摘 要

威廉•萨默塞特•毛姆是英国小说家和剧作家。他的小说通过讽刺幽默的写作手法反映社会道德现象。写于1919年的《月亮和六便士》便是这样一部小说。毛姆使用第一人称的角度来叙述这个故事。这部小说反映了著名的法国印象派画家高更的生活。主人公查尔斯·斯特里克兰曾经是一个在伦敦的股票经纪人。他对生活感到无聊,便搬到了巴黎来实现自由和他的梦想。为了赚到足够的钱,他不得不在船上工作,最后他到达了一座叫塔希提的岛,并且在此发现他的精神家园。斯特里克兰的一生中主要有三个不同时期。这篇文章旨在通过对三个不同时期的环境的分析从而进一步挖掘他性格转变的原因。

关键词：月亮和六便士；空间；性格；分析

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….1
2. Demonstration…………………………………………..………………………...2
   1. London: a human in bondage………………………………………...................2
      1. A mediocre husband and father in London …………………………………...2
      2. London, place of bondage…………………………………………………......4
   2. Paris: an artist in restless pursuit of dream...………………………....................5
      1. A Desperate artist in Paris………...…...…………………………….………...5
      2. Paris, a failed dreamland……….………………………………………….....7
   3. Tahiti: a man of transcendence………………………………………………….7
      1. A free man in Tahiti………………………………………………..………......8
      2. Tahiti, place of freedom…………………...…………………………...………9
3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…………10

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..11

Bibliography.................................................................................................................12

Spaces and Personality: An Analysis of the Protagonist Characterization in The Moon and Sixpence

1. Introduction

William Somerset Maugham is a British novelist and dramatist. By the time he was ten, both William’s Parents were dead and he was sent back to England to live with his uncle, the Rev. Henry Maugham. This was the first time to face with his homeland, and Maugham even couldn't speak any English. For this reason, he was deeply influenced by the French and the French culture. Maugham's masterpieces are generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Razor's Edge.

In The Moon and Sixpence William Somerset Maugham took the French artist Paul Gauguin as the prototype to describe the protagonist Charles Strickland who abandoned his family and the social status to pursue his dream. Strickland was a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London. Then, he left his wife and children and went to Paris to pursue his dream of painting. He became indifferent to the surroundings and even other’s life. Finally, he came to the Tahiti, which was a perfect spiritual home to him. In Tahiti, He got alone with the outside peacefully and achieved success in painting. The unethical phenomena in this works caused the readers' and the critics' censure. The radical change in his personality caused scholars’ interest.

In the previous study of Maugham, there are several papers studying The Moon and Sixpence on the basis of analyzing protagonist’s personality. Some study Strickland from the perspective of analytical psychology. They think that there are false ego, inner ego, somatic ego and spiritual ego in Strickland, which lead to his weird character and behavior. Some scholars use Schopenhauer's philosophy and Nietzsche's  philosophical thought to read Strickland. Some analyze the image of Strickland from his attitude towards female. Few of studies analyze The Moon and Sixpence from space, my paper will study the novel from this angle.

In The Moon and Sixpence, there are three different periods in Strickland’s whole life. The essay is to find out the reasons of the transformation of characters by the analysis of environments in the three different periods. In the first part, Strickland was once a stockbroker in London, where means a constraint to him. He left the family and went to Paris to pursue his dream of painting. The second part introduced his hard time in Paris, the centre of art. He devoted himself to painting and didn’t care about other things, even destroying his savior’s family. Finally he came to the island called Tahiti and he found his spiritual home there. In the last part, in Tahiti, he released himself and reached a new height of artistic.

2. Demonstration

2.1 London: a human in bondage

In The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham created the impressive protagonist Charles Strickland, who had a happy family and a decent job at the beginning and became as poor as a church mouse at last. Originally, Charles Strickland was a stockbroker of British stock exchange, who had a happy family, a charming wife and two smart children. His wife was very interested in making friends with celebrities of literary circles, so she often held a variety of banquets at home. However, the man who lived a rich and decent life was totally tired of lifestyle of London social circle which was composed of tea parties, banquet, dancing parties and so on. What’s more, he was also fed up with dealing with money every day on the stock exchange. He thought that his lifestyle was too boring. So Charles Strickland wanted to make some change, he abandoned his own family and went to Paris to pursue his dream.

2.1.1 A mediocre husband and father in London