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Chapters 1–16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Moon and Sixpence, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Art and Beauty
Society vs. Authenticity
Women vs. Men
Morality
Mind vs. Body
Summary
Analysis
Chapter 17. Five years later, the narrator, bored with London, decides to move to Paris. Before he leaves, he visits Mrs. Strickland, who has expanded her typist career into a business with four employees. Despite her success, she keeps bringing up how “she was a lady by birth.” When the narrator asks whether her daughter will join the business, Mrs. Strickland says no—her daughter will marry “well.” The narrator, disturbed by Mrs. Strickland’s snobbery, asks what Mrs. Strickland would like him to do if he sees Strickland. She offers to send the narrator some money to help Strickland if he is poor—a gesture that the narrator interprets as “petty and vindictive.”
When Mrs. Strickland keeps mentioning that she was “a lady by birth” (before Strickland left her and forced her to work) and talks about her daughter marrying “well,” it indicates that women in early 20th-century England derived their social standing from their relationships with men—and thus hints that Strickland’s abandonment devastated Mrs. Strickland as much because it lowered her and her children’s social status as because she loved him. Despite the narrator’s usual discomfort with moral judgment, he is quick to call Mrs. Strickland “petty and vindictive”—hinting that he is harsher toward people who pretend to be moral but aren’t than toward people, like Strickland, who act immorally but don’t try to hide it.
Themes
Chapter 18. After arriving in Paris and renting an apartment, the narrator goes to visit his friend Dirk Stroeve, a “bad painter” of Italianate cliches in which the narrator nevertheless senses “an ideal.” Due to Stroeve’s idealism, the narrator sees in him more than an “object of ridicule,” which is how other artists treat him. Moreover, the narrator greatly respects Stroeve’s taste in other people’s art—Stroeve has an eye for talent. They write each other letters, and the narrator learns that Stroeve has married and moved to Montmartre.
Much as the narrator previously characterized Strickland as leaving his wife for “an idea,” the idea of art, he now associates Stroeve’s exquisite artistic taste with having “an ideal” despite Stroeve himself being a “bad painter.” This parallel again links art and beauty to ideas, idealism, and the life of the mind in contrast with the body, sexuality, and—by implication—women.
Themes
Chapter 19. When the narrator visits Stroeve’s studio, Stroeve greets him joyously and introduces him to Mrs. Stroeve, a woman with a statuesque body. Mrs. Stroeve is affectionate toward Stroeve, but the narrator can’t tell whether she adores him the way he adores her. He also has difficulty guessing her class background. At Mrs. Stroeve’s urging, Stroeve shows the narrator his new pictures—all still romanticized images of Italian peasants. The narrator wonders how the “sincere” Stroeve can produce such “insincere” art.
The narrator seems to believe that art naturally expresses the artist’s personality. As such, Stroeve—a “sincere” man who produces “insincere” art—is a riddle to him. Through Stroeve, the novel may be hinting that the narrator’s beliefs about art and sincerity are overly simplistic—or perhaps Stroeve is less “sincere” than the narrator believes.
Themes
When the narrator asks whether Stroeve knows Strickland, Mrs. Stroeve says, “Beast.” Stroeve explains that he once asked Strickland to come see his paintings. Strickland came, looked without speaking, asked to borrow 20 francs, and left. Stroeve admits that he gave Strickland the francs. Mrs. Stroeve bemoans that Stroeve insists on telling such a story about himself. The narrator, to his chagrin, is more entertained by Stroeve’s absurdity than shocked at Strickland’s cruelty.
Strickland was both socially impolite and personally cruel to Stroeve—another example of Strickland’s immorality. The narrator’s amusement at this anecdote again suggests his tacit sympathy with Strickland’s authentic callousness as opposed to most people’s insincere and socially conditioned politeness.
Themes
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Stroeve declares that Strickland is an artistic genius. The narrator, shocked, asks whether Strickland has been successful. Stroeve says no—but Strickland’s still a genius. He offers to take the narrator to meet Strickland at a café Strickland frequents. When Mrs. Stroeve caustically comments that some Dutch buyers thought Stroeve was joking when he showed them Strickland’s paintings, Stroeve animatedly says that beauty isn’t self-evident—you have to “repeat the adventure of the artist” to appreciate it. Mrs. Stroeve asks why Stroeve’s paintings seemed immediately beautiful to her, then. Stroeve, shakily, says he’s going to go out with the narrator for a moment.
Stroeve’s claim that one must “repeat the adventure of the artist” to appreciate the beauty of a painting again associates artistry and genius with an individual “adventure” and an authentic vision over and against learned technique or even natural talent. The individuality of great art makes it less accessible because people do not have an immediate, socially conditioned response to it. The accessibility of Stroeve’s painting to Mrs. Stroeve thus suggests that Stroeve’s art is indeed bad—a badness that Stroeve’s shaky voice suggests that he himself is aware of.
