Somerset Maugham & Racism in Fiction
Lately, I’ve been reading a collection of Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I’m reading Maugham after a very, very long time, and I don’t remember enjoying his work, especially the short stories, this much when I was younger. For one thing, I was struck by the clarity which his descriptions produce. Reading them, it is possible to immediately see the South-east Asian countryside setting he describes or an elderly connoisseur of art fallen on hard times or a colonial service official lording it over his minions. Perhaps I am much more impressed by them now that I am trying my hand at short stories more often, and description and setting are things I seem to struggle with. But that’s not really what I want to talk about here.
What really startled me was the casualness with which racial differences and assumptions of superiority and inferiority are presented. Many of the stories are set in Britain’s then existing empire - parts of the Polynesian Islands, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. Often, the main character is a colonial service man, or a planter or businessman looking to make a fortune in the colonies. In story after story after story, the natives are weak, ineffectual, timid, yet vengeful, cunning and capable of using devious means to achieve their ends. It is not just that the natives are this way, the (white) narrator or protagonists take great pains to remind us that they cannot help being this way. That is the way of their race, after all. Where the natives are presented in a more kindly light, it is as simple children who need the strong hand of the white administrator to guide them. They know little what is good for them, and would be better off trusting the white man’s knowledge.
While admiring the language and craft of the stories, the modern reader finds it very difficult to glide over these generalisations, so easily presented. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to make of them. I could think of three different scenarios.
The first is that these are stories set in the colonial era, where this was likely to be the mindset of most people. As such, Maugham may not have subscribed to them himself, but was faithful to the dominant views of the time. His characters simply think and speak the way most people of the time would have. In this view, there is a clear-cut line between the author and his narratives. In a sense, it becomes easier to enjoy the stories as just stories.
The second is that Maugham himself is likely to have subscribed to the general view of the white people of the time, which is that they were fundamentally different from and superior to other races. The stories lend some support to this - story after story repeats the racial distinction theory in such detail that it is difficult to imagine the author having a very different view. Few characters question this distinction or act in a manner to discredit it even a little. In general though, I’m not a big fan of mixing up an author with what his characters say and do. Further, in some stories, Maugham takes a good poke at other distinctions, such as differences of class. In one story, first class passengers on a cruise liner face the weighty question of whether they should allow second class passengers to participate at a dance. Clearly Maugham makes the episode, and by inference, the distinctions behind it, seem absurd. Why he doesn’t ever do this in the case of race - I don’t know. Does it imply that he identified with the views of his characters?
The third way of looking at it is that the question is not whether Maugham himself was a racist or not. The age in which he lived subscribed to these views to such an extent that it allowed him to portray one character after another in a manner which we find shocking today, but would not then have been anything out of the ordinary. But - Maugham did not live in the early 1800s, he lived from 1874 to 1965. Which means that most of his writing would have been done in the period between 1900 and 1940. Was the early 20th century that primitive in its thought? The question I would then be interested in is, were other contemporary novelists adopting the same tone ? If yes, at what point of time really did it become incorrect to talk of racial distinctions in this manner? Note, I’m not talking about the point when people have stopped generalising about race and behaviour, just the point when people were no longer comfortable doing it in such a blatant manner!
Perhaps other readers interested in literature and its relationship with caste/race/class can thow some light on this.
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I’ve been meaning to comment on this post for days … still surprised I’m the first one.
You ask: Was the early 20th century that primitive in its thought?.. The question I would then be interested in is, were other contemporary novelists adopting the same tone ? If yes, at what point of time really did it become incorrect to talk of racial distinctions in this manner?
The short answer is yes, yes and it depends on the person.
The long answer (or the reason why I’ve dragged my feet on commenting) is: the rise of the PC culture is incredibly recent. In fact, looking back at pop culture, I’d say it wasn’t until the 80s that people really began to watch what they said.
I’m no sociologist but my own theory is that this is when people of color began to be seen more and more prominently in western pop culture be it in the arts or in sports and with that prominence, came the trappings of politeness. Maybe record execs didn’t really think African Americans were their equals but they would have to be really stupid if they went about calling the talent the N-word because there were bound to be execs at other companies who’d mind their tongues. So I’d guess economics was a primary force.
