Of human bondage somerset maugham

Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels.

This is the story of an unforgettable fictional "character" named Philip Carey and his extremely tumultuous and tormented life from age 9 thru Poor Philip is only nine years of age when his beloved mother dies in childbirth and he is sent off to the vicarage to live with his strict, overbearing Uncle William and loving Aunt Louisa. Born with a club-foot and small for his age, Philip is shy and embarrassed by his deformity and is often lonely and pegged an outcast. Throughout the reading of this complex semi-autobiographical novel, I often became so frustrated with Philip that I just wanted to shake his obsession with the vile, grungy waitress Mildred right out of him! BUT he was also a kind, likeable "character" generous to an indescribable fault, good-hearted and most of all Originally published in , this memorable classic is one hell of an "intimate tale of human relationships.

Of human bondage somerset maugham

I n Aspects of the Novel , EM Forster wrote: "The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define. For English readers, this is a Bildungsroman we mostly first encounter as adolescents. It earns its place in this list for the edgy economy of its dark, often cruel narrative more than its style prosaic or its humanity tormented. Maugham's unforgettable portrait of Philip Carey is one that teenagers, typically, will ingest like junkies, not least because Maugham poured so much of himself into the plot of the novel and its strangely sympathetic protagonist. Perhaps not since David Copperfield , an obvious inspiration No 15 in this series , had an English writer mined his own life so explicitly or so ruthlessly. Philip Carey is an orphan hungry for love and experience. Like Maugham, who was a homosexual with a bad stammer, he is afflicted with a disabling deformity, a club foot. Raised by his clergyman uncle, the boy is imprisoned in late-Victorian vicarage life dreaming of his release from bondage, and praying to an indifferent God to have his disability healed. After a closely observed passage through boarding school, Philip escapes to study in Heidelberg, enjoys a brief spell as a struggling but failing artist in Paris, and then returns home. Now begins the most poignant and memorable passage of the novel, Carey's hopeless affair with Mildred, a waitress.

Maugham is a classical Bildungsroman — a coming of age story, published almost years ago. Sometimes I worry that I'm like a sociopath who cannot fake human emotions when it comes to romance and religion.

Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although he stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention. The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the beloved mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and his father had died a few months earlier. Now orphaned, he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Louisa and William Carey in Blackstable , a town in Kent. Philip lives at his uncle's vicarage.

Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor. And that is where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a formative, tortured and masochistic affair which very nearly ruins him. William Somerset Maugham was born in and lived in Paris until he was ten. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth , published in , won him over to literature.

Of human bondage somerset maugham

I n Aspects of the Novel , EM Forster wrote: "The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define. For English readers, this is a Bildungsroman we mostly first encounter as adolescents. It earns its place in this list for the edgy economy of its dark, often cruel narrative more than its style prosaic or its humanity tormented.

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To Philip's dismay, after Mildred has her baby, she falls in love with Philip's good friend Harry Griffiths and runs away with him. Even now, after finishing the book, I'm not sure I fully understand the meaning of the title, but it doesn't matter. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style. A surprising brain of your own. In the Henry James story, another young and idealistic main character is told that the meaning of the enigmatic oeuvre of a writer he reveres is also like the pattern of a Persian carpet: if you look at it long enough, you will be able to figure it out. Somerset Maugham. I thought I was going to be reading some sexy victorian novel, but I was definitely mistaken on that front. Vit Babenco. Yet she remembers everything about her dreams I lied to myself that she liked me, I kept treating her wonderfully, and held onto — and practically lived upon -- her every word. Philip used reading to escape; as I did and many others do. Not since Crime and Punishment have I read a novel this intense. George H. An American philosophy student named Weeks sees Hayward less as a poet and more of a waster, and with deliberate self-assurance, calls the Englishman out on his inconsistencies during their fireside chats.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham is considered a semi-autobiographical work and has been critically acclaimed as one of the best English novels of the twentieth century.

France BnF data Germany. See C. Maugham is a good story teller and his characters are drawn well. His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. Philip goes for Sunday dinner to the Athelnys, and his friend Thorpe Athelny insists that Philip will stay with them until his situation improves: "Betty," he said, when she came in. It is tiresome, and I was itching for him to leave school, so something would actually happen, in order to keep me invested in the plot. Having worked as a governess in Berlin and Paris, Miss Wilkinson thrills Philip with her tales of being seduced by an art student in the City of Lights. There were many jumping off points for inspiration. Then was the well-intentioned impulse at trying his hand at becoming a painter in Paris. I might have liked if I pushed through but I followed the rules of the game. It captivated me from start to finish. This was not always the case.