"The Veil": After reading this book, you don't want to cheat on the disillusionment of finding a good husband, the hasty flash marriage is another trap to find yourself and move towards independence

Some people say that reading Maugham's novels is like tickling and scratching just right.

Some people say that after watching Maugham's "The Veil", you will not want to cheat.

"The Veil" is about the beautiful woman Katie, who has been educated by her mother since she was a child, and strives to choose a good husband to achieve a class leap. Picking and choosing, picking old, picking narrow range, she decided to marry Walter, a bacteriologist she did not love, and followed him to Hong Kong.

After meeting the handsome assistant Secretary Charlie, Katie fell in love with him at first sight.

Walter, who loves Katie deeply, learns of her infidelity and gives two choices: "If he is willing to marry you in two weeks, I agree to divorce you; if he does not want to divorce you, you will follow me to the cholera epidemic area." ”

An excited Katie went to see Charlie hopefully, but Charlie told her explicitly, "I can't divorce my wife." ”

Desperate, Katie followed Walter to the cholera-stricken area, where she saw another world of life and death, about faith, and after some emotional and intellectual struggles, she established a new, independent personal mind and found her own path to happiness.

Looking back at the misfortune of the first half of her life, Katie understands that everything was caused by her mother.

<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > disillusionment with finding a good husband</h1>

Katie's mother, Mrs. Justin, has spent her life pinning her life on others.

The first is the husband: she marries a lawyer and focuses on nurturing him to be successful.

In order to create more opportunities, she arranged various banquets, large and small, and met the wives of various big people. She believes that getting to know people can help her husband rise. As she grew older, her husband was not able to see the wives in the circle as she wished, slowly becoming younger women, and she became more and more anxious.

If he could become an official lawyer, he might have more face, and she asked him to apply. Her husband has long been accustomed to obedience, he does not love this family, but is forced by responsibility and habit to take care of this family.

After the lawyer's husband was recruited as a royal lawyer, due to his status, private cases became less, his income was reduced, and his position was delayed.

Mrs. Justin could not rely on her husband to improve her social status, and she hit her daughter with the idea. Katie is the eldest daughter and is beautiful, while her sister is relatively ordinary. Mrs. Justin was devoted to raising Katie, and the family's resources were almost all tilted toward her, and her sister made many sacrifices as a result.

From the age of 16, Mrs. Justin took Katie to and from the ball, met many young men, and chose a marriage partner from whom the status and economy were satisfactory. Katie was circling among the men.

But years later, until she was 25 years old, Katie was still in the middle of the book. The younger sister is 7 years younger than her, meets a potential stock who will inherit her father's title of jazz, and is ready to get married.

Katie, who had high hopes, had been picking for many years, and there were fewer and fewer people to choose, and the conditions were getting worse and worse. Her mother was disappointed in her and wished she could marry out immediately. Mrs. Justin's teaching her about the conditions for choosing a mate and instilling in her views and values of marriage and love also deeply influenced her.

It can be said that when she was young, Katie did not have her own life, she relied on her father to ensure survival, by the mother to direct her own pursuit, how marriage should choose, how to live her life in the future: find a qualified man, marry and have children with him, is the meaning of a woman's life; if you can rely on the beauty of your youth, find an excellent man, then the glory brought by marriage is also the highest achievement of women; if this marriage is tall enough, it is also the achievement of the mother's family.

<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > hasty flash marriage is another trap</h1>

Katie, who has not achieved her goal, has lost her value, she is beautiful, but beauty will gradually pass with age. The failed Katie hopes to escape her mother and the opportunity to become a bridesmaid for her sister.

Walter appeared before her, and she didn't love him, but he could take her to another place, away from everything that was not going well now.

After marriage, Katie followed Walter to Hong Kong. Three months later, she discovered that it was the wrong choice: Walter's status as a bacteriologist had done them little substantial benefit: it was an obscure post and less highly regarded. She hated everything about him, including his looks, his height, even his love for her, which was the reason she despised him.

At a banquet, she met Charlie and fell in love with his handsomeness and charming charm. The two often meet in a narrow, dirty antique shop.

Walter knew about their relationship and struggled inside, he loved her deeply, but she hurt him without hesitation.

