Of Human Bondage

Rating:
Summary: Great if you can hold out till the middle
Review: Don't ask me why I read OF HUMAN BONDAGE. I guess it looked lonely on the shelf and I wanted to see what it was all about, and to my surprise this was actually an entertaining, yet semi-tough book to endure till around page 350.
Early on W.S.M sets up Philip's life: where he started, and the underlying motivations and convictions that caused him to make the tragic decisions he ultimately does. In a nutshell, Philip is this orphan who is raised by his uncle and aunt a Vicar 60 miles from London. Philip is very unhappy, yet very impressionable at the same time. As Philips grows older we see how he will react to Religion, Management, Friends, the arts and his loves. It is not till Philip meets Mildred and begins to date her, that Maugham gives Philip free reign of the novel. It is from this point that Maugham makes Philip a pathetic predicable fool for love. I personally know many people, both male and female who went through exactly what Philip endured during the beginning of his relationship. Maugham's dialogue was so raw that I was cringing when they argued.
It is in my opinion that many people who wrote prior reviews, had a hard time with this book because either they were on the receiving or giving end of this very neurotic love affair themselves and it instilled in them the same feelings of anguish.
But ultimately what I got from this novel, was that life is not perfect. There are alot of directions we could take life, and sometimes we have to do what we want to do, even if our piers are dead set against it. Yet we must throw caution into the wind and see if our decisions are the right choice. We must learn from our mistakes, we must get lost before we can find ourselves.

Rating:
Summary: Marvelous; the quintessential bildungsroman
Review: I find Maugham to be the finest of storytellers. I have read all of his short stories and many of his novels and I never cease to be amazed at his prowess at being unabashedly entertaining in all his works.

This novel is life contained between two book covers. As Maugham traces the early childhoood, teenage years, and young adulthoood of an English everyman at the end of the 19th century, we are privy to the entire range of human emotions -- jealousy, anger, greed, unrequited love and longing, fear, self-pity, passion, desire, hope .... the petty emotions as well as those that overwhelm us and, ultimately, make us slaves to the smallness of our own lives (hence the book's title).

As Maugham writes of his protagonist's stint in medical school in turn-of-the-century London, he unwittingly could be describing his own novel: "It was manifold and carious; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe, it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you saw it; it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children and of men for women...There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life."

Indeed.

Rating:
Summary: The Real main character
Review: Mildred is the real main character of the novel. She is a woman who cannot stand any weakness in a man. To her weakness is repulsive. Mildred's is a way of female feeling that is very real and can be very dangerous for the woman herself and those who care about her. Mildred is unable to appreciate the fact that not really caring is the single quality of mind that most makes a person, male or female, appear strong. Mildred runs to men who do not care about her. And it destroys her life. Mildred is an expression of a very real kind of woman: a hatred for weakness, a love of excitement and fun, needing to float above meaning in words she utters or hears, repulsed by meaning, able to endure only words which are hollow. It is said that a sense of purpose is for most people a great need. Mildred wants with all her longing never to need a reason for being. (This is perhaps the most intoxicating of all human longings.) Mildred wants to keep it that way: not needing any purpose. She wants talk to be bar talk-- words which are spoken but are not reflected upon, which hide her from the real and permit her to float above deep emotions as above everyday mundane issues. Such a woman can be very exciting to a man, but exceedingly dangerous to love. The Mildreds of the world long to be dominated, but to fight the domination. To deeply love such a woman is very possible; to dominate her is very possible, but both to love and dominate her is exceedingly difficult. This is a Human Bondage.