Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)

It's difficult to approach this wonderful book afresh, as there have been several film versions -- none of them really satisfying -- and to tell the truth this wasn't the first time I've read it. This was my third read over a period of 50 years, and each time was like a new experience. This is a long novel -- no getting away from that -- and there are moments when the reader might wonder why Mr. Maugham didn't condense his story somewhat. But novels were long in those days (1916), and this is in the tradition of a lengthy Dickens novel like David Copperfield. There are similarities, too, with Dickens in theme and treatment: a boy orphaned at a young age, brought up by relatives inexperienced in the rearing of a shy, sensitive child, the constant struggle with poverty, the finding of one's place in the world. So yes, this is a long book but it has a magical forward thrust -- Maugham was a master storyteller -- and except for a couple of doldrums it moves right along up to its somewhat unconvincing finish. What stood out for me this time around is how shockingly self-absorbed the hero, Philip Carey, really is! Painfully shy, he is flawed in many ways, but extremely bright. The reader often wants to just slap some sense into him, wishing he would learn from his mistakes and get over himself, as we say nowadays. This is maddening, but it makes Philip a fascinating character study. He doesn't learn from his mistakes, and like many young people is completely ruled by his emotions, complicated in this case by his pride and class snobbery. In other words, he is his own worst enemy. It's interesting, and crucial to the tension of the plot, that the reader is more aware than Philip is where his self-destructive behavior will lead him. We fear for him and mourn with him when misfortune comes. Oddly, for such a long book, the character who becomes his nemesis has to wait until the volume is half over before she makes her appearance.

The central and most famous sections of the story deal with his disastrous involvement with Mildred Rogers, a selfish, ignorant virago of a woman who instinctively recognizes in Philip an unconscious masochism and uses it to manipulate him, like a puppet on a string. Her cruelty is almost beyond belief at times, and the reader learns to both dread and look forward to her appearances, like a terrible accident we're compelled to watch. And it should be said that these are the most exciting scenes in this powerful novel. The protagonist's attraction to her is a mystery even to himself, but it is undeniable. A kind of bondage. But there are other women in Philip's life and invariably he treats them quite badly. His men friends don't fare much better. He doesn't seem to have a sense of what makes people tick. He is simply oblivious to the suffering of a fellow art student who is in love with him, although her tragic end does provoke some pricks of conscience. On the other hand, despite many setbacks Philip eventually becomes an excellent doctor, sympathetic and liked by his patients. These contradictions in our hero's character are part of why he is such an enduring character in literature. For me, the most moving parts of his story are when he is forced by dire circumstance to accept help from the people who care for him. He seems surprised that they would want to, so precarious is his self-esteem. This makes Philip Carey very modern in some ways. He has to touch bottom several times before the way forward becomes clear. This is one of the great books of the twentieth century, and one of the most entertaining.

I finished Of Human Bondage within the past hour, and though I came here looking for information on various editions, I read a few of the reviews as well, prompting me to put down a few comments.

Maugham and his contemporaries were writing in a world altogether different from their recent predecessors: though set in the later-19th century, waning years of the Victorian era, the book was published in 1915. It's part of 20th-century literature, and though pre-dating the horrors of the first World War, it's got a 20th century outlook. When it's grim, it is a kind of darkness that feels quite in the middle of Dickens and the "lost generation". When it's attractive, and it is often enough, it seems to be a little more old-fashioned, but not romantic or picturesque.

Philosophically it's existentialist - that is to say, the protagonist, Phillip, evolves through the story of his first 30 years from a young man convinced of the "rightness" of the Church of England, to an atheist, and on until he embraces a philosophic outlook that he's come to pretty much on his own.

There is wonderful writing here, plenty worth re-reading immediately before moving on, beautiful things and artfully hideous things. The length of the story, the "one man's life in 122 chapters" completeness of it, can remind a reader of a Tom Jones or even a Dickensian "boy-to-man" tale. The incidents and settings can prompt similar comparisons. At various points I found myself thinking of Orson Welles' observation, "Happy endings depend on stopping the story before it's over." Sad endings, too. Change and alteration by surroundings, events and self are part of the existentialist notion, and the ending is actually always a kind of receding destination.

By the way, though psychology was in the writer's vernacular in 1915, Maugham steers clear, it seems, in favor of philosophy and religion.

The settings here grow in interest, I think - the boyhood years, especially in school, are by now such well-trod territory that they hold less attraction. The German and Paris years are entertaining, the Hospital years pretty fascinating. The secondary characters all bring something to the color and the development of the story - the development of the man, too.

" ... he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered reals and explored unknown lands."

Mr. Maugham's magnum opus unquestionably lived up to the hype. For many years I had started this book, only to be dissuaded by its overwhelming somberness and what seemed to be a bleak outlook on life. But that's just how it starts out!! The rest of the novel is as dynamic and filled with as much depth and soul as "Great Expectations" or Joyce's "Portrait." A bildungsroman like no other.

The story follows the hapless Phillip Carey, as he makes his way through adolescence and young adulthood. He learns from an early age that life is brimming with tragedy: orphanned and club-footed, he is taken in by his vicar uncle and later attends a religious boarding school. These formative years, in which he experiences constant disappointment, have an irrevocable impact on his spirituality and worldview; God no longer exists for him and he's forced to search for another meaning to life. He travels through Europe, jumping from one occupation to another, ever indecisive about his calling. The novel carries through all his ups and downs, from the stimulation of Paris to the stagnation of London, from painter to healer.

