Essay Questions

What is the relationship between this story and American economist Thorstein Veblen?

The most immediate connection between the story and Veblen is the American setting in which it primarily takes place. Veblen notoriously taught at the University of Chicago for part of his career and, as usual, never quite managed to fit. The iconoclastic Veblen actually seems like a character from one of Maugham’s stories—like this one—about disillusion with the promises of capitalism. Veblen was a revolutionary and visionary economist whose theories were rejected at the time as radically out of touch with reality, but have long since proved prescient.

At the core of his theory is the emptiness of leisure capitalism; it was Veblen who created the concept of conspicuous consumption and posited the idea that American capitalism would one day be firmly based on the precarious foundation of “keeping up with Joneses.” These ideological elements of American capitalism firmly embraced by Bateman and Isabel and which Edward comes to realize he is in rebellion against. Whether Maugham was actually influence or even familiar with the theories of Veblen is not clear, but this story provides a very strong argument that he must at least have known of Veblen’s economic ideas even if he had not actually read them.

What is Maugham specifically criticizing in the character of Isabel?

One of the critical knocks against Maugham which dogged his career is accusations of misogyny. And, indeed, there is no getting around the fact that few of his main characters are women and of those that the most memorable are less than ideal. Doubtlessly, Isabel is usually lumped into that vast ocean of female characters swimming the treacherous waters of Maugham’s misogynistic tendencies, but in this case his criticism does not seem gender-oriented. In fact, Bateman and Isabel seem fairly interchangeable to the point that one wonders why she didn’t choose him over Edward from the beginning.

The final imagery shows these two linked heart and soulless desire for wealth and leisure and those who question how she could throw over Edward so effortlessly are missing the point if they choose simply to reduce her to being a target of misogyny. Isabel and Bateman represent the American aristocratic class where few marital pairings are based on the idea of love. Like her love of antiques from decorative periods that clash violently, her love of both Edward and Bateman is positioned as a critique of the crassness and hypocrisy of midwestern values.

What is ironically off-base about Bateman’s assertion “you will never persuade me that white is black and black is white” which he makes to Edward? The subject is Arnold Jackson, Isabel’s notorious uncle who is sentenced to prison for fraud, subsequently becomes a black sheep of the family, and exiles himself to Tahiti where he comes to wield great influence upon Edward’s transformation. Bateman reveals the full dimension of his lemming-like status among the capitalist elite of Chicago when he refuses to even entertain the possibility raised by Edward that there just may be a distinction between and good man who does bad things and a bad man. He completely misreads the point Edward is valiantly—but that, one suspects, Edward realizes is completely in vain—trying to make. This misapprehension is key to the chasm that now exists between the two men as it demonstrates that Bateman likely could never get to where Edward is no matter how long he spent away from America.

Edward is perhaps being overly polite in trying to show Bateman that nothing is absolute in the world and that literally everything must be considered in shades of gray. Bateman is solidly trapped in his conditioned mindset, however, that he obliviously holds fast to this philosophical outlook by thinking that Edward is trying prove to him Arnold Jackson is a good man because his outlook can only comprehend that the singular possibility that if he is not the rogue everyone believes him to be then he could only be a good man. The irony is that Bateman is the only one of the two men even discussing black and white as Edward is trying to get him to realize there are no such things.