If anyone wants to read my essay so far here it is, I havent checked it yet:/ One more page to go
P.S I dont expect you to read this, maybe just see how long it is?
William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist, and a short story writer. In 1925, Maugham wrote about a love story called the Painted Veil. It shows the flaws in marriage, the changing of one’s personalities, but most importantly the regret of not caring and spending enough time with a loved one who would pass away before you knew it. In this story, the married couple doesn’t return the love back to each other, until they started to share true love. In order for this to happen, they need to change and work together. Kitty, the wife, began to truly love her husband after she stayed in Southern China for a while. Before that, Kitty was very different in England and Hong Kong. In this essay I will be discussing how the different locations which include: England, Hong Kong, and Southern China and how these changed Kitty.
The Painted Veil tells us a story about this vain woman called Kitty Garstin. She is pretty but on the other hand is very shallow. Her mum is trying to get her sister, Doris, and Kitty married to successful people who have connections and a good job, no matter what personality they have. At a party, Kitty meets a bacteriologist, Walter Fane. Walter is attracted to Kitty, and proposes to her later. She marries him, but for the wrong reasons as she does not love Walter. She only married him to get away from her family and as an older sister; she also wants to marry before her younger sister, Doris. When the new couple moves from England to Hong Kong, China, Kitty cheats on Walter and commits adultery with another man called Charlie Townsend. Upset and humiliated, Walter who has always been silent, threatens to file a divorce in public to get Kitty and Charlie into trouble. The other option he gives Kitty, is a life threatening journey to the heart of a cholera epidemic in a remote town in China, Mei-Tan-Fu. Kitty does not want to go back to her family if they divorce, leading her with no choice but to accompany Walter to Mei-Tan-Fu. Walter volunteers to look after the sick because he has a kind heart and an M.D degree. However his secret intention was to hope that Kitty would catch cholera resulting in her death. During their stay in a Bungalow, Kitty thinks about what she’s done and tries to change. Nearing the end of Walter’s death, both of them start to share true love at once. Walter, who had been over-working, catches cholera because he didn’t have enough strength in his immunity system, and passes away. Kitty regrets all the sins she had done that got both of them into this mess. She comes back to England later, only to find out her mother died. She decides to stay with her father as a widow.
The first place where Kitty and Walter meet starts in England which is a well-known place. Here is where Kitty was raised up, lived in for most of her life, and eventually cause all this trouble. Between 1921 and 1922, there was a vast change in drinking habits at night clubs and parties. Kitty loved going to parties, two reasons, because she loved dancing and she was also looking for a successful man to marry. At a few of the many countless parties Kitty attended, Walter had seen her and instantly fell in love. Although he asked her to dance a couple of times, Kitty did not realize that Walter was deeply in love with her. This shows how shallow and ignorant Kitty was at the start of the book. At one of the parties, she admits she forgot Walter’s name even though he told her before. She tries to cover this by claiming that she danced with many people and couldn’t possibly remember everyone. At this point, Kitty is spoiled by this luxurious life that she doesn’t need to care about because her dad pays for all the family expenses. England, as well as other European countries was very wealthy which potentially made the prices of goods expensive, which could be why Kitty didn’t have a happy, healthy family. When Walter and Kitty get married, they plan to move to Hong Kong. This allowed Kitty to get away from her family, regardless of how she treated Walter with no affection.
