Among the successful British writers of the early 20th century, Somerset Maugham is almost unique in regularly expressing if not an outright contempt for British colonialism, then at least a very strong sense of moral ambiguity about it. He may not exactly qualify as the anti-Kipling when it comes to a progressive view toward anti-colonialist perspectives, but he is certainly the closest anyone of that era comes who actually enjoyed a tremendous readership.
“The Pool” offers an excellent example of the way in which Maugham approaches themes related to British colonialism. The story of Lawson and Ethel is quite easily interpreted as a critique of the expectations of assimilation, but what is really unique about it is that the narrative works toward an increasingly ambiguous take on the subject. The body of water which gives the story its title has proven to be far too tempting to many critics looking to find religious symbolism, but another symbolic perspective can endow it with a more politically charged metaphor: a gene pool. Ethel is described as being of mixed-race with the term “half-caste” and this less than pureblood status makes her great beauty a non-starter for the British men sizing her up. “I’ve given her the glad eye once or twice, but I guess there’s nothing doing,” says Nelson. In other words, despite having some acceptably European genes in her pool (via Norway) she is not sufficiently European to consider marriage material. She’s a foreign and dark one at that.
That pool in which the native women swim as a group is endowed with a mysterious element which also speaks to the concept of genetic differentiation. There is something off about the pool relative to Ethel: “It looked as though there were in this pool some secret which attracted Ethel against her will.” Since she’s only half-islander, this secret might well be interpreted as the pool drawing her Norwegian genes which is not fully cognizant of the cultural appeal of the pool. At every point in the story, there always seems to be a tension at work between two opposing forces trying to fit together against a force pushing them apart, like when you try to get two magnets to connect and instead they repulse.
This is the element of the story associated with expectations of assimilation as a foundation of colonialism. England expects natives of its colonial holdings who migrate to U.K. to leave their filthy pagan ways back home and assimilate fully into proper Christian Brits, keeping a stiff upper lip and all that, what-what. When Lawson brings Ethel back to his home in Scotland, she is not able to assimilate and heads back to the island. Lawson follows her and proceeds to regularly humiliate himself in his own failed attempts to assimilate into island culture.
One way of interpreting this, of course, would be to leap to the assumption that Maugham is saying whites should mix with whites and colonials should mix with colonials and never the twain should meet. And that would a proper reading of the text were it not for the irony of Lawson—the representative of the master lording over the colonials—being the one who is constantly humiliated and winds up a depressing alcoholic who commits suicide. In order for the story to be interpreted as a Kiplingesque racist fantasia supporting the idea that England is superior, Lawson cannot be the one who winds up suicidal. Because, after all, what would a superior race ever have reason to feel suicidal about relative to the relations with a lowly dark-skinned island woman?