Themes
Literary Devices
Chapter 20. The next evening, the narrator and Stroeve find Strickland playing chess at the same café where the narrator and Strickland once had absinthe. When Strickland briefly pretends not to recognize the narrator, the narrator says he just saw Mrs. Strickland. Strickland laughs and tells Stroeve and he and the narrator had a “jolly evening” five years ago. After Stroeve leaves, the narrator asks to see Strickland’s pictures. Strickland refuses, though the narrator suggests he might buy one and Strickland admits he’s “half starved.” The narrator offers to buy Strickland dinner. Strickland resists until the narrator says he doesn’t mind whether Strickland “starve[s] or not,” at which point Strickland gleefully agrees to dinner.
Strickland’s refusal to sell or even show his paintings to the narrator underscores that Strickland is invested in the idea of his art—not in fulfilling his bodily needs, even basic ones like food, by making art just to sell. Strickland only agrees to dine with the narrator after the narrator is quite rude to him, claiming not to care whether Strickland “starve[s]”—suggesting that Strickland prefers to socialize only with people as authentically unfiltered (and, perhaps, immoral) as himself.
Themes
Chapter 21. On the walk to the restaurant, the narrator buys a newspaper. He reads it during dinner, trying to use silence to force Strickland to speak. When they finish eating, Strickland at last asks what the narrator has been up to. The narrator, by showing no interest in Strickland, gets him to talk about himself. From Strickland’s inarticulate revelations, the narrator gleans that Strickland has been living in poverty—but, impressively, doesn’t care about material discomfort despite his “sensual” nature. He has been working on his paintings in obsessive solitude, but (the narrator suspects) doesn’t try to sell the paintings because he doesn’t care about them once he’s finished working.
The narrator gets Strickland to talk about himself by not asking him any polite questions—a tactic showing yet again that Strickland reacts positively to rudeness, considering rudeness supposedly more “authentic” than conventional politeness. Though the narrator believes that Strickland has a “sensual” nature (i.e., that he is naturally prone to indulging his bodily senses) Strickland rejects bodily comforts to serve his art, another detail that sets up a contrast between artistic ideals and human bodily needs.
Themes
The narrator asks Strickland whether he cares about audience reactions or fame. Strickland claims not to—he doesn’t even care whether he paints well: “I only want to paint what I see.” When the narrator wonders aloud whether he himself could write on a “desert island” with no hope of an audience, Strickland’s eyes light up, and he admits he’s dreamed of living alone on an island where he could finally locate the thing he wants—or rather, he says something inarticulately to that effect, and the narrator fills in the gaps.
Strickland’s claim, “I only want to paint what I see,” again implicitly argues that real art is about expressing an authentic individual vision rather than about technical skill. His enthusiasm for the ideal of a solitary desert island, meanwhile, underscores his antisocial and individualistic tendencies. The narrator’s casual admission that he is translating Strickland’s inarticulate statements into fuller dialogue suggests that the reader cannot entirely trust the narrator to report Strickland’s dialogue accurately. In a way, the narrator’s “translation” of Strickland also suggests that the novel itself is a “portrait” of Strickland that the narrator is painting to fulfill his own individual vision: that is, the narrator is an artist on a journey that parallel’s Strickland’s artistic journey.
Themes
Literary Devices
The narrator asks whether Strickland has any regrets about leaving his “comfortable” family life for poverty in Paris. Strickland says no—he never thinks about the past, only the present. When the narrator asks whether Strickland is happy, Strickland says yes. Strickland suggests that the narrator disapproves of him, but the narrator says he no more disapproves of Strickland than he would a “boa-constrictor.” Strickland retorts that the narrator doesn’t disapprove because he himself has “a despicable character.”
Strickland’s lack of regret for his “comfortable” life in London emphasizes yet again his disinterest in his own bodily needs. Meanwhile, the narrator’s claim that he doesn’t disapprove of Strickland any more than he would a “boa-constrictor” implies that he sees Strickland’s cruel and callous behavior as natural and authentic to him—just as a boa-constrict is naturally and unavoidably a dangerous predator. Strickland’s joking response that the narrator himself is a “despicable character” further parallels Strickland and the narrator, hinting that both men are “beyond” morality due to their rejection of social conventions—though the narrator is less obvious about it than Strickland is.
Themes
The narrator asks whether Strickland has fallen in love in Paris. When Strickland disgustedly denies it, the narrator speculates that Strickland has occasional orgies of sexual relief with some “beastly” woman—and afterward feels “like a disembodied spirit” overwhelmingly in touch with beauty. Strickland, in response, looks utterly wretched, and the narrator realizes the conversation is over.
When Strickland abandoned Mrs. Strickland even though she would have supported his artistic career, it hinted that he felt he needed to be free of dependent women and perhaps of sexuality to devote himself to his artistic ideal. Now the narrator speculates that Strickland occasionally surrenders to his bodily, sexual needs with “beastly”—that is, particularly physical—women to, conversely, feel like a “disembodied spirit” afterward. If the narrator is right—and Strickland’s devastated reaction suggests he may be—then the novel may be foreshadowing that Strickland’s struggles with his sexual needs may be central to his artistic career going forward.