Walter arranges for Katie to travel with him to Mae Tam Province, which is ravaged by cholera. The doctors who treated cholera there had died of an infection, and it was very dangerous for them to go there at this moment. Katie is terrified, and she fears that Walter wants to take her to her death to get revenge for her cheating. At the same time, she was happy, because Walter said that if Charlie could divorce you now for your sake, and marry you within two weeks of the divorce, then I would divorce you to complete you.

Katie finds Charlie, only to see the ugly face beneath Charlie's veil: he can't get a divorce, and she's just his plaything.

Katie's love suddenly became ridiculous, and when she returned home, Walter had ordered the maid to pack her luggage. Katie knew at this time that Walter had already known the result, and he had just asked her to see Charlie for herself.

Katie, with a heart of death, followed Walter to Mae Tam Province.

The marriage Katie chose was not love. Marriages without love were pale, and love outside of marriage brought color to her life. She wanted to replace Walter with Charlie and live a different married life. Katie likes Charlie, who is more handsome and more decent in career, status, and finances.

But reality is a slap in the face, and Katie doesn't do Charlie any good.

For Katie, no matter who she chooses, there is no essential difference: changing her life through men, through marriage, is passive and undignified. When others want you, you are precious, and when others do not want you, you are despicable.

<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > find yourself and move toward independence</h1>

Katie was unlucky compared to her mother, who suffered more and suffered more blows, and she was also lucky. After seeing Charlie's true face, the journey of life and death in Mae Tam Province helped her find the meaning of living and the secret of peace of mind.

On the way to Mae Tam Province, she remembered Charlie and still felt that she loved him very much, that she was injured, and that the process of healing alone was painful.

The second one who helped her break her illusions was Assistant Waddington. Waddington used to know Charlie very well, and Waddington told Katie that Charlie was just a person who was very good on the outside, but in fact, he was not a very good person on the inside, his wife helped him a lot, and he knew that he had affairs on the outside, and said that the women who fell in love with him were "second-rate goods".

Katie had different feelings about the same person from someone else's point of view, and she realized that liking this not-so-good Charlie was not glorious.

In Mae Tam Province, Katie met the abbot of the monastery and the nuns, each of whom praised Walter. On this trip, she saw a different side of Walter. Walter loves small children, he is gentle when he faces children; he focuses on studying the cholera virus, giving hope to those who suffer disasters here; he is full of love for the sick...

Katie knows Walter more objectively, in the past because she did not love, she carried a lot of subjective factors, and now, she is proud of his excellence. But at the same time, she is more convinced that she does not love him and will never fall in love with him.

The people they met in Meitan Province all seemed to have their own pursuits, not trapped in the world, they seemed to have chosen a path that was not easy to take, but they were more independent and happier than themselves. The abbots and nuns who left their hometowns to pursue their faith; the Manchu women who left their families to follow Weeddington in their insistence on love, each of them seemed to be hiding a secret. That secret is the true meaning of the happiness that Katie is struggling to find.

Later Walter died of cholera, and before dying, in order to make him reduce the torment of his soul, she confessed her mistake in his ear, expressed apologies, and begged for his forgiveness. He replied, "It was the dog that died." ”

There is an explanation in the book: a person saved a dog, the dog bit people, everyone thought that people would die, but in the end it was the dog that died.

Walter confessed that he had brought Katie to this dangerous place just to get revenge, and he had thought he was human. It's just that Katie didn't expect to get personal growth here, she has jumped out of love and got more. Walter was still trapped in emotional pain, even losing his life, and when he was dying, he realized that he was the dog.

When Katie discovers she is pregnant in Mae Tam Province, she tells Walter truthfully that she is not sure who the child is. Walter used himself to test the virus in a near-suicidal way.

Katie wished she was pregnant with a daughter: "When I look back at what kind of girl I am, I hate myself very much, but there is nothing I can do about it. I want to raise my daughter and make her a free, self-reliant person. I brought her into this world, loved her, and raised her, not so that she would sleep with any man in the future and attach this life to him from then on. ”

Maybe that was what she wanted to say to her mother, who had died. After the death of his mother, his father was finally appointed judge, and the mother did not receive the honor of success with her husband until her death.