W. Somerset Maugham
Published: 2013-04-17
Total Pages: 320
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"Love" wrote George Meredith in "The Tragic Comedians": 'May be celestial fire before it enters the system of mortals. It will then take the character of its place of abode.' W. Somerset Maugham's story is about a girl, young, well-born, imaginative, romantic and clever with "full red lips almost passionately sensual" marries a commonplace Philistine with broad shoulders and the heartiness and intolerant joviality of the prosperous farmer. The man is not a gentleman. There is nothing between the two except the fierce sexual attraction which she feels for him. "Love to her was a burning fire, a flame that absorbed the rest of life; love to him was a convenient and necessary institution of Providence, a matter about which there was as little need for excitement as about the ordering of a suit of clothes." This is the tragedy of Mrs. Craddock. Disillusion comes, and with it a feeling of contempt, akin to hatred, of the man to whom she is oppressed by, which alternates with fleeting fits of passionate desire. His strong body still appeals to her after she has learnt to hate his placid mind and heartless soul.There is a rugged strength about this work, a faithfulness to life, which make us almost forgive a certain coarseness of conception and expression that seems inevitable with the modern realist. The artistic finish with the crude trick by which the author, conveniently kills off Mr. Craddock is quite in keeping with the treatment of the earlier portions of the book. The neurotic elements in Mrs. Craddock's temperament are cleverly suggested, and in Miss Ley, an outspoken old maid with a taste for epigrams and Continental travels, the author has successfully created wonderful characters who will live in the memory of readers long after the book is finished.