W.S Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence: A Reflection on Genius, Gender Roles and Making Sense of One's Life

This paper examines W.S. Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence (1919), inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, exploring two of its most important themes: the basic human need to make sense of one's life and the construction of gender roles. The novel depicts the life of a genius totally dedicated to his art, an initiator of a new style in painting, and a controversial man in his relationships with women. In doing so it tells much about Maugham's own biography, the importance of writing to him, and the status of women in Victorian and Edwardian society. In this respect, the author argues that Maugham's depiction of Western women in his novel could be seen, on one hand, as a criticism of old femininities, and, on the other, as a plea in favour of the rise of new models, with particular regard to the first wave of feminism that was spreading in the early twentieth century.