He experiences one existential crisis after another, as he goes through all his trials and tribulations. An especially bitter one for him is his dalliance with the femme fatale who becomes an object of obsession for him. Mildred is an odious human being, embodying just about every negative quality imaginable, and she manipulates poor Phillip every chance she gets. Never has unrequited love been quite so embraced by anyone other than Phillip. But it is only through her pettiness and selfishness that Phillip can realize who he is.

As we see in the course of the novel, the world is a rich tapestry, and we must discover its meaning for ourselves. Phillip eventually realizes what this is, and it is this realization that allows him to endure the pain and emotional turmoil of it. It is truly an ordeal at times. But he learns to embrace another possibility, one pregnant with hope, a counterpoint to tragedy and misfortune.

Besides Phillip and Mildred, the novel is rife with Dickensian characters, from the lovable Thorpe Athelny to the histrionic Miss Wilkinson to the poetic Cronshaw and the diffuse Hayward. Maugham's heart was always in the nineteenth century, as Gore Vidal notes. The influence of that era's literature and art is unmistakeable in every facet of his writing and the characters, in particular. They are a heart-warming cast that play off of Phillip's idiosyncracies and enrich all of his life experiences.

This novel has my unreserved praise. Here is the bildungsroman at its finest, a novel that rightfully deserves its place in the canon. It exceeded all my expectations and left me craving more. What every book should be.

Anyone who's ever taken themselves too seriously will recognize a kindred soul in Philip Carey of W. Somerset Maughum's Of Human Bondage. We meet him when he's still a child and very recently orphaned, going from a relatively privileged life with his mother to a much sparser one with his aunt and uncle, the latter of whom is a pastor in a small town in the British countryside. Scared a bit by his that uncle, he escapes into books and becomes a voracious reader. The next year, he's sent to boarding school, where his disability (he has a clubfoot, which gives him a limp), combined with his shyness and sensitivity, makes for a generally unhappy experience. He becomes passionately religious and plans on a career in the clergy, but when his prayers for a cure for his foot are unanswered, he loses both his faith and his direction in life.

He goes to Germany briefly, comes back to England and tries being an accountant, which doesn't take, then to France to study art, then back to England again, where he decides to settle down and study medicine, which was his father's career. But all his indecision has driven down his available resources so he'll need to live very modestly until he's a doctor and can start earning a living...and then he meets Mildred. Despite Philip's self-pity, he's had a few relationships with women at this point, and is actually in a good one, when he meets the waitress his friend has a crush on. Philip becomes obsessed with her, despite her obvious disinterest in him and lack of social skills. His situation eventually becomes desperate, but with some kindness and a bit of luck, it resolves itself.

I refuse to stop reading a book before I finish it. This does backfire on me sometimes, but other times it pays off to stick with a book, and this was one of those instances. About halfway through it, I was sick of Philip and his moping and the garbage way he treated women and his refusal to understand that as wonderful as self-discovery is, there's no money in it. The whole book is his story of growing up, and he was so grating that I wasn't at all invested in him or rooting for him to succeed. But then he starts to mature, puts his head down and works, uses his own hard-earned life lessons and experiences to be a good doctor to the people he sees. And by the end of it, when he does find some measure of happiness and chooses to do the harder, better thing, I couldn't have been happier for him if he were an actual person and a friend at that.

I've always been a character-over-plot type of reader, and this book is all the former...the only major outside event is the Boer War, which happens late in the book and while it does have an impact on Philip, it's pretty far removed from the central themes of the coming-of-age story. In some ways, it suffers for its fixation on Philip...like I said above, he can be a hard character to really sympathize with, particularly early on. But the payoff in the back half is real, and seeing him grow as a person is really rewarding. This is a good book, a very good one even, but it may not be the right book for every reader. If you're looking for a dynamic plot, or lack the patience for/interest in a long-term character study, this probably isn't going to be something you enjoy. If you've read what I've written and are intrigued, though, I highly suggest you get ahold of it...it'll be a rewarding experience!

Wanted to read "Of Human Bondage" because I had read several other Maugham books, but not this, his best-known. Apparently it is in the public domain, and hasn't attracted enough scholarly interest for there to be a good critical edition. So I had to slug through a bunch of free or cheap kindle editions, looking for the best reader. Most of them had the same problems that most free ebooks have. I really don't like ebooks that have paragraphs that are not indented and have a blank line between them: it's just too different from a normal printed book. That's mostly why I picked the digireads edition.

The good: Typography was acceptable, price was cheap, not too many typos.

The bad: First, the introduction by Jean Asta is a total throwaway, nothing but a perfunctory hack job. I hope they didn't pay her much for it. Second, there was something odd about the text size and pagination. It has page numbers, but only 412 pages. This is basically a 700-800 page book. And it was necessary to set the type size larger than normal to make it display properly on the kindle. Then, when you go to the dictionary, the type looks enormous! So that was weird, but tolerable.

I could go on to talk about the book itself, but I think I'll stop here. I'll say this much: it's different from his others, and it's extremely good. It does that tricky British thing of expressing emotions in a highly reserved way that still manages to get you crying now and then. Highly recommended.

3 stars for the digireads edition, a strong 5 stars for the book itself.