Of Human Bondage Maugham, W. Somerset - R. Ellis Roberts (review date September 1915)
R. Ellis Roberts (review date September 1915)
SOURCE: "The Amorist," in The Bookman, London, Vol. XLVIII, No. 288, September, 1915, pp. 171-72.
[In the following favorable review, Roberts comments on the futility of Philip Carey's relationships with women and calls the novel a clever "portrait of the weak egoist."]
It was a right instinct which made Mr. Maugham give the greatest space to Mildred, among all the women who touched and influenced his hero's life [in Of Human Bondage]. For Philip Carey, introspective, indolent, shiftless, opinionated, club-footed, is a man doomed to be loved. He is not doomed to evoke great passion, nor is it his destiny to love lightly or deeply any one woman: he is simply one of those men for whom women, in whom affection is stronger than passion, will always be prepared to suffer. Yet he himself has, mentally rather than emotionally, the capacity for feeling passion: and he does, midway in his...
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