Kitty and her new husband moved to Hong Kong, a colony that was part of the British Empire. Westerners and very few Chinese people were looked up to as elite or superior to the locals. One example was that in the late 19th century, Chinese people were not allowed to live in elite areas such as Victoria Peak. Kitty had some sense of power, and decided to use it for the bad. During the two years of their marriage, Kitty did not really try to know Walter, to understand him. On the other hand, Walter tried to show his love but in fact does not try enough for Kitty to see it. These contradicting factors could be the reason why Kitty suffered from boredom, plus she kept justifying that it was Walter’s fault for being so boring but did not criticize herself. This eventually led to Kitty and Charlie, another shallow Westerner committing adultery in Hong Kong. The whole action taken by the two forced Kitty to accompany Walter on his dangerous trip to Mei-Tan-Fu partly because of two reasons: because Hong Kong was a small colony; everybody knew most of the colony. If a few people find out what Kitty had done, word would spread rapidly, humiliating all of them, Kitty, Charlie, and even Walter. The second reason was also why Kitty married Walter, she wanted to get away from her family but if they divorce, Kitty would have to bear the rest of her life living with them. At the same time, she was getting older, which meant it would be hard for her to find another successful man as her beauty was fading away. Even though after the petty look and agonizing talks with her husband, she still believed it was his fault and he should not be able to blame her. Hong Kong did not change her for the good; instead she grew more ignorant, hateful, and scared at the same time.
A few days later, Walter and Kitty depart for Mei-Tan-Fu. Walter sneakily makes them take the most uncomfortable and inconvenient path to get there as a punishment for Kitty. When they arrive in this small town in the heart of China towards the south, everything appears to Kitty as nightmare or basically a shock to her expectations. The streets are polluted and everyone is so poor and dirty. The whole step Kitty takes from a westernized colony and country to a local town in mainland China really gets Kitty thinking about her past actions. She realizes that she lives in a wonderful environment with everything she needed, unlike a huge mass of unfortunate people dying from a disease which they cannot afford to treat it.
Throughout the rest of her stay in Mei-Tan-Fu, Kitty, experiences site of deaths in the streets. At this moment, she is very scared, as if her comfort zone bubble had been popped. Also, Kitty visits an orphanage with lots of Chinese orphans whilst feeling sympathy for them. Kitty probably changed the most during her stay in Southern China, convincing her from all those unfortunate experiences to become a more grateful and loving person. Meanwhile, she still feels useless and decides to help the nuns running the orphanage and small hospital. The French nuns believe that Walter is a benevolent and generous gentleman and assume Kitty and him love each other dearly. Guilty of the heartbreak she had caused Walter, she reconsiders what they are going to do with their lives. Normally, when Walter was working, Kitty would stay in the bungalow usually reading, if not then thinking about her actions. All the nasty experiences in Mei-Tan-Fu revealed to Kitty the true personality of Walter: he would risk his life to help other less fortunate people, does not matter if they are Western or Chinese. Attracted to this trait of his, Kitty comprehends Charlie as a wimp and forgets about him in her mind, begging Walter for his forgiveness. The couple rejoices, although Walter still does not forgive himself. He could never forgive himself not matter how many times Kitty pleaded him to, he felt he was taken advantage of even when he had been so polite and giving to Kitty. Eventually, Walter dies from cholera, but Kitty thinks he died from a broken heart, as she understands how bad and embarrassed he must have felt. After the whole event in Mei-Tan-Fu, Kitty changes to become a much nicer and better quality person. She even offers to stay in there and help the nuns run the orphanage even though she is pregnant (She does not know whose child it is; either Walter’s or Charlie’s). However, the nuns do not need her help, therefore they urge her to go back to Hong Kong then back to England to live with her family. It shows that before Kitty was shallow and selfish, but now she is offering help to the nuns and the orphans, even though the orphans do not speak English. She starts to think about others first before minding her own concerns (pregnancy, mother sick etc.). Here is when Kitty changes the most, becomes nicer, kinder, more loving, everything better, if only she was not filled with regret for what she had done to Walter, who died before she could sincerely apologize.
This is a poem about loved family members can disappear without warning, so family should spend time with each other before they pass away, who knows how much regret they will have? The poem is called “Remembering” by Nikki Grimes:
remembering
Grandma filling up this porch
with laughing
and stories about when
Mama was a little girl
and Grandma would hug me
and say
I was her very special granddaughter.
But now she’s gone.
I miss her---
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