The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1824 sonnet, which begins "Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life".

Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character. Through Kitty one can witness a myriad of emotions and sentiments. She, being an extrovert personality, likes to mingle with people but circumstances in her life are such that she is forced to marry Walter Fane who is totally her opposite. Her husband is a bacteriologist who works in Hong Kong and she indulges in an affair with Charles Townsend. However, with the twist of events, she is forced to pass through various phases that make her evolve as a person and find her own dimensions of personality.