comes to understand the fakery, pretentiousness, and self-deception that characterizes most of this artistic activity. For the untalented, the life is brutal and destructive. He watches talentless friends like Fanny Price and Miguel Ajuria waste their lives in futile, feverish quest of the impossible. It is Fanny’s suicide that finally ends his Paris pilgrimage.

Philip does not regret his Paris sojourn. He knows that he has had important experiences and has learned some valuable lessons; he is not disappointed to discover that he is without real ability. Even the truly talented artist is in bondage to his discipline and must commit himself completely if he is to realize that talent. Philip has no taste for such total dedication; he would rather live than create. Art study in Paris has taught him how to look at things in a new way, and that is, for him, a sufficient reward.

If Philip’s experience with Miss Wilkinson gave him a taste of the reality of sex and love, it did not stifle his need for them. Upon his return from Paris, Philip begins one of the strangest and most intense romantic involvements in modern literature. There is nothing about Mildred Rogers that should logically attract Philip. She is physically unattractive, crude, stupid, and abrasive. Indeed, it is her very insolence that seems initially to interest him and, once attracted, he becomes obsessed with her. His knowledge of who Mildred is, and even his deliberate rejection of her, has no effect whatsoever on his passion—a fact that Philip himself clearly recognizes. Given this powerful, irrational need, her continuing arrogance and abuse only excite his desire, and the more unavailable she seems, the more intense it becomes.

Mildred is, finally, like a fever that must be endured until it runs its course. Maugham suggests that such is the nature of romantic love. Once the fever is dissipated, Philip is cured, and Mildred becomes simply an object of charity to him—at least that is Philip’s belief. With the situation reversed, however, his adamant rejections of her sexuality must have at least some elements of subconscious revenge, and it is hard to believe that Philip does not, at some level, enjoy her final rage. In any event, the affair with Mildred has two lasting effects: Philip gains control of his passions and, at the same time, comes to understand the limits of rationality in the face of ungovernable emotions.

The last third of the novel has disappointed many readers. Especially disconcerting is the apparent contradiction between the sophisticated bleakness of Philip’s final philosophical conclusion and the domestic felicity he expects to attain as a result of his marriage to a simple country girl. A number of events bring Philip to his final intellectual position. Following the end of his affair with Mildred, he meets Thorpe Athelney and his family, endures a short period of economic deprivation, and learns of the meaningless death of two old friends, Cronshaw and Hayward. These circumstances bring him face-to-face with the last bondage. Having emancipated himself from environmental, physical, cultural, religious, aesthetic, and emotional restraints, one final bond remains: Philip’s need to understand the meaning of life. Out of his anguished rumination Philip gains a new and final insight: “suddenly the answer occurred to him. . . . Life had no meaning. . . . Life was insignificant and death without consequence.”

Instead of depressing Philip, this revelation, reminiscent of his earlier conversion from Christianity, excites him: “For the first time he was utterly free . . . he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.” To many, such an insight looks dismal, but to Philip—and Maugham—this view is exhilarating because it frees a person to make the most of oneself and one’s talents in purely human terms without needing to measure him- or herself against impossible transcendental absolutes.

It is in this context that Philip’s marriage to Sally must be examined. Her father, Thorpe Athelney, is the only truly independent person whom Philip meets during his lifetime. Athelney is free of the religious, cultural, social, and economic pressures that distorted Philip’s early environment. On the other hand, he has no need to play any of the false artistic or rebel roles that Philip encountered during his Paris sojourn. Athelney follows no false gods and pursues no impossible dreams. He is, in short, his own man who has lived his life completely in accordance with his own needs, instincts, and desires. The results have been personal satisfaction and happiness.

Because Philip accepts life as it is, he decides to settle for the one kind of happiness and existential meaning that he has seen demonstrated in action, not theory. Sally Athelney may not excite his passion or intellect, but he feels a “loving kindness” toward her and, to him, that promises a more satisfying life than to continue his search for nonexistent absolutes.

Therefore, the resolution of the novel is not inconsistent and can be justified on an intellectual level. These final scenes, however, remain artistically unsatisfying. Maugham himself, in his book of reminiscences, The Summing Up (1938), admitted that his final vision of domestic contentment was the one experience in the novel that he did not know personally. “Turning my wishes into fiction,” he wrote, “I drew a picture of the marriage I should like to make. Readers on the whole have found it the least satisfactory part of my book.” Maugham, who was gay, did not find personal felicity in marriage, but he did remain true to the ideas articulated in Of Human Bondage. In talking about the importance of the novel to his life, he stated, “It was the kind of effort that one can make once in a lifetime. I put everything into it, everything I knew, everything I experienced.”