A Beautiful Life

When Waddington talks about “the richest in beauty is the beautiful life,” he is not talking about how people look on the outside. He is saying that people who live an authentic, happy, fulfilling life are the beautiful people. The nuns, who live in poverty, and who risk dying, are the people who are the most beautiful. They are helping people, fighting against the “chaos” of life.

This relates to the title of The Painted Veil because it affirms that what matters is not the beautiful decorations someone might have on the outside, what matters is whether they are an honorable, good, and internally beautiful person. Kitty seemed to have learned some of this in China, especially when she found fulfillment in working with the orphans and nuns. But I’m not sure how long this lesson will really last, since she was unable to keep that sense of decency and honor for long once she returned to Hong Kong.

Arrogant Colonizers

The quotation by Wole Soyinka that "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness" seems like a reasonable statement.

Some of the characters, like Kitty and Deputy Commissioner Waddington certainly seem to be arrogant. Waddington, while he knows a lot about Mei-tan-fu, drinks a lot, likes to eat (except salad), and he seems to spend a lot of time with Kitty, rather than the community. I could see him thinking that he is open and accommodating, but he seems more condescending about the local people. Kitty seems like she is developing some understanding and emotions after her visit to the nuns and her awakening to beauty. She wants to help the nuns, but it seems to be about making up for her actions, not true selflessness. 

All in all, Soyinka’s statement seems potentially accurate, that Maugham is arrogantly using the idea of the purity and differentness of the colonialial setting to lead to changes in the colonizer, rather than caring about the colonized’s perspective.