VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION
GRADUATION PAPER
THE IMAGE OF WOMEN IN WILLIAM SOMERSET
MAUGHAM’S SHORT STORIES
Supervisor:Đỗ Thu Hương
Student:Nguyễn Mỹ Linh
Course: QH2010.F1.E1
HÀ NỘI - 2014
ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH
KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP
HÌNH ẢNH NGƯỜI PHỤ NỮ TRONG TRUYỆN NGẮN
CỦA WILLIAM SOMMERSET MAUGHAM
Giáoviênhướngdẫn:Đỗ Thu Hương
Sinhviên:Nguyễn Mỹ Linh
Khóa: QH2010.F1.E1
HÀ NỘI - 2014
ACCEPTANCE
I hereby state that I: Nguyen My Linh from 10.E1, being a candidate for the degree
of Bachelor of Arts ( TEFL) accept the requirements of the university relating to the
retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the
library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research, in accordance with
the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of
the paper.
Signature
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest
paid author during the 1930s. He devoted his whole life to literature with a legacy of
numerous works. Maugham achieved success such fields as novels, plays and short
stories. The history of English literature dignified him as the eminent writer of the
novel. In addition, with famous author such as James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling,
Katherine Mansfield and so on, Maugham was recognized as the short-story statue in
the early twentieth century in English literature. These short stories were considered as
epitome of traditional art writing. Maugham’s short stories: The luncheon, The escape,
Mr know all, The letter, Rain etc. were always on the anthology of typical works in the
world. In his contemporary time, the talent of Maugham was not highly appreciated by
literary critics, he even had to deal with negative comments and sarcastic remarks
because he followed traditional writing while English literature at that time expected a
new trend of writing style. However, when “literature fever” passed by, the true values
still existed with time. The talent and value of Maugham’s works were gradually
recognized and attracted generations of readers in the world and gained the high
appraisement of the critics. So far, there have been many worthy studies focusing on
Maugham’s novels. However, there is a fact existing in literature approaches is that
readers and critics mainly pay attention to famous novels but show little concern
about short stories- the genre that brings the success to this English writer. Several
anthropology books and websites introduce Maugham’s works; however, they do not
absolutely approach and deeply evaluate the values of his writing. Maugham’s short
stories seem to be the potential land for researchers to explore.
Today, there have been studies about Maugham’s short stories in several aspects
including time and space reflected in his works, human nature and so on. Most articles
by critics about Maugham’s short stories are collected in the book “The legacy of
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critics”. For instance, Yue conducted a study on W. Somerset Maugham and his use of
the Chinese landscape as a means to forward his views on this issue. His papers
pointed out the significance of landscape depiction in Maugham narratives and
considered its relevance to the understanding of Maugham as an anti-imperialist

legacy, however, the researcher only explores the five main short stories including:
The luncheon, Louise, The letter, The judgment seat and The promise
5. Research methodology
This thesis will implement methods of interpreting and comparing or contrasting
primary sources. The researcher will also use biographical and historical materials in
order to understand the social settings mentioned by critics. In addition, analyzing and
evaluating the viewpoints of the critics are also another way for me to conduct this
research on Maugham’s short stories. By studying the comments of the critics, the
researcher will grasp their viewpoints and examine whether they are reliable opinions
or just their subjective ones.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Critics and related studies on Maugham’s work
According to Murphy (p.379), throughout a career which lasted more than five
decades of commercial and artistic success, raging debate revolved about the quality of
W. Somerset Maugham’s work and the nature of his character. Several famous critics
cavalierly dismissed Maugham’s masterpieces. Edmund Wilson, for instance, once
commented, “I have never been able to convince myself that he was anything but
second-rate,” while others, among them Carl and Mark Van Doren and Christopher
Isherwood, have respected Maugham and highly appreciated Maugham’s work. The
debate has become difficult to understand by the strict control which the well-known
author exerted over his personal and professional relations. The critic and biographer
Robert Calder has proposed, “Willie’s Maugham, the man, was an enigma: W.
Somerset Maugham, the literary artists, remains a mystery.” Calder (1989) makes a
big effort to settle these questions by finding a logical connection among all of
Maugham’s works to his main themes. Despite being hindered by a common tendency
among Maugham’s critics to firmly link the writer’s work to biography, Calder’s
important study is totally different. It conveys almost necessary information about
Maugham, which seems to be the most complete and unified opus. However,
combinations of biographical and New Critical approaches that make Calder’s work