Themes
Chapter 22. The narrator begins writing a play and socializes with other authors and with his friends, particularly Stroeve and Mrs. Stroeve, whose name is Blanche. The narrator senses that Blanche is hiding something, yet she and Stroeve get on well; she only gets angry with him when he exposes himself to ridicule. One day, Stroeve takes the narrator to an art dealer whom Stroeve persuaded to try to sell some paintings of Strickland’s. When they arrive, the dealer explains that Strickland took the paintings back for some reason of his own—but he isn’t bothered. When the dealer suggests that you can only tell an artist’s “merit” by his success, Stroeve becomes enraged.
The narrator’s sense that Blanche is hiding something may foreshadow future revelations about her past. Meanwhile, Stroeve’s anger at the dealer who judges artistic “merit” only by success shows Stroeve’s idealism: like the narrator and Strickland, Stroeve believes that true art expresses an individual genius’s authentic vision—whether or not conventional society ever comes to appreciate that vision.
Themes
Chapter 23. The narrator sees Strickland often, as does Stroeve, though Stroeve is always swearing not to consort with Strickland again after Strickland is cruel to him. The narrator and Strickland’s interactions are often peculiar. One day, Strickland tries to borrow 50 francs from the narrator. The narrator cruelly refuses, claiming that as Strickland is kind to no one, no one need be kind to him—a refusal that ultimately seems to preserve whatever respect Strickland has for the narrator. When the narrator suggests he could buy one of Strickland’s paintings, however, Strickland refuses.
Implicitly, Strickland seems to like and seek out the narrator because the narrator is as impolite and potentially immoral as he is. In the novel’s view, both men see through and reject the insincerity of social norms and conventional morality. Strickland’s continued refusal to sell his paintings despite his need for money, meanwhile, emphasizes again that Strickland paints to realize an idea rather than to fulfill his bodily needs (i.e., for food and shelter).
Themes
Literary Devices
A few days later, the narrator runs into Strickland at a café. Strickland boasts that he has received 200 francs to paint the portrait of “a retired plumber.” When Stroeve arrives, Strickland, in his good humor, insults Stroeve until he cries—which makes the narrator guiltily amused. Yet his best memories from Paris at that time are of the Stroeves’ household: Stroeve’s real passion for his wife (Blanche) and their domestic harmony, which has “a singular beauty” that Stroeve’s buffoonery only makes somehow more emotionally affecting.
The narrator’s amusement at Strickland’s cruelty shows the narrator’s own better-hidden cruelty and disdain for social conventions, while his guilt at his own amusement shows that he has not fully rejected conventional morality the way Strickland has. Yet the narrator’s association of the Stroeves’ domestic arrangement with “beauty” suggests that he sees something authentic and valuable in Stroeve’s love for Blanche.
Themes
Chapter 24. Stroeve sentimentally decides to invite the narrator and Strickland over for Christmas so they won’t be alone. They go to Strickland’s usual café and learn from an acquaintance that Strickland is very sick. Stroeve wants to go help him. The narrator and Stroeve find Strickland in bed in a small apartment full of painting supplies. Strickland tells them to “go to hell” but also admits he’s had nothing but water for two days. While Stroeve goes to buy bread and milk, the narrator takes Strickland’s temperature: it’s 104.
Though Strickland clearly needs help, he tells the two men attempting to help him to “go to hell.” This response shows not only his ingratitude but also his individualism: by implication, Strickland hates any situation that reveals his need for other people or for social connections in general.
Themes
Chapter 25. After tending to Strickland, Stroeve and the narrator go back to Stroeve’s. Stroeve asks Blanche whether they can nurse Strickland at their place. Blanche refuses, claiming to hate Strickland and not to care that he might die. When Stroeve persists, referring to both Strickland’s genius and status as a human being in need, Blanche bursts into tears and begs him not to bring Strickland into their home: if he does, she’s sure something awful will happen. Stroeve reminds her that she has been helped in “bitter distress” before and asks whether she wouldn’t like to help someone else in the same way. She turns dead white but agrees to help Strickland.
Earlier, the narrator intuited that Blanche was hiding some secret. Now Stroeve alludes to a time that Blanche was in “bitter distress,” suggesting that her secret may relate to a terrible past trouble. Blanche’s revulsion at the idea of bringing Strickland into her home reminds readers that Strickland has already destroyed his own harmonious domestic environment—and may foreshadow that Strickland will cause some trouble for the more peaceful and conventional Stroeves as well.
Themes
Literary Devices
Chapter 26. The narrator and Stroeve move Strickland to Stroeve’s. Though Strickland is ungrateful, Stroeve and Blanche nurse him assiduously. When the narrator asks Blanche whether she talks to Strickland and whether she still hates him, she calmly replies that they never talk and that she hates him more than ever. About six weeks after Strickland moves in, the narrator sees him staring at Blanche with “curious irony” while she stares back in “alarm.” Strickland is now very thin. The narrator sees in him “outrageous sensuality” that is somehow also “spiritual,” like he’s a satyr out of Greek mythology. He reads Mallarmé, and the narrator wonders what he gets out of it.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) was an influential French poet associated with Symbolism, an artistic movement invested in allegory and metaphor as opposed to realism. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), the painter on whom Strickland is based, was also sometimes associated with the Symbolists. The peculiar looks that Strickland and Blanche exchange—his ironic, hers “alarmed”—suggest that something is going on between them despite their lack of conversation. Meanwhile, whereas the novel has previously contrasted mind and body, sensuality and spirituality, the narrator now claims that Strickland’s “sensuality” is itself “spiritual.” This, in turn, suggests that the two opposing tendencies can perhaps be harmonized.
