Text/Zhou Xiaoqi
"I know you're stupid, frivolous, and empty-minded, but I love you. I know your intentions, your ideals, your snobbery, your vulgarity, but I love you. I know you're a second-rate, but I love you. ”
This is what Maugham said to Kitty in his famous love novel The Veil, through Walter's mouth.
The novel "The Veil" has been mixed in critic circles, some people think it is amazing, some people think it is made of clichés. But in any case, it was special to Maugham because it was the first novel of his life that took several years.
"The Veil" tells the story of the aging heroine Kitty, in order to maintain her face in front of her sister Doris, and hurriedly marries a bacteriologist she does not love. After getting married, Kitty cheated on her, and was retaliated by her husband Walter, who took her to the place where cholera was prevalent, and as a result, her husband died of cholera, but Kitty was redeemed and reborn.
There are always some people who grow up in stupid and superficial environments and learn to heal stupidity with stupidity.
The heroine, Kitty, is such a woman.
Her mother was stupid and superficial, so she placed the hope of marrying into the rich on the beautiful eldest daughter Kitty, and she didn't even bother to think about the little daughter who was not very good-looking.
Under the guidance of her mother, Kitty's main task in her early 20s was to participate in various dances, meet various young talents with status, try to choose a person among whom her mother and herself were satisfied, and marry herself.
Kitty's luck was not very good, and after a few years, she still had no favorite object, and as she grew older, her mother's impatience became more and more obvious.
It happened that at this time, the sister with the average appearance had found a satisfactory marriage partner and was about to enter the palace of marriage, and Kitty, who had always been leading everywhere, naturally refused to bow to the wind, and she decided to get married before her sister.
Just to save so-called face, she married the reclusive bacteriologist Walter Finn without any in-depth knowledge.
Walter loves Kitty and loves her especially after marriage, but Kitty doesn't love Walter. In Kitty's discerning eye, Walter is full of problems, and she can't love him at all.
Disgusted with her husband Walter, Kitty falls in love with Charlie Townsend, the tall, handsome, and charismatic Hong Kong secretary. So, Kitty cheated.
Obviously, marrying Walter is Kitty's own choice, but she wants to punish Walter for cheating, as if she doesn't love him and blames him for not being outstanding.
She even sneered at Walter after being caught cheating: "If a man doesn't have something in him that makes a woman fall in love with him, it's his own fault, not hers." ”
Kitty's stupidity lies in blaming others for her mistakes and foolishly thinking that she can make up for them in an affair.
Of course, her resourceful and calm husband, Walter, is about to teach her the heaviest lesson of her life, which is about the fate of life and death.
In the face of the test of reality, the veil of human nature will eventually be lifted, and everything will eventually be exposed.
One coincidental afternoon, When Kitty is dating her lover, Charlie, Walter just happens to be home to deliver books to his wife, and the infidelity is exposed.
Walter, who had always been calm, neither rushed into the room to beat up Charlie, nor did he immediately show any clues in front of Kitty. However, a premeditated plot of revenge was breeding in his mind.
Soon, Walter was carrying out his plan.
He finds Kitty and asks her if she would like to follow him to Mae Tam Province, where cholera is rife, and Kitty refuses, but if Kitty doesn't go, Walter will ruin Charlie.
Kitty approached Charlie to discuss it, much to her dismay.
She originally thought that Charlie loved her deeply and was willing to divorce herself, but in front of her career and women, Charlie's true face was exposed, and in order to save her career, he urged Kitty to follow Walter to Mae Tam Province, although Kitty repeatedly stressed that he would die there, Charlie still tried to persuade.
Disappointed in the face of love, Kitty, with a disheartened heart, followed her husband Walter to Mae Tam Province.
Along the way, her mood was mixed, and she even had a premonition that she would die here.
It has to be said that Walter is a person with a heavy heart, in order to retaliate against his wife's cheating, he will not hesitate to cut open the ugliness of human nature to her, so that her fantasy of love will be destroyed in front of reality.
In addition, she must be sent to a strange plague land with the fear of cholera, and her life and death depend on luck.
However, Walter is also a poor person, and when he discovers the preciousness of his beloved Kitty, he leaves her forever.
Circumstances are truly magical, especially when it evokes hope for a person's life and brings her salvation and rebirth.
Kitty, who had just arrived in Mae Tam Province, was panicked, but she soon adapted.
Under the guidance of deputy commissioner Weedington, Kitty gradually adapted to the rhythm of life in Mae Tam Province. Her husband, Walter, was always busy, constantly doing research on germs, and bored, she later joined the convent and took care of the poor orphans with the abbot and the nuns.
In the process of chatting with Weeddington and the abbot, Kitty blended into this life, and although the fear of cholera still lingered in her heart, she gradually found herself in the process of helping others.
As more and more people die, So does Walter's job. Sometimes she didn't even know when he would come back and when he would leave, all she knew was that he looked very tired.
Fate always loves to joke with people, and in an accidental fainting, the convent priestess tells Kitty that she is pregnant.
Walter especially expected the child to be his own, but Kitty didn't give him a definite answer.
After learning that Kitty was pregnant, Walter urged Kitty to leave Mae Tam Mansion and return to her mother.
At this time, Walter did not have the hatred he had for Kitty when he first came to Mae Tam Province, and even he wanted her to leave this dangerous place.
At the end of the day, he still loves her.
But Kitty insisted on staying, still working as usual.
Late one night, Kitty, caught up in a dream, did not wait for Walter to come home, but waited for the news of Walter's death. He had to say goodbye to Kitty because of the plague.
After burying Walter, Kitty left Mae Tam Province. Unexpectedly, she met Charlie again.
In view of her husband's great contributions and sacrifices, Kitty received exceptional favors from Mrs. Charlie, who urged her to stay at his house. But in the end, Kitty chose to leave and go to the Bahamas with her father.
After experiencing many things, Kitty, who was once stupid and frivolous, finally completed her own redemption and growth in a complex experience, and achieved rebirth.
There are not many characters in the whole novel "Veil", and the story is simple and clear. But the heroine Kitty's upbringing is only the tip of the novel's iceberg.
Through this novel, in addition to sharply exposing the greed, jealousy, desire, selfishness, etc. of human nature, Maugham also shows the true meaning of love, marriage, and the Tao through Kitty's experience.
Each of us is always easy to look at problems with a veil, but we do not know that when we lift this veil, what we glimpse is the truth of life.
Kitty didn't know Walter and thought he was mediocre, but in fact he was calm and witty and knowledgeable. Kitty's lover, Charlie, even though he knows he is selfish, still wears a filter to present himself with a handsome image of the other party. Charlie's cheating became the norm, and under the connivance of his wife, because of his handsome appearance and prominent status, he gave each cheating object a very positive image; and the knowledgeable, astute walter, because of his short stature and not good at expressing himself, was disliked by the people around him and his wife.
In life, most of us are superficial, and we all look at people with the eyes of "respecting people first and respecting people later". As everyone knows, it is this superficial cognition that makes us miss out on people who are really worth treating well.
No matter what kind of choice you make, you must not be blinded by the eighth above the iceberg, but also try to explore the seven-eighths of the ice. Because in the process of searching, we will not only know more about others, but also more about ourselves.
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