Maugham on Mainland Southeast Asia
Abstract
Based on his experiences during a journey through mainland Southeast Asia in 1923, Somerset Maugham published a book of colonial travel entitled The Gentleman in the Parlour. Focusing mainly on his representations of Burma (now Myanmar), an analysis will be presented of Maugham’s travelogue in the light of postcolonial scholarship, especially those theoretical insights developed under the inspiration of Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism. Despite its pretensions to be apolitical, Maugham’s travel book will be shown to be a repository of colonial ideas and attitudes, integrally involved in the prevailing European discourse of high imperialism. It is thus of great interest and value to scholars of British imperial rule in Asia. In 1923 Somerset Maugham traveled across mainland Southeast Asia all the way from Burma through to Vietnam. He used a variety of means of transport, including riverboat, canoe, pony, rickshaw, car and steamer. He went from Rangoon up the Irrawaddy river to Pagan and then on to Mandalay, then crossed the Shan states into Thailand. He traveled south to Bangkok, by steamer to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, visited the monuments of Angkor, went overland to Saigon, and then by boat to Hue, Hanoi and Haiphong in northern Vietnam. At that time Maugham already had a reputation as a great traveler, but this was the most ambitious and arduous journey he ever made. He recorded his experiences and impressions in a travel book called The Gentleman in the Parlour: and reissued by Marlowe & Company in 1989 (Maugham 1989). (Unless otherwise indicated, throughout this article all page numbers given in brackets in the text refer to this later edition.) The aim here is to present an interpretation and analysis of Maugham‟s book of colonial travel, especially in the light of the theoretical insights offered by postcolonial scholarship. Of particular relevance is the work of Edward Said, Rana Kabbani, David Spurr and Mary Louise Pratt (Said 1995; Kabbani 1986; Spurr 1993; Pratt 1992). In his book Maugham explicitly claimed to be uninterested in British imperialism as a political issue. He expressed his intention to write from a subjective point of view, concentrating on those incidents and experiences which moved him as an individual. Though guided by his subjective responses, the style of writing he adopted in the book makes strong implicit claims to objectivity, supposedly presenting realistic descriptions of what he saw and did on his trip.