16) The character sketch of charles strickland

One of the best novels by William Somerset Maugham can be considered the novel “The Moon and Sixpence”, which describes the fate of a strange creative personality and a great artist at the same time Charles Strickland, the prototype of a famous artist of 19^th century Paul Gaughen. His talent and genius were recognized only after his death and his work became his posthumous monument commemorating the artist’s extravagance and greatness at the same time. His character, views on life and his own way of world perception were so extraordinary and difficult to comprehend as most of his works.

Strickland didn’t study painting profoundly, he didn’t even know how to apply one or another technique, but he had something inside him that made him express himself and create. At first there was nothing out of the ordinary in him, he looked commonplace, just "good, dull, honest, plain man", like many others. But suddenly everything changes; he feels a new strong desire to paint, to place the pictures from his inner world on canvas. Strickland breaks all that connects him with his past ordinary life, abandons his job and wife, and goes to Paris where he devotes himself to painting.

As a really talented man he needs very little and lives in great poverty. Like all beginners he is not a success but he dreams of painting something extraordinary, something that will attract people's attention, appeal to their feelings and emotions. In fact, most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. And Strickland is one of them. He 'works on a canvas with all the force of his violent personality" and is never satisfied with what he creates. When he was creating his masterpieces people considered him to be a poor madman pretended to be an artist. Nobody even thought of the possibility that this untidy ragged man, always hungry and penniless, one day would be known worldwide as a genius of art.

Being concentrated on his art, Strickland is indifferent to love, friendship and kindness. He is convinced that love is luxury he can't afford. Love is by its nature "absorbing, it takes the lover out of himself", and the painter is obsessed by the passion of expressing his emotions on canvas not in his real life. Strickland shocks by his indifference—it doesn't touch him that people around are suffering. He is not interesting in the life of his children and wife; he ruins his friend’s family life; he shows neither respect nor gratitude to the people who help or take care of him. Strickland's rudeness, impoliteness, abrupt straightforwardness and denial of moral principles alienate and cause interest at the same time. He doesn't care of anybody or anything except art.

The culmination of his creative development is his final masterpiece, which he creates in Tahiti far away from the civilization being almost blind. His body suffers greatly from the disease, but he is really happy and is willing to die as he has finally achieved what he wanted. "He made the world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed it". The artist puts the whole expression of himself, painting the walls of the poor wooden house in which he lives. But he isn't just painting; he is creating a new magic world, one look at which takes the visitor's breath away. The terrible disease took the artist’s life, but his soul will always be alive, living in his pictures.

Половина вопроса 17) WOMEN CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL «THE MOON AND SIXPENCE».

Blanche Stroeve is one of the most complicated characters in the novel.

Dirk Stroeve was very much in love with his wife and he could hardly take his eyes off her. It was not possible to tell if she loved him though, but it was possible that her reserve concealed a very deep feeling. She was not the ravishing creature that his love-sick fancy saw, but she had a grave comeliness.

She was rather tall and her figure was beautiful. Her hair, brown and abundant, was plainly done, her face was very pale, and her features were good without being distinguished. She had quiet gray eyes. She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty. The author did not suppose that she was clever or could ever be amusing, but there was something in her grave intentness which excited his interest.

There was something mysterious in her reverse. Though she was English, he could not exactly place her, and it was not obvious from what rank in society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or how she had lived before her marriage. She was very silent, but when she spoke it was with a pleasant voice, and her manners were natural.

Even when the author grew more intimate with Blanche Stroeve, she remained always rather silent, and gave him the impression that she was concealing something, which he took for natural reverse.

Blanche’s relationship with Strickland is of great importance when disclosing her character. She seemed to hate him at first because of his bad manners and complete indifference to other people although as it later turned out this explanation covered some deeper feelings. When her husband asked her if he could bring Strickland to their house, she violently resented the possibility. “I was surprised to see how moved she was. She went on laying the table, but her hands trembled. She closed her eyes for a moment, and I thought she was going to faint. I was a little impatient with her; I had not suspected that she was so neurotic a woman.”

She was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's desire to bring Strickland into the studio; she was frightened of him, though she knew not why; she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way the horror which she felt for him was transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely troubled her.

Surprisingly, Blanche proved herself not only a capable, but a devoted nurse. She insisted on doing her share of the offices needful to the sick. She did not speak to him much, but she was quick to forestall his wants. For a fortnight it was necessary that someone should stay with him all night, and she took turns at watching with her husband.

Stroeve was delighted with her. But he was a little puzzled by the behavior of Blanche and Strickland towards one another.

The author noticed on one occasion that Strickland and Blanche were exchanging strange glances. He saw that Strickland’s eyes were fixed on Blanche Stroeve, and there was in them a curious irony. Feeling their gaze, she raised her own, and for a moment they stared at one another.

When Dirk finally asked Strickland to leave his studio, his wife expressed her desire to go with Strickland. "`I'm going with Strickland, Dirk,' she said. `I can't live with you anymore.' Although her words were shocking to Dirk, they were not really unexpected as he saw a change in his wife’s behavior even before she knew it. But it seemed so improbable to him that he thought it was merely jealousy.

He found they didn't want him -- not Strickland, he didn't care if I was there or not, but Blanche. She shuddered when he went to kiss her.

Blanche Stroeve's action might have been the result of a physical appeal. As the author puts it: I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenseless against passion.

Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction. She hated Strickland because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed. The daily intimacy with the sick man moved her strangely.

Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind and petulant, considerate and thoughtless. She was desire.

But it may be that she was merely bored with her husband and went to Strickland out of a callous curiosity.

Strickland was at once too great and too small for love, and losing his interest in Blanche, having satisfied his lust and being fed up with her feminine tricks, he eventually left her.

"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account." Her life with Dirk was impossible and she decided to commit suicide.

Her life story explained a lot in her previous behavior. It appeared that she was a governess in the family of some Roman prince, and the son of the house seduced her. She thought he was going to marry her. They turned her out into the street neck and crop. She was going to have a baby, and she tried to commit suicide. Stroeve found her and married her.

That was perhaps the cause of the peculiar quality of Dirk's love for his wife. I quote: I had noticed in it something more than passion. I remembered also how I had always fancied that her reserve concealed I knew not what; but now I saw in it more than the desire to hide a shameful secret. Her tranquility was like the sullen calm that broods over an island which has been swept by a hurricane. Her cheerfulness was the cheerfulness of despair.

She was a passionate woman and had always strived for love, but she only got compassion. She understood that nobody needed her and saw no more purpose in life. She was not an individual, but an instrument of pleasure.