Themes
Chapter 27. A few weeks later, the narrator runs into Stroeve at the Louvre and asks why Stroeve isn’t painting. Stroeve tearfully explains that he let Strickland paint with him in his studio—only for Strickland to throw him out. When the narrator asks whether Stroeve wants him to get rid of Strickland, Stroeve says no, clearly not wanting to discuss it. The narrator is confused.
Strickland’s selfishness and cruelty toward Stroeve, who has gone out of his way to help a gravely ill Strickland, yet again underscores Strickland’s callousness and immorality. Meanwhile, Stroeve’s refusal to discuss Strickland at length with the narrator suggests that some other problem may be brewing in secret in the Stroeve household.
Themes
Chapter 28. A week later, Stroeve visits the narrator at his apartment and announces, crying, that Blanche has left him because she loves Strickland. The narrator, disbelieving, asks for the whole story. Stroeve explains that he asked Strickland to leave so that he could use his studio. When Strickland started packing, Blanche announced that she was leaving with him. Shocked, Stroeve pointed out that Strickland would make her miserable, but she insisted that she loved him. Stroeve rushed at Strickland, and Strickland knocked him down. As Strickland and Blanche were leaving, Stroeve threw himself at Blanche’s feet and begged her to stay. When she treated him with contempt, he left the studio to them rather than letting her go to whatever hole Strickland would have rented.
This passage suggests the meaning of the strange looks Strickland and Blanche shared in earlier scenes: they were experiencing a presumably unexpected sexual attraction to one another. It also fulfills Blanche’s prediction that something “terrible” would happen if Strickland came to stay with her and Stroeve. Strickland’s decision to have an affair with the wife of the man who nursed him back to health shows again his ingratitude and immorality, while Blanche’s sudden attraction to Strickland implies that women are attracted to bold individualism and genius—perhaps because, in the book’s view, they derive their identities from the men with whom they are most closely associated.
Themes
Chapter 29. When the narrator is disgusted by Stroeve’s “weakness,” Stroeve explains that he couldn’t let Blanche live the way Strickland lives—he still loves her and will take her back if her affair falls apart. When the narrator notes Stroeve’s lack of pride, Stroeve says there’s no pride in real love and asks why he shouldn’t take Blanche back when so many wives take back unfaithful husbands. The narrator, amused by this reasoning, says that “most men are made differently” and can’t take back unfaithful wives.
The narrator interprets Stroeve’s generosity toward his unfaithful wife as “weakness,” revealing yet again his distaste for conventional, pro-social moral virtues like kindness, politeness, and so on. Meanwhile, his response to Stroeve’s gender-egalitarianist argument that men can take back unfaithful wives if wives can take back unfaithful husbands—to argue that “men are made differently” than women—shows his uncritical gender essentialism.
Themes
When the narrator asks whether Stroeve suspected Strickland and Blanche’s affair, Stroeve says he knew before Blanche did—he was aware she didn’t reciprocate his passion for her and was always very jealous, but he tried not to let it show. Then he saw that as Blanche was nursing Strickland, she stopped wanting Stroeve to come home. When the narrator asks whether Stroeve might leave Paris for a bit, Stroeve says he’ll stay—in case Blanche needs him. The narrator tells Stroeve to stay at his place for the night.
Despite Blanche’s betrayal and Stroeve’s extreme jealousy, he still stays in Paris in case she needs him—an unconventional, authentic level of devotion to an unfaithful wife. Thus, the novel hints that there is something individualistic and beautiful about Stroeve’s passion despite his oft-mentioned ridiculousness.
Themes
Chapter 30. The narrator, unable to sleep, ponders Blanche. He concludes that she never loved Stroeve, only passively responded to his passion and protection, a feeling “which in the minds of most women passes for” love. He suspects that Blanche feared having Strickland in her home because she was vaguely aware of being sexually attracted to him. Sexuality erased her personality, turning her into “a Maenad.”
The narrator’s supposition that what “passes for” love in “the minds of most women” is really just a reflex response to men’s more active passion reveals again his contempt for women in general. A “Maenad” is a female follower of the ancient Greek god Dionysus, deity of wine, fertility, and insanity, among other things; the maenads were famous for their ritualized religious insanity, which could lead to acts of group violence. When the narrator compares Blanche to a maenad, he implies that her bodily attraction to Strickland had spiritual elements—but also that it drove her, in some sense, insane.
Themes
Literary Devices
While the narrator acknowledges that his speculations about Blanche may be wrong, he can at least come up with explanations for her behavior. Yet he has no idea why Strickland acted as he did. He can easily comprehend that Strickland would betray Stroeve, but he can’t believe that Strickland loves Blanche—love, according to the narrator, always includes some sentimentality, and Strickland is not sentimental. Moreover, Strickland would tear the love out of his own heart rather than be ruled by someone else.