what he does)”. It seems that he gives the reader the camera to record the “visual
impression” but what he observes tend to be much better and more vivid than others.
Because of the faithfulness in reflecting reality, “Maugham casts a cold eye on
himself as observer and his character”, Reddy (2008, p.26). He is basically opposed to
Romanticism and makes himself and his experience to be representative. Closer to
Defoe than Wordsworth, he controls the role of the self-observer in order to prevent it
from becoming over indulgent. Maugham makes himself the civil and cordial
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converser he failed often enough to be in life. In writing, he succeeded in dealing with
his stutter and his unbridled passions. He compelled himself to speak for, and to
observe common humanity. The reader can understand his social intelligence, not his
peculiar desires. This is at once a valuable thing and legal responsibility, particularly
in Maugham’s travel writing. Maugham specializes, in his illustration in “On a
Chinese Screen”, on finding “types,” although types belong to the author’s subject to
specific pressures. Maugham is not stressed on in uniqueness of character but he wants
to show the nature of the human being to be illustrated on certain conditions.
In addition to common themes P. Reddy (2008) finds out about Maugham’s work,
Askew (2012) explores that a plenty of Maugham’s plays describe love and marriage
as “suffocating”. It implies that passion is degraded by marriage relationship and is
liberated from the traditional ideas about social and sexual behavior. For Maugham
employs metaphor to express the change from safe, traditional and obviously boring
marriage to unorthodox, liberating passion by means of elopement, flight and travel.
“The Moon and Sixpence” portrays the character Charles Strickland who runs away
from his family and peruses his passion of art and bohemian lifestyle. Meanwhile,
Philip Carey in “Of Human Bondage” coming from the respectable middle class
chooses to travel as a way to escape from the reality.
It seems that the critics mainly focus on the biography of Maugham and his well-
known novels but his unique short-stories have not been investigated deeply.
However, the critics contribute to guiding the researcher to conduct a research a
common themes in Maugham’s work including human nature and adulterous affair as

the wives had to fulfill their duty and offered some heirs. This attitude became more
common end even King Edward had affairs with different women, not only the noble
but actresses and others as well.
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1.2. Women in the English society in the early twenties
According to Mate (1999, p.98), the turn of the twentieth century brought great
changes to women’s lives in almost aspects from home to the public. These changes
involved as active movement for equal rights, a form of new female organizations as
well as an increasing number of women participating in art. Due to the influences of
World War I which led to social shifts, women had more chances to work in the office
instead of just staying at home as housewives before, as well as taking part in political
situations which were dominated by men in the past.
The end of the Victoria era witnessed the incredible change in the suffrage
movement in Britain, especially in England. Women fought for justice in the society
and achieving political equality as men. In contrast to what were depicted for the
women with the delicate, demure, feeble images, the suffragists had militant spirit
which was shown by their expression of protest. As a result, English women gained
the right to vote which marked significant event in the history of feminism. World War
I played a very important part in the recognition of women’s ability as well as the new
opportunities for women in the workplace. It is due to the fact that men had to enroll in
World War I, male employees decreased dramatically; therefore women were given
more job opportunities. Several jobs were considered as female work including
nursing, telephone operation, teaching and so on. Besides, women also actively took
part in the social and political life in England. The turn of the twentieth century
witnessed a new image of women compared to ideas of Victoria era. Women usually
had short hair and wore skirts. Fashion partly expressed the renovation in the
perception of commerce at that time. It seemed that women overcame the barriers and
broke social rules and lived for themselves. They even smoked, danced and did many
things that women in Victoria era were not permitted.
2. The portrayal of women in English literature

