It's a really really sad story.
Prepare your tissues.
Walter and Kitty
Let me firstly give you a recap of the novel by Maugham.
Kitty, a pretty girl born to a upper-middle class family have the hope rested on her from her domineering mother to marry rich. However, as she squandered her early youth flirting with a lot and declining a dozen, she found herself at the age of 25 but still not engaged. Out of the fear of "missing her market", and that her younger and less attractive sister Doris might upstage her by marrying first loomed over her head, she get married to a serious bacteriologist named Walter and departed to his post in Hong Kong. It's not long before she met Charlie, the assistant colonial secretary, who is equipped all the charm of a man: handsome, tall, urbane and tactful. Their affair went on for almost one year until one day Walter observes their assignation. Charlies reassured Kitty that Walter dared not to expose the scandal as he's administrative inferior. While Kitty, having detected an ominous change in his demeanour, suspected that his husband would go to extremes. Finally her husband confronted her, and offered two choices: she could divorce Walter but only when Charlie agreed to divorce his wife and marry her within two weeks, or she must follow him to a cholera-ravaged village where he had taken a new post. Charlie's response to the choice suprised her: he didn't care a bit about her, and he definitely never sacrificed his marriage in exchange of her. Shocked and disillusioned she had to go to the cholera-infested Chinese village with her husband. But magically, through frequent contact with the nuns in convent, she awakened to her frivolity and superficiality. She decided to recast herself and devoted herself to the caring of older children at the covent. And soon she found out she was pregnant, which eased the tension in their relationship. But before she even gave birth, Walter died of cholera. She was sent back to Hong Kong again, and was placed in Charlie's house. Charlie maintained a look of kindness and amiability, but seduced her again when Mrs. Townshead was not at home. Ashamed of herself and hateful of Charlie, she took flight to her home just after her mother's death. With her sister Doris, her father, they had a deep conversation and they decided to set for a new journey.
Among all the characters, I can't help sympathising with Walter, the unlovable man. The most heart-broken sentence comes from him: What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favour. I found myself in him. He's naturally serious and reserved, so am I; he is too self-conscious to lose himself, so am I, he too sensitive to resist the slightest mockery, so am I. He is an individual of great personal force, and he restrained his his emotions, hided them deep so that even his beloved wife find it hard to detect the devastating passion inside him. Even if it's his wife who commited the mistake, the one he really blamed is himself.
In this novel, Maugham's writing skills are brought at length. He's really great at capturing humans' fleeting emotions and representing them in a vivid way, especially through metaphor.
When he is describing Mother Superior, that's what he said: "Her character was like a country which on first acquaintance seems grand, but inhospitable; but in which presently you discover smiling little villages among fruit trees in the folds of the majestic mountains and pleasant ambling rivers that flow kindly through lush meadows." Comparing one's character to a country with smiling little villages, that's really vivid.
And again that's how he described the moment when we knew others's thoughts suddenly: Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.
At last is the example of his accurate capture of human emotions: His self-control was due to shyness or to long training, she did not know which; it seemed to her faintly contemptible that when she lay in his arms, his desire appeased, he who was so timid of saying absurd things, who so feared to be ridiculous, should use baby talk. She had offended him bitterly once by laughing and telling him that he was talking the most fearful slush. She had felt his arms grow limp about her, he remained quite silent for a little while, and then without a word released her and went into his own room.
How torturous that will be like Walter.
That's really heartbroken love.
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