At various points, the narrator explicitly acknowledges that he is merely speculating about the other character. These acknowledgments underscore that the narrator is potentially unreliable in his judgments, but they also remind readers that the narrator, too, is an artist—that the novel is his “portrait” of Strickland. The narrator’s belief that Strickland would rather die than submit to another’s control, meanwhile, emphasizes Strickland’s apparent total individualism and hatred of interpersonal or social strictures.
Themes
Chapter 31. The next day, Stroeve goes to fetch his things from the studio. Blanche has given Stroeve’s things to the porter and is herself absent. A few days later, Stroeve ambushes her on her shopping route and begs her to return to him, telling him Strickland will get bored of her. She slaps him and runs away. The narrator, annoyed by Stroeve’s “want of spirit,” tells Stroeve that Blanche would have less contempt for him if he’d hit her instead. He suggests that Stroeve go home to peaceful northern Holland for a while, but Stroeve insists on staying—he wants to be present in case something bad happens to Blanche. The narrator, finding Stroeve a “ridiculous object” despite his real passion, contemplates the complexity of human nature.
The narrator feels that Stroeve’s generosity and patience toward Blanche show “want of spirit,” and he argues that Blanche would react better if Stroeve beat her—attitudes revealing that the narrator believes men should dominate and control women rather than reasoning or pleading with them. His feeling that Stroeve is a “ridiculous object” rather than a sympathetic person, meanwhile, reminds readers that he is sometimes cold, callous, and immoral in the way that Strickland is. Finally, Stroeve’s fear that something terrible will happen parallels Blanche’s earlier fear—and foreshadows that, as far as Blanche and Strickland’s affair goes, the worst is yet to come.
Themes
Chapter 32. Because the narrator senses “self-satisfaction” in all “moral indignation,” he doesn’t seek Strickland out to criticize his behavior and so doesn’t see him for a few weeks. Then, one day, he runs into Strickland and Blanche on the street. The narrator is cold to them—so Strickland perversely insists on talking to him and invites him to play chess. Unable to invent an excuse not to, the narrator goes with them to a café and plays chess. During the game, he contemplates Blanche’s unreadable face and thinks she must have a “complicated character” to abandon the safety of Stroeve for Strickland. Though the narrator is very curious about her and Strickland’s situation, they give him no clues.
By claiming that there is “self-satisfaction” in all “moral indignation,” the narrator hints again that morality is a fundamentally hypocritical and insincere social pose, not the product of an authentic individual conscience. His curiosity about Blanche’s “character,” meanwhile, reminds readers of his earlier excitement at the dissolution of the Stricklands’ marriage. In an arguably “immoral” fashion, the narrator—a writer-is always interested in gathering truthful narrative material from the sins and sufferings of others.
Themes
Chapter 33. A few days later, Stroeve, who heard from an acquaintance that the narrator was at a café with Blanche, visits the narrator and asks to hear about his wife. When the narrator says he couldn’t tell how Blanche was doing, Stroeve again expresses a fear that something terrible will happen. He begs the narrator to write to Blanche for him—he’s already written himself, but he doesn’t believe she reads the letters—and let her know that Stroeve will take her back and care for her if anything terrible happens. The narrator writes a short letter to that effect.
This passage emphasizes yet again that Stroeve, despite his supposed ridiculousness, authentically cares for Blanche’s well-being and safety despite her infidelity—showing that individual authenticity and care for others can sometimes go hand in hand. Stroeve’s worry also reiterates the foreshadowing that something terrible is going to occur as a result of Blanche and Strickland’s affair.
Themes
Chapter 34. Weeks pass. The narrator avoids Stroeve, whose “lamentations” now “bore” him. One morning, a distraught Stroeve bursts into the narrator’s room and says, “She’s killed herself.” After the narrator shakes him and makes him drink some water, Stroeve explains that Blanche and Strickland had a fight, he left her, and she drank oxalic acid—she’s actually not dead, but she’s been hospitalized. Stroeve went to visit her at the hospital, but she refused to see him. He asks the narrator to come with him to the hospital in case she’ll see the narrator. When they arrive, the doctor tells them Blanche is too sick for visitors—though he adds scornfully that women usually try not to succeed at suicide, as they’re just trying to scare the men they’re involved with.
The narrator’s attitude toward Stroeve, whose real emotional pain now “bore[s]” the narrator, suggests a parallel between the narrator’s coldness and Strickland’s more active callousness toward the pain of others. Both men are “authentic” in their coldness—and immoral in conventional terms. Blanche’s suicide attempt fulfills the foreshadowing that some additional terrible event would occur due to her affair with Strickland. The doctor's cynical and dismissive attitude toward Blanche’s suicide attempt—suggesting that women generally use the threat of suicide to control their male romantic partners—hints that the novel sees women as essentially manipulative toward men.
