appear to her, the shock over her husband’s past and his secrecy….and her inability to view her husband as anything other than “damaged goods,” and as now belonging to a native woman (it brings to mind Nellie Forbush’s reaction to her lover’s confession of having had a native wife & children in the musical, “South Pacific”)…Shocked as she is, Maugham shows us a woman who doesn’t act on impulse : she takes a long time (6mos.) to decide what she will do, knowing that 50 yrs of loneliness confronts her if she leaves him (she even confesses to him: “If you had had just one child with her, I might have been able to bear it”)…
She does, in the end, the only thing that she can do—sail for “home”….In a final, brilliant, character reveal, we see the husband (whose concealment of his past has caused such heartache) invite that same “past” back into his life—on the very day his wife left…. Maugham at his best!
Wow. She won.
I sobbed hearing this but was ultimately delighted.
🙏💕
kazowaaa
Such a nice little story to make me feel miserable. And the ending music is like a. Nice little nail i stepped on, to make me think of tetanus infection. Maugham had me until the very last word.
East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet…..etc. I love Maugham's stories of The White Man's Burden😊
Very nicely narrated.
Well it's no good crying now! He should have kept his pants on from the beginning! Who did he think was going to be responsible for his children?
Thanks for this vintage Maugham !
well there will be some censure I am sure…from those who have never been lonely ex-pats away from everyone and everything from their own culture..I have been an ex-pat luckily not in a situation like this..but with a husband and family however I can relate to the lonely young man lost in translation…His 'crime' if there was one was to pretend it never happened and ruin two women's lives..but that was then
Similar things happened to peasant women and servant girls in Europe. "Funny" how they were also accused of lacking feelings and considered fully disposable.
I guess the British Empire didn't invent the wheel.