Of Human Bondage, Volume 1: Is It Really His Foot That Holds Philip Back?

Volume 11 of Minumsa's World Literature series is the first volume of W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage. Its hero, Philip Carey, is born with a club foot, and from the first chapters he is mocked for it. So it is easy to read the "bondage" of the title as that foot. But the further the book goes, the more things hold Philip, and eventually something appears that grips him far harder than his foot. By the end of this guide you will be able to point, chapter by chapter, to the four things that hold Philip in the first half of the novel, and you will know how to read it beside a philosophy book that bears the same title.

What kind of book is it?

The Minumsa edition is translated by Song Mu; volume 1 came out in August 1998 and volume 2 in September of the same year. Volume 1 runs to 588 pages and holds the author's foreword and the text; volume 2 ends with the translator's commentary and a chronology of Maugham's life. The original novel appeared in 1915 and has 122 chapters. The publisher's page does not say at which chapter volume 1 ends, so this guide follows the chapter numbers of the English original and covers only scenes from the first half.

The publisher presents the novel as a Bildungsroman, a story of a young man waking up to life and society, and points out that Maugham chose an ordinary person rather than an exceptional one as his hero. According to the publisher's author note, Maugham lost his mother at eight and his father at ten, went to school in Canterbury under an uncle's care and graduated from a medical school in London. In the novel Philip, too, loses his mother at nine, grows up in the house of his uncle, a vicar, and later enters a medical school in London. That is why the publisher calls it an autobiographical novel.

READING NOTES

The places Philip Carey passes through

The first half of the novel's 122 chapters

1. 01

   Childhood · ch. 1–21

   • London, 1885: he loses his mother at nine.
   • His uncle's vicarage; school at Tercanbury
2. 02

   Heidelberg · ch. 22–31

   • Sent to learn German
   • He gives up his faith (ch. 28).
3. 03

   A London office, then Paris · ch. 36–52

   • Leaves his articles to study painting
   • Cronshaw, Fanny Price, the master Foinet
4. 04

   St Luke's medical school, London · ch. 54–

   • His father's old medical school
   • He meets Mildred, a tea-shop waitress (ch. 55).

Chapter numbers follow the English original · Minumsa does not list where volume 1 ends

A book with the same title

The English title, Of Human Bondage, is the same phrase as the English title of Part IV of Spinoza's Ethics. In R. H. M. Elwes's translation, Part IV is headed "Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions", and its preface opens with a definition. Spinoza names bondage the human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions: a man who is a prey to his emotions is not his own master but lies at the mercy of fortune, so that he is often compelled, while seeing what is better for him, to follow what is worse.

Spinoza appears inside the novel, too. In chapter 53 Philip, reading philosophy hungrily, is filled with awe by Spinoza and feels he has never before met a mind so noble and so unapproachable. Keep that definition in mind while reading, and it becomes clear what Philip escapes and what catches hold of him again.

Four things that hold Philip

The club foot. At boarding school the boys play at imitating the way Philip runs. In chapter 14 he holds on to the Bible's promise that faith can move mountains, and on the night before he goes back to school he kneels naked in his cold room and prays for his foot to be healed. The next morning it is unchanged. His uncle tells him that means he did not have enough faith; Philip prays again, and gives up before Easter.

Faith. In Heidelberg, where he has been sent to learn German, Philip stops believing in God. In chapter 28 he feels the fear of hell-fire lift, and in the novel's words, "He was his own master at last." It is the exact opposite of Spinoza's definition. Maugham qualifies the relief: out of old habit Philip thanks God that he no longer believes in Him, and long afterwards a sudden terror of hell still breaks him into a sweat.

READING NOTES

Four things that hold Philip

A bondage that moves from the body to the heart

1. 01

   The club foot

   • Prayer does not heal it (ch. 14).
   • Teasing, and other people's stares
2. 02

   Faith

   • The fear of hell
   • After it: "his own master at last" (ch. 28)
3. 03

   The wish to be a painter

   • Fanny Price's death (ch. 48)
   • Foinet: never more than mediocre (ch. 51)
4. 04

   Passion

   • Unhappy with Mildred, unhappy away from her
   • He despises himself and cannot stop (ch. 57–59).

Plot checked against the English text on Project Gutenberg

The wish to be a painter. Philip gives up his articles at a London accountant's office and studies painting in Paris. There Fanny Price, a poor fellow student with a fierce belief in her own talent, takes her life, her rent unpaid (chapter 48). In chapter 51 his master, Foinet, looks at Philip's work and tells him he has some manual dexterity but no talent, and will never be more than mediocre. Soon afterwards news of his aunt's death calls him back to England, and Philip gives up painting and decides to enter the medical school his father attended.

Passion. Philip manages, one way or another, to put the first three down. The fourth is different. Back in London at medical school, he meets Mildred, a waitress in a tea shop, in chapter 55. She is rude to customers, and at first Philip even dislikes her name as pretentious. Yet in chapter 57 he realises that he is not happy with her, but unhappy away from her. In chapter 59 he despises her affectations and her looks one by one, and loathes himself for loving her all the same. A man who sees what is better and follows what is worse: this is exactly the state Spinoza called bondage.

How to split a long novel

At more than 1,100 pages across two volumes, the novel is long to read in one go. Its first half divides naturally where Philip changes place: childhood in London and Blackstable (chapters 1–21), Heidelberg (22–31), Blackstable and the London accountant's office (32–38), Paris (39–52), and medical school in London (from 54). At the end of each stretch, write one line on what Philip put down there and what he picked up, and you will see the same problem come back in a new shape in the next stretch.

Scenes to fold down while reading

The first volume has several scenes that return later. The prayer of chapter 14 is where Philip's habit begins of explaining failure as "my faith was not enough". Read the relief of chapter 28 side by side with the Mildred chapters, and you can watch one man, within one book, become his own master and then lose that place again.

Mark chapter 45 too. In a café in Paris Philip asks what the meaning of life is, and the poet Cronshaw only tells him to go and look at the Persian carpets in the Cluny museum: one day the answer will come to him. Philip complains that he is being cryptic, and the novel holds the answer back for a long time. Remember, when you close volume 1, that this question is still open, and you will not miss the scenes in volume 2 where Philip comes back to the carpet.

READING NOTES

Three places to mark while reading

Scenes set up early that return later

• Ch. 14 · Faith that moves mountains

  • Philip prays for his foot to be healed.
  • He learns to call failure a lack of faith.

• Ch. 28 · His own master

  • The relief of the day he drops God
  • Read it beside Spinoza's preface to Part IV.

• Ch. 45 · The Persian carpet

  • Cronshaw's riddle when asked life's meaning
  • The answer is held back for later.

Reading guide · chapter numbers follow the English original

While reading volume 1, write one line per chapter: what is holding Philip now, and does it come from outside him or from within? The foot, the faith and the painter's dream are settled one after another, and you can see that what stays in the last box is a passion Philip grips himself and cannot let go.