Themes
Chapter 35. The narrator makes Stroeve stay at his apartment. The next time they visit the hospital, Blanche refuses to see either of them. Stroeve asks the nurse to tell Blanche that if Blanche wants to see “anyone else,” Stroeve will bring that person. When the nurse goes to ask Blanche, someone replies, “No. No. No.” The nurse returns. When the narrator asks about the strange voice, the nurse explains that the acid burned Blanche’s vocal cords. The narrator asks Stroeve to go away. After Stroeve is gone, the narrator asks the nurse whether Blanche has explained her motive. The nurse says no—Blanche just cries silently all the time. The narrator thinks he could murder Strickland. As he leaves, he wonders whether Blanche wouldn’t ask for Strickland because she knew he wouldn’t come.
In the previous scene, the male doctor who treated Blanche suggested that her suicide attempt was inauthentic, a ploy to manipulate Strickland after he left her. Yet when Blanche refuses Stroeve’s offer to bring “anyone else” to the hospital—a clear though indirect reference to Strickland—she refuses. The narrator’s speculation that she refuses because she knows callous, immoral Strickland wouldn’t come see her if asked suggests that Blanche’s suicide attempt was authentic—an act of genuine despair. Despite the narrator’s prior lack of sympathy for unfaithful Blanche, he’s angry with Strickland when he perceives how devastated Blanche is, which shows his relative emotional softness compared to Strickland despite the occasional parallels between the two men.
Themes
Chapter 36. Over the next week, it becomes clear that Blanche won’t survive. One evening, Stroeve arrives at the narrator’s looking depleted, and the narrator knows Blanche has died. When Stroeve says that the narrator has been “very kind” to him, the “embarrassed” narrator denies it. Stroeve says that he saw Blanche die, but she looked so placid that he didn’t perceive the exact moment of death. Stroeve lies down and sleeps—for the first time without pharmaceutical aid since Blanche was hospitalized. The narrator puts a blanket over him. The next morning, Stroeve is lying in the exact same position with his glasses still on.
It is unclear whether the narrator is “embarrassed” at Stroeve’s praise simply because he dislikes emotional displays or because he knows he hasn’t been “very kind” to Stroeve, at least not in his thoughts. Regardless, the narrator takes tender care of Stroeve after Blanche’s death, again curbing the parallels between the occasionally cold narrator and the more consistently callous, immoral Strickland.
Themes
Chapter 37. The narrator attends Blanche’s funeral with Stroeve. Afterward, he feels “bored with a tragedy that did not really concern” him. Deciding to change the subject away from Blanche, he suggests that Stroeve leave Paris—and perhaps travel to Italy to work. Stroeve responds apathetically. When the narrator suggests they go have lunch together, Stroeve insists on going to the studio alone. The narrator is glad to part from Stroeve and feels a newly zesty enjoyment strolling around Paris by himself.
After showing the narrator’s tender side with Stroeve, the novel reminds us of his Strickland-like capacity for callousness: he is once again “bored” with Stroeve’s pain and is able to greatly enjoy Paris as soon as the grief-stricken Stroeve is out of sight.
Themes
Chapter 38. About a week later, Stroeve takes the narrator out to dinner. Stroeve is dressed in mourning clothes, and the narrator thinks it’s “cruel” that Stroeve’s fatness makes the mourning look goofy. Stroeve announces that he’s going home to Holland—the mockery of others and Blanche’s infidelity have weighed him down too much. He tells the narrator about how his carpenter father wanted him to become a carpenter too and suggests that maybe carpentry would have been a better path for him. He announces that true wisdom is in living a quiet, humble life. Internally, the narrator rejects this idea as evidence of Stroeve’s “broken spirit”—but he keeps his thoughts to himself.
When the narrator muses that it’s “cruel” that a mourning suit looks silly on a fat man, he seems to express an implicit wish that beauty should accompany authentic feeling in reality as it does in so much art—but art is not reality. (Of course, the novel is not reality either—but it is “realist” and, as such, aspires to wholly realistic descriptions of life, including its ugliness.) When Stroeve rejects the individual assertiveness of ambition in favor of a quiet life, the narrator sees it as evidence of a “broken spirit,” showing the narrator’s loyalty to concepts of genius and individual exceptionalism as against social conformity and humility.
Themes
The narrator asks why Stroeve became a painter. He explains that because he won awards for drawing at school, his parents sent him to Amsterdam to compete for an art scholarship, which he won. Her mother cried at his first exhibition, and now all the walls of their house bear his paintings. (The narrator thinks that Stroeve’s Italianate paintings must look “garish” in his family home.) When Stroeve says that perhaps his life would have been better if he’d become a carpenter, the narrator asks whether Stroeve would really give up art. Stroeve says, “Art is the greatest thing in the world.” Then he admits he went to see Strickland.
Stroeve’s artistic career may ultimately have been a failure. Even the narrator, who is relatively positively disposed toward Stroeve, thinks of his paintings as “garish” and contrived. Yet even when Stroeve tries to regret his decision, he still believes that “art is the greatest thing in the world.” That both Stroeve and Strickland—otherwise diametrically opposed characters—both intensely value art suggests that, in the novel’s view, art really is “the greatest thing in the world.”
