Lifting the Veils in William Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil

Abstract: Novels with love as a theme often deal with a passionate or forbidden love. In 1925 William Somerset Maugham wrote a different version of the typical love story we have read so many times. It tells a story about a married couple who never really shares the same love for each other. Maugham mentions that he was inspired by Dante when he wrote The Painted Veil. Indeed, he uses different sources of inspirations, such as poems from Shelley and Goldsmith. The aim of this essay is to investigate what these intertextual references bring to the novel and what their functions are. The method I use is looking at the different references used by Maugham and stating their purpose and significance to the novel. The result of my investigation illustrates how the use of Shelley’s theme of veiling signifies hiding, as well as not wanting to see the truth, while Goldsmith’s poem shows the true relationship between the married couple and how corrupted society is. Maugham also lets Dante’s Purgatorio demonstrate how Kitty, the wife, gets the chance to change her life for the better.