The Painted Veil

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This classic tale of love and betrayal is set in the early 1900s: Kitty Garstin accepts Dr. Walter Fane's marriage proposal because she didn't want her sister to beat her to the altar. I know Walters. Those cold and passionate introverted and unforgiving correct people who will do everything right and remain impossible to belong to. If he had been different ... but he wasn't and that is the problem. Delirium. Or perhaps it was the last line of Goldsmith's elegy that she hadn't read yet somehow knew! If only she could cry for Walter like the stupid, round-faced coolies! For a while, Kitty had hoped Walter might improve, but once she had succumbed to Charlie Townsend's assured athleticism she could no longer fool herself that Walter was anything other than a short, ugly, charmless nonentity.

What is remarkable about this tale—both the book and the film—is that you come away uplifted in both instances. The film makers have changed the ending, perhaps realising that modern cinema audiences haven't the stomach of Maugham's readers 80 years ago. You must be very hard to please," returned Kitty, in the bright, chaffing way she could assume so easily. "I suppose he's far and away the most popular man in Hong Kong."

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Walter laughed a cruel laugh. "Townsend will never leave his wife," he sneered. "You are just his plaything. If he promises to leave Dorothy, I will give you a divorce. Otherwise, you must come up country with me to Mei-fan-tu where I've offered to take charge of the cholera epidemic."

Even still, it is the moment I became less forgiving of her character and the direction the book was taking. I would have liked her to have still more sympathy and love for her family, became more transparent with Waddington and, finally, resist Charlie -- even one last time. She didn't change as much as I had hoped.Maugham’s portrayal of Kitty and her anguishing journey towards self-realization and atonement is hypnotic. We follow her from self-absorbed young girl, to selfish and delusional adulteress, to guilt ridden and forgiveness seeking wife. Never one for the overly simplistic, Maugham mixes in complications and complexities to Kitty’s emotional state to make this more realistic. In Townsend, Maugham has created a truly despicable villain, but also very believable.