Themes
Chapter 39. Stroeve tells the narrator how he went to the studio after Blanche’s funeral. From the police, Stroeve knew that Strickland had left Blanche right after dinner—yet he saw that Blanche had washed the dishes before she drank the acid, a detail suggesting a “methodicalness” to her suicide. Agonized, Stroeve ran out of the living quarters into the studio, where he found a canvas propped against the wall. He put the canvas on an easel and saw it was a nude painting of Blanche reclining on a sofa. Stroeve screamed, snatched up a scraper, and ran at the picture—but then saw that it was tremendous art and dropped the scraper.
The “methodicalness” of Blanche’s suicide indicates that she was not acting impulsively or simply intending to manipulate Strickland with a false suicide attempt: she really intended to die, an intention highlighting her despair at losing her chosen man. Stroeve’s anguish and rage at the nude painting of Blanche suggests that he initially saw the nude as simply a symbol of Strickland and Blanche’s adulterous relationship, while his decision not to attack the painting reveals both the overwhelming esteem in which he holds great art and the nude’s channeling of sexuality into some greater aesthetic creation.
Themes
Stroeve tells the narrator that he nearly committed a “crime” in attacking the nude. He tries, haltingly, to explain the individuality, “sensuality,” and novel “spirituality” of the painting. The narrator, admiringly, realizes that unlike most people, who invoke beauty casually and meaninglessly, Stroeve has a real, almost religious feeling for beauty. He asks what Stroeve said to Strickland. Stroeve replies that he asked Strickland to come to Holland with him. When the narrator is shocked into silence, Stroeve says that he and Strickland both loved Blanche—and Holland’s simplicity might be good for Strickland. Strickland refused but gave Stroeve the nude of Blanche. The narrator hopes that Stroeve will get over his grief and be happy. The next day, Stroeve leaves for Holland.
Stroeve’s sense that to destroy a beautiful painting would be a “crime” emphasizes his total commitment to art and beauty despite his own bad paintings, as does the narrator’s realization that Stroeve’s feelings about beauty are analogous to religious faith. That Stroeve saw both “sensuality” and “spirituality” in the painting suggests that Strickland was able to channel his sexual feelings for Blanche into the nude and so transmute a bodily experience into an aesthetic and intellectual creation. Finally, Stroeve’s invitation to Strickland to come to Holland with him—a highly unconventional action—shows Stroeve’s emotional authenticity, an authenticity rooted in generosity and good faith rather than callousness like Strickland’s.
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Chapter 40. A month later, the narrator runs into Strickland on the street. Though the narrator tries to extricate himself from Strickland’s company, Strickland invites himself back to the narrator’s place. When the narrator asks why Strickland would want to spend time with someone who detests him, Strickland says he doesn’t care what the narrator thinks of him—and that, moreover, the narrator enjoys Strickland’s company a little for the opportunity to let out witty, cutting remarks. The narrator finds humor in this and, beginning to find his own moral disapproval of Strickland a little affected, shrugs and lets Strickland follow him.
Yet again, Strickland proclaims that he doesn’t care what others think of him, a proclamation emphasizing his antisocial authenticity and individualism—and yet again, the narrator decides to spend time with Strickland because he feels that moral judgment of Strickland would be affected and inauthentic, highlighting the narrator’s belief that moral judgment is usually a kind of social posturing rather than an outgrowth of authentic individual conscience.
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Chapter 41. Strickland enters the narrator’s apartment without an explicit invitation and, once there, smokes silently. The narrator contemplates how disturbing it is for writers to realize that their curiosity about human nature, including human evil, is stronger than their condemnation of it—perhaps because in evil characters they see their own suppressed instincts. Alongside real disgust at Strickland, the narrator feels “cold curiosity” about him. The narrator states that he heard Strickland gave Stroeve the nude of Blanche. In response to further questioning, Strickland says he only gave the painting to Stroeve because he was done with it. He also claims to feel no guilt about destroying Stroeve’s life or about Blanche’s suicide.
Here the narrator implies that an interest in human evil is intrinsic to the novelistic art that he practices: to be a novelist and construct believable characters, he has to understand other people, including their bad qualities—and so he feels more “curiosity” than condemnation even for very destructive people like Strickland. This dynamic suggests that, for the narrator, art is opposed to—and more important than—moral judgment. When the narrator broaches the subject of the nude, he seems implicitly to be asking Strickland whether he gave the nude to Stroeve as a kind of apology. Strickland immediately denies this implication, insisting on his lack of remorse, and instead claiming that he was simply “done” with the nude—a comment perhaps indicating that Strickland has overcome sexual desire (represented by the nude Blanche) by channeling it into his art.
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When the narrator asks why Strickland would destroy Stroeve and Blanche’s life, Strickland says that Blanche would never have forgiven Stroeve, regardless: while working as a governess for an aristocratic family in Rome, she was impregnated by the heir. The family threw her out. After she tried to die by suicide, Stroeve found her, rescued her, and married her. Strickland asserts that a woman can forgive a man for hurting her—but not for “the sacrifices he makes on her account.” When the narrator asks what happened to the baby, Strickland says it was born dead.
Earlier, the narrator speculated that Blanche was keeping a secret; it seems likely that Blanche’s seduction, pregnancy, and “rescue” by Stroeve were the secret in question. Strickland argues that women are essentially resentful, ungrateful, and masochistic, forever vindictive toward men who make “sacrifices” on their “account” but attached to men who hurt them. It remains to be seen whether the novel undermines or reinforces Strickland’s negative and essentialist view of women.
