Of Human Bondage

I enjoyed Spinoza when I read him as an undergraduate. I had some feeling for his interpretations of god and human behaviour. He was a rationalist, which fitted my youthful desires to understand the universe. He was a sort of pantheist, with god being everywhere and everything rather than being a bored bearded old chap sitting on a cloud punishing the misdemeanours of man. I preferred to think of him as an atheist of his time, finding a rational explanation for the state of the universe and calling it god so that it did not upset the god-ridden authorities of the age in which he lived.

Then there was Spinoza’s ethics. Spinoza reasoned that nothing was intrinsically good or evil, and was only so in relation to our perceptions of good and evil. He recognised that we had different ways of thinking, and one powerful way was through the emotions. Emotions, according to Spinoza, have some control over our thoughts and actions and though we may aim for rational thought emotions are powerful, ie we are in bondage to our emotions, hence the title of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage’, a semi-autobiographical account of Maugham’s early life expressed through the main character Philip Carey.

I tried reading Maugham when I was 18, the age at which we try everything and know nothing. I hated his writing. It has taken me until now to try again. This time I enjoyed reading Of Human Bondage, but I did not like Philip Carey, and I still have a dislike, if that is possible through a novel, of Somerset Maugham. Both come across as ungrateful selfish people who are incapable of having a positive loving relationship. Philip cannot love those who love him, and only loves those who don’t deserve his love. Maugham expressed something similar in his own life.

Maugham was bisexual. In later life he said ‘I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and only a quarter of me was queer – whereas really it was the other way round.’ He had an affair with Syrie Wellcome and later married her. They had one daughter who Maugham in later life disowned because he wanted to adopt his male secretary. Maugham lost the court case. After his marriage failed he lived for many years in France with his male lover, Gerald Haxton. The extent to which he had difficulties being in loving relationships was due to his bisexuality and the age he lived in is unknown, as is the way he expressed relationships in his works such as Of Human Bondage and the poor marriage in ‘The Painted Veil’.

Of Human Bondage is a sad novel, with unfortunate characters who in the main do not achieve much of value. Unhappiness runs through the pages, whether the discussion is about Philip who never really settles to anything, or the surrounding characters, who are mainly failures in their own ways. Philip searches for the meaning of life. Early on he rejects god, and eventually he discovers that life has no intrinsic meaning (similar to Spinoza) and that the only meaning is at the personal level. When he achieves this knowledge he still does not act on it and work out ways in which he can be happy, instead he continues fumbling through and making continual errors. We see this best of all in the failed relationships he has with others, whether friends, family or lovers. Even at the end where there appears to be a little hope he still cannot attain happiness. He cannot love well.