Of Human Bondage

Of Human Bondage is a famous novel written by W. Somerset Maugham, published in 1915.

This novel is a coming-of-age story of a young man who is an orphan with deformity. It is said this book is autobiographical.

Philip Carey is born with a clubfoot and loses his parents soon. He grows up as an orphan and is brought up by his uncle and the wife. He struggles with his deformity through his life. In the divinity school, he is treated with a gibe by the classmates and lose his religious faith. He goes to Germany to study, then works as an apprentice for an accountant. But he quits the job only for a year and goes to Paris to study art. He finds a lack of talent for art after all, and returns to London. He decides to study to become a doctor like his father.

One day, he meets Mildred who is a waitress for a cafe, and loves her. Mildred is a calculating woman and only uses him to advantage. His love for her is unrequired and self-destructive.

People who have corporal defect struggle with the inferior complex or a sense of humiliation, and often feel hurt. They, only themselves, know these feeling. That kind of experience affects the personality forming of them. Philip struggles with his foot problem and is sensitive to curious glances. On the other hand, he too is imperfect, sometimes he is laughably selfish himself.

There are five women in this story. In Germany, Philip loves Ms. Wilkinson. He kisses her daringly. Once she shows her love to him, he rids himself of her easily because she is not young (she was 37 years old). In Paris, Fanny Price who is an art student is kind to him and loves him. But she is ugly, dowdy and no talent. He couldn't love her and she commits suicide from poverty. In London, he almost loses himself at the mercy of love for Mildred. Philip is cured by Norah's motherly love, who is a novelist after he is abandoned from Mildred. But he sees Mildred again, he abandons Norah. When he lose all money because of failed investment and can't continue to study medicine, he hopes his uncle's death because of the uncle's bequest. His uncle dies and Philip qualified as a doctor, he notices his love to Sally who is young and kind.

The theme of this book is talked by Cronshaw who is a old poet Philip met in Paris. Life has no meaning and no purpose. There is only a pattern of life that each people makes by themselves, just like a Persian rug. What meaning is there in wealthy, honor, works of art or poem, and memory people leave?


This title is taken from the Forth Part of Spinoza's Ethics.

Of Human Bondage, or of the strength of the Affects

The impotence of man to govern or restrain the affects I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master, but is mastered by fortune, in whose power he is, so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he sees the better before him.


In this story, Philip was tied down in his inferior complex by deformity of his foot, or unrequired love for Mildred, and lost himself. When he liberates himself from such bondages, he can live his new life.