If you watch the TV show Mad Men, you can see how downright dismal the attitudes were to people of color, Jews, women and LGBTs even at the start of the 60s. Remember segregation didn’t end until the mid-60s. And it wasn’t a very popular decision well into the 70s. And the last race riots I remember in the US took place in the 90s in LA, if I’m not mistaken.
Maugham, about whom I feel the same way as you do i.e. he improves beyond recognition when you read him as an adult, is a different case because he was an Englishman and one of the last of a dying breed (the upper class gentleman) in his upbringing if not by inclination.
Not only was Maugham brought up as a superior white man, he was brought up as a superior Englishman as well - far above the hoi polloi of his own countrymen. It would have been remarkable if he didn’t hold the common views of the time re: race.
But there were exceptions to this general rule of what we would today call racism. Gerald Durrell’s father, for example, who used to work in India took a stand against the attitudes of the time, and Durrell himself writes a passage in Garden of the Gods (I think) in which an Indian guest refers to himself as a “nigger” and his mother protests that that is not a “nice thing to say” but the Indian says “I’m the only nigger here and I don’t mind” at which an English officer pats him on the back and commends him by saying “Spoken like a white man, sir!”
People of olden times - who knows what made them tick?
The one thing I do know is that we simply can’t apply present day morals to their work because we tend to oversimplify. However, once in a while you read things like Grendel (which writes back to Beowulf) or The Wide Sargasso Sea (which writes back to Jane Eyre) and you wonder…
Compared to a well-travelled person, of any color, I’m sure the sheltered natives would have seemed just as they were described.
I mean, just over on the rape topic we have been talking about how some Indian women are sheltered beyond belief. That would then make grown adult women appear to be childlike and weak. So if this is the case for some people even in 2008, then what to speak of 50, 100, 200 years ago?
Amrita, thank you for that long and very useful commentary. I guess I expect too much from people of a completely different generation. As you say, money plays a big role - however, which comes first? Would people of colour/ other oppressed groups be allowed to play a major role in economic activities (i.e. money for themselves, not slaving for others), before people look at them as equal members of society? Or - is economic participation possible only after social integration? It is an interesting topic, isn’t it?
HP - your comment is, sorry to say, but way off the mark. The contrast mentioned here is not between “a well-travelled person” and “sheltered natives”. It is about how an entire country/group is viewed in a particular way. While individual authors like Somerset Maugham may have been well travelled, I’m sure the bulk of white people living back in England, were fairly uneducated, till say a 100 odd years ago, and had very little exposure to other countries/people. Still, it is unlikely that Maugham would have seen them as fundamentally different people. Of course, he would have seen them as of a different class, but the distinctions attributed to race are simply fabulous!
Besides, it is wrong to say that all “natives” were sheltered. Please do read on the great maritime cultures of South India, for e.g. This does not of course mean that every individual was aware, educated or prosperous - but I suppose the same holds true for many Western countries too, until recently. That didn’t stop white people from projecting their superiority…(including over cultures such as the Egyptian, which they knew had contributed tremendously to art and learning)
Yeah but the uneducated of England would not have been reading books like this one. The book was written for the educated classes, who probably had more exposure to the world even if only through books.
Anyway, I think about myself in India sometimes and I have also made comments like, “childlike”. This is because the majority of Indians that I had met came off as very well, childlike.
Once a degree holding bank manager asked me if in my country people drink water.
Once an English medium educated New Delhi teenager who worked at MacDonald’s, had a boyfriend and hung out at all the hotspots asked me if it’s true that in New York City there are huge dinasaurs that come and trample buildings and people. She had seen a sci-fi film.
OK and these are just two educated city people examples. Don’t even get me started on the small towns.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s too far off to assume that 100 years ago the people would have been even more childlike and even wilder questions may have been asked of the author. However, since it was so long ago and they were largely uneducated, they can be excused.
I don’t know what excuse can be offered up for educated city folk in the 21st century.
Hi there, just came across your blog from Ramsu’s and have been enjoying reading your posts.
