I have read the novel of human bondage and it seems to mee the novel is bigoted against the lower-classes. The main character is a very educated medical student in London with a club foot. He meets a cockney waitress who is extremely mean and rude and treats him very badly. Does anyone else think this book portrays the lower-classes in a bigoted way?
2006-08-31 12:53:22 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
Maugham isn't bigoted; learning to love Mildred is, for Phillip, akin to him accepting his handicap (his foot), along with all the suffering and humiliation it has caused him his entire life. His relationship with this noxious person helps him understand that his life experience has given him strength of character.
Mildred is obnoxious but her traits are important to the overall narrative and theme of bondage. Philip has observed the bondage of others to fame, desire etc, and displays contempt for it, yet even though Mildred is repulsive to him, she is strangely alluring as well. She attracts Philip because she embodies his unresolved childhood psychological trauma (orphaned and deformed) and, in a way, a means of his freedom from it.
2006-09-01 01:30:43 · answer #1 · answered by teresa c 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Class differences were much more important back then. Just because the characters in the book act in certain ways doesn't mean that Maugham is bigoted
If you want a better idea about what Maugham thinks of the classes, read THE RAZOR'S EDGE.
2006-08-31 20:01:00 · answer #2 · answered by Ranto 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