characters were described to be more openly sexual rather than the possession of
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someone’s desire. The portrayal of women in English literature was marked with
different nuances thanks to the rise of the novels in the eighteenth century with famous
masterpieces. Female characters in Dickens have been portrayed as stereotypes such as
bad-temped unpleasant women, the foolish wives or beautiful and sexually attractive
women who brought men more trouble than happiness. Besides, women were the
central characters in Brontë sisters’ novels. In “Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë portrayed
a woman who could take control of her own destiny, which was very different from
the female characters in Jane Austen’s works.
The turn of the new era witnessed a change in the style and content of women's
writing, as well as an increase in the depiction of feminine images and themes in
literature. The dawn of the new century witnessed considerable changes in the writing
style and plot about women as well as an increase in the portrayal of female images
and themes in literature. Male writers like D. H. Lawrence and W. D. Howells focused
on issues relating to sexuality and the extramarital political affairs between men and
women. In contrast, female authors such as Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson,
and May Sinclair and so on explored themes involving the ordinary lives of women
and the difficulties they had to endure to define their distinctive identity in changing
people’s awareness of the world.
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CHAPTER 3: WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM AND HIS
SHORT STORIES
1. William Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham was born on January 25th , 1874 in Paris. He is a well-
known English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose works are
recognized by plain style, cosmopolitan settings, and profound understanding of
human nature. Maugham had lost both his parents when he was ten years old and then
he was fostered by an uncle and educated at King’s School, Canterbury. After
spending a year at Heidelberg, he attended St. Thomas’ medical school, London, and

trend lasting from the 1880s to 1940s that described detailed factors in reality to
propose that social conditions, heredity, and environment exerted strong effects on
shaping human personality. Literary naturalism movement was opposite to
Romanticism and Surrealism which tended to use romantic and supernatural elements.
Naturalism was a result of literary realism, a remarkable literary trend in Western
countries in mid- nineteenth. Naturalistic authors were influenced by Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution. Therefore, these writers often supposed that one's heredity and
social environment had important influences on determining one's character. While
realism pursues to describe subjects and matters in life as they really are, naturalism
also makes effort to find out the scientific motives that lead to actions and
phenomenon. Readers can see that naturalistic works often contain uncivilized or
degraded matter; for instance, Émile Zola's works mentioned sexuality and
unavoidable pessimism frankly. Naturalistic writers depicted the social problems such
as poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a
result, naturalistic authors were usually condemned for going too deeply into human
vices and miseries.
It was dues to the fact that Realism and Naturism were reflected clearly in
Maugham’s works so his writing style gained different judgments. There were
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different opinions about this British author. Many readers claimed him as a great story-
teller while; others just considered him as financially playwright rather than a serious
writer. Maugham’s plays were performed widely and his books were published
repeatedly and translated into different languages. He was highly appreciated by
various English writers such as R. Aldington and J. Aldridge. Somerset Maugham was
described by Cyril Connolly as “ the greatest living short-story writer.” People
considered him as “ Maupassant of England”.
In 1959, Maugham stopped writing in his last travelling around the world. He spent
his last years in Nice (France) and died there on December the 15
th
1965.

age of forty, she married a boy of twenty–one and they had a happy marriage.
However, after ten years living together, Peter, her husband fell in love with a very
beautiful young woman. Elizabeth made a strange decision that she would file a
divorce from Peter to set him be free from their marriage.
1.3. Louise
The story is about the main character, Louise who always pretends to be weak and
has serious problems with her heart. She cheated on everyone except the narrator
because he knew her very so well, thus she hated him very much. Louise was then a
frail, delicate girl with large and melancholy eyes. Her father and mother worshipped
her with an anxious adoration, for some illness, scarlet fever had left her with a weak
heart and she had to take the greatest care of herself. When Tom Maitland proposed to
her they were dismayed, for they were convinced that she was much too delicate for
the strenuous state of marriage. But they were not too well off and Tom Maitland was
rich. He promised to do everything in the world for Louise and finally they entrusted
her to him as a sacred charge. Louise outlived her husband. He caught his death of
cold one day when they were sailing and Louise needed all the rugs there were to keep
her warm. He left her a comfortable fortune and a daughter. Louise was inconsolable.
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It was wonderful that she managed to survive the shock. However, a year after Tom’s
death she allowed George Hobhouse to lead her to the altar. He was a fine, upstanding
fellow and he was not at all badly off. For the next two or three years Louise managed,
notwithstanding her weak heart, to go beautifully dressed to all the most lively parties,
to gamble very heavily, to dance and even to flirt with tall slim young men. But
George Hobhouse did not have the stamina of Louise’s first husband and he had to
brace himself now and then with a stiff drink for his day’s work as Louise’s second
husband. It is possible that the habit would have grown on him, which Louise did not
like at all, but very fortunately (for her) the war broke out. He rejoined his regiment
and three months later was killed. After that event, in order to distract her mind she
turned her villa at Monte Carlo into a hospital for convalescent officers. Her friends
told her that she would never survive the strain. When the war came to an end Louise