I havent read Somerset Maugham since my late teens but remember liking his short stories and novels a lot. Back then, I did not pick up on the racist implications in his writing but I am not surprised by your observations, considering the age he wrote in. A lot of writers from those days who wrote about protagonists traveling to and living in distant lands had this attitude come through in their writings. There was Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, a lot of Rudyard Kipling’s writing (his racism was so blatant that even my oblivious teenage self was disgusted), Conrad’s Lord Jim, a lot of Edgar Wallace’s writing, to cite a few writers. And this wasnt confined to writers of the “Raj”, either. I was surprised to detect shades of blatant racism even in Mark Twain’s writing - particularly his easy acceptance of slavery and his treatment of Afro-American characters in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn. (He was a fair bit older than Maugham, of course, but was writing in the days of the American Civil War)
As to when did people learn to be more politically correct, like Amrita I can also offer only conjecture. I think the two World Wars between them helped reduce the economic power of the colonists and triggered the upward economic movement of the “child-like” “colored” people. Once the former “inferior” races were recognised as a rich and growing market, political correctness had to follow!
HP - the issue is not about certain people asking dumb questions; its about extrapolating things to a whole country and believing that people believe or act in a certain way because of their race, rather than acknowledging that social, economic, cultural as well as personal traits can all play a role. On the basis of your interactions, if you believe that indians as a rule are childish - I find that as silly as Indians who meet a few divorced Americans and conclude that the West is immoral. (and its not about whom maugham was writing the book for - that’s immaterial).
Bollyviewer - thanks for visiting and for your comment. Conrad, I do remember from college - heart of darkness - and do remember thinking, my god, how he exoticises the whole thing - you hardly get a sense of the country or people beyond its “savagery”. I think the economic aspect, which both you and Amrita have pointed out is important in inducing political correctness…
Also, am glad you put that “colored” in quotes - somehow I find this Western term “people of colour” very strange - it’s as though white is default and everyone else is lumped together as some “other”. Unfortunately, its used so often that I find it slipping into my vocabulary these days!
“On the basis of your interactions, if you believe that indians as a rule are childish - I find that as silly as Indians who meet a few divorced Americans and conclude that the West is immoral.”
Well, they would be correct to conclude that many people (the majority I think) in America are in fact divorced!
If in one’s mind “divorce” is an immoral thing, than they would be correct in saying the majority of divorced Americans are indeed immoral, according to their definition of immoral.
Divorce is not immoral in my opinion, however, I would be lying if I said most Americans that I know are not divorced, because they ARE divorced. And I have no problem with divorced people.
Anyway, it’s not just a few Indians Apu, I have hundreds of stories of such type of questions being posed to me by Indians.
The environmentalist who even travelled to Japan to speak at an International Symposium on Environmental Issues asked me that how come, if sex is open and free in my country, such a big deal was made over President Clinton having sex with Monica.
Than the New Delhi businessman asking me, “so, in your country men can have sex with anyone they want, how did you protect yourself”…
The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
No, I don’t equate this ignorance to anything in their DNA. I equate it to ignorance and lack of logical thinking skills.
50 and more years ago “race” was considered a real thing. Recently it has been theorized to be a social construct only. In old books it appears they used the word “race” in places where we today would use “culture”.
“No, I don’t equate this ignorance to anything in their DNA. I equate it to ignorance and lack of logical thinking skills”
- HP, this is the crux of it. Having lived all my life in India, I feel confident in disagreeing with you on whether Indians as a whole are illogical or not. However, where we agree is in that traits in a bunch of people are not a given/something embedden in DNA.
I’m not saying all Indian are illogical. I have not met all Indians and data on such would be impossible to obtain.
However, what I’m saying is that given the demographic that I was exposed to (the area and basic cultural background of persons of that area), either have not been exposed to very many things/concepts OR have been exposed yet still think in a childlike, reductionist manner.
HP - Well that’s true of any population. I live In NYC with tons of other Indians and I still have people coming up to me, wanting to have deep discussions on chakras, commending me on my newly learned English, asking me if I’d ever been bitten by a snake and things of that nature.
Btw, that story about the McDonalds girl is absolutely fantastic
Hi,
I am an indian and i ‘ve not felt offended when i read Someret Maugham.Considering his times when he wrote I may not think it’s a great crime as to condemn him. Even Raymond Chandlar used the word Nigger in many of his stories. But Somersset Maugham is a master of short story teller next only to Gye De Moupssant. His “Before the party” is one of the best short I have ever read. I really wondered why he was not n awarded noble prize.
Mohan - thank you for the comment. The point wasn’ however whether one should condemn him or not. I was more interested in exploring how the change in literature came about in depicting people of other countries..