Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
W. Somerset Maugham presents the normative structure where elite culture takes it material from the profane underside of society. Told though a narrator, a young writer, who is to write a biography of an older writer, Maugham produces a situation wherein the older writer, who is valorized by the elites, gets his life blood and material from a common woman who is so full of cheerful life she eschews the middle class values of petty bourgeois. Of course, she is obscured such that the second wife of the writer, who has much more normal pretenses as to decent society wishes to eradicate the first wife from the biography. Nonetheless, the younger writer, seeking to understand WHY pursues the truth and discovers the tragedy of the death of their child from the first marriage. The older writer of course, mines this, and is wildly successful. It is only after he mines this however, that in writing their story, he loses the first wife but gains entry to the world of literary greats.
In this exact way, the structure of this novel follows a journey of discovery, an uncovering of one’s greatness. At the root of it, Maugham suggests its not only tragedy but the sexist muse of a lively woman, one who is so full of life so as to be enough to supply literary greatness for the elites. This juxtaposition of the profane within the valorized is a criticism of the hypocrisy that the elites have, in that they have no life of their own. Their values and their attitudes are derivative of commoners, in much the same way that the riches of the few are built off the backs of the labor of the many.
Indeed, Rosie, the first wife, becomes immortalized by this book to be the secret muse, in-itself a valorization of commonly women, but for their lack of art, their lack of bourgeois pretension, for their “genuineness”. In that sense, while criticizing the hypocrisy of UK society, it also participates within the same genre of logic. And so Rosie lives on, having lovers, living life and being cheerful.