he annihilates them.
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CHAPTER 4: DEVELOPMENT
1. The portrayal of women in Maugham’s short stories
1.1. Selfishness
According to Ayn Rand (p.53), “To be selfish is to be motivated by concern for
one’s self-interest and the benefit of other men is not his primary purpose or goal; his
own benefit is his primary purpose and the conscious goal directing his actions”.
Although the female characters in Maugham short stories express their selfishness in
different circumstances, they share one common feature of placing their own interest
higher than anything. To achieve their egocentric purposes, they dare to conduct
actions that are against moral and humanistic values. All the three female characters in
the three short stories, “The luncheon”, “The letter” and “Louise” are reflected as
selfish women who deserve to be criticized seriously because of their merciless
actions.
“The luncheon” creates a situation in which people lose their dignity because of
material self-interest. Maugham builds a gluttonous female character who always says
that “I never eat anything for luncheon,” but then she eats too much. Apart from
satisfying her appetite, she does not care about her acquaintance’s financial plight at
all. She orders expensive dishes to satisfy her hearty eating and drinking habit. When
being invited for the lunch, she makes use of the last coin of her acquaintance, a very
poor writer who “had eighty francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of the month”. The
ridiculous feature reflected in this story is that the gluttony is covered carefully by
elegant appearance of attentive woman reader. Eating is a common demand of every
human being. However, when it is beyond the limitation, it becomes preposterous and
deserves to be criticized seriously. The purpose of the luncheon is to discuss literature
but this female guest turns it into a chance to satisfy her gluttony. She eats a lot of
dishes but ridiculously she still advises the writer to follow her example, “and never
eat more than one thing for luncheon”. This story is told with the purpose of
highlighting the plight of the inviter and showing the selfishness of the invited. She is

her to murder because she feels that she cannot put up with being abandoned, “Oh, I
hated him then. I tore him limb from limb. I said everything I could to wound him. I
insulted him”. Until her shameful actions are revealed, she finds all the ways to take
advantage of her husband. She does not care about his pains at all but the only thing
she wants is to escape punishment. All her merciless actions originate from moral
degradation to revenge. Leslie loves herself too much that she cannot withstand the
fact that her lover wants to keep away from her. Her motive for committing murder is
that she wants to protect the benefit of owning the two men, her husband and her lover.
Leslie betrays her kind husband and has affair with another guy but she cannot endure
being betrayed. This shows the selfish nature of a woman who only cares about her
own interest. If she really loves her paramour profoundly, she never acts wickedly like
that. Readers can compare Leslie’s action with Elizabeth Vermont in “The promise”.
Both of them have to face up with the fact that their men no longer love them and fall
in love with another woman. Although Elizabeth loves her husband deeply, she
accepts to file divorce and lets him be with his mistress. True affection means that
people can sacrifice their own happiness for who they love. Leslie claims with the
lawyer that she loves her lover, however, she just considers him as her possession.
Once her benefit is threatened, she disregards morality and uses cunning tricks to
conserve her own advantages. Leslie is a crafty woman who draws up an insidious
plan to destroy her lover’s reputation and drive him into horrible death. She kills him
to give vent to anger and takes him far away from his mistress. A human life cannot be
decided by any individuals so her cruel action is against moral and humanistic values.
Leslie murders him without concerning about the serious consequences but only to
satisfy her selfishness that leads to the death of her lover. To sum up, this woman
deserves severe punishment because of her sinful actions.
1.2. Hypocrisy
As stated by Ayn Rand (p.100), hypocrisy is understood as not “practicing what
you preach”, “saying one thing and doing another” and is used to point out who
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