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The narrator asks why Strickland even “bothered with” Blanche. Furiously, Strickland admits that he desired her—but then, retreating to humor, explains how she was “frightened” and he “took” her. However, he hadn’t known she was planning to leave Stroeve for him, and he told her upfront that when he was tired of her, their relationship would be over. He wanted to paint the nude, but after the painting was done, she was useless to him.
When the narrator asks why Strickland “bothered with” Blanche, his phrasing implicitly suggests that he sees Blanche in particular or love affairs in general as beneath a truly committed artist like Strickland. Strickland’s anger when admitting he sexually desired her shows his resentment of his own body and its demands, while his claim that Blanche became useless to him once he painted the nude suggests that he intentionally channeled his sexuality into his art in order to neutralize or sublimate his bodily desires. Finally, the language that Strickland uses to describe his first sexual encounter with Blanche—that she was “frightened” and he “took” her—suggests at minimum that she was initially ambivalent and passive and may be hinting that their first sexual contact was not consensual.
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When the narrator retorts that Blanche loved Strickland, Strickland angrily rants that love is “weakness” and women are just “instruments of [his] pleasure,” not relationship partners. He claims that women are weak and stupid but always trying to exert control over men, who by contrast have intellect and ideals. He believes that Blanche was using the same “tricks” that Mrs. Strickland used to employ to tie him down when all he wanted was to be solitary.
Given Strickland’s hatred of social convention and social ties in general, it seems likely that he views love as “weakness” because it prompts the individual to attend to the desires and values of another person rather than always following their own desires and values. Strickland’s gender-essentialist view that women are always trying to control and entrap men, whereas men are always trying to escape women to accomplish something important, associates women with society, compromise, and the body and men with individuality, boldness, and the mind. Thus far, the novel’s representations of Mrs. Strickland and Blanche have problematically upheld Strickland’s essentialist view of women.
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When the narrator calls Strickland inhumane, Strickland asks whether the narrator actually cares that Blanche died. After a pause, the narrator says he’s “ashamed” that he himself doesn’t care about her—because her life had value. Strickland retorts that life doesn’t have value and that Blanche died by suicide because she was “a silly and unbalanced woman”—not because of anything Strickland did. Then, claiming that they’ve talked enough about a nonentity, Strickland invites the narrator to come look at his paintings.
Here the narrator admits that he doesn’t care that Blanche died, but he feels “ashamed” about it, suggesting his authentic immorality and callousness on the one hand and his internalization of social judgments about all human life having value on the other. By contrast, Strickland, who possesses the same authentic immorality without having internalized countervailing social judgments, can quickly dismiss Blanche as “a silly and unbalanced woman” whose death has nothing to do with him and move on to the thing he believes is important: his art.
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The narrator reflects unhappily that Stroeve and Blanche’s tragedy does seem “useless”—Stroeve will get over it, and Blanche might as well never have been born. The narrator asks why Strickland seeks his company when he loathes Strickland. Strickland laughs and claims that the only thing the narrator dislikes about him is that he doesn’t care what the narrator thinks of him. The narrator becomes furious not only because Strickland can’t understand moral judgment but also because Strickland is partly right: indifference is “the bitterest wound to human pride.”
When the narrator judges Stroeve and Blanche’s tragedy “useless” because it won’t have a large impact on anyone’s life, it implies an artistic standard for human tragedy: only those tragedies that are grand and permanently influential are “useful” or “really matter.” Yet again, the narrator reveals that his approach to life is primarily aesthetic rather than moral—however much he (hypocritically) criticizes Strickland for lacking moral standards. Meanwhile, the narrator’s claim that indifference is “the bitterest wound to human pride” implicitly argues that the real reason people harshly judge Strickland’s callousness is not its immorality or destructiveness but its puncturing of their conceit.
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The narrator wonders aloud whether any human being can really not care what others think, given the individual’s dependence on the collective. In response, Strickland insists that they go look at his paintings. The narrator asks whether Strickland thinks about dying, and Strickland replies that death “doesn’t matter.” The narrator has a sudden, strange impression that Strickland, with his artistic drive, is a “disembodied spirit.” He agrees to go see the paintings.
Here the narrator proposes a problem with Strickland’s radical individualism: because individuals are ultimately dependent on other human beings and on society, one cannot be a truly atomized individual. Characteristically, Strickland ignores this philosophical argument to focus on his obsession: his own art. Strickland’s claim that death “doesn’t matter” and the narrator’s perception that Strickland is a “disembodied spirit” underscore the association of the mind and spirit with art and immortality, in contrast with the mortality of the body.
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Chapter 42. The narrator is excited to see Strickland’s paintings because he believes that art reveals the artist’s soul whereas social intercourse conceals it. Strickland shows the narrator about 30 paintings. To the narrator’s disappointment, they seem to him “crude” and “ungainly.” In retrospect, he will be even more impressed at Stroeve’s acuity in immediately recognizing Strickland’s genius. Yet despite the paintings’ apparent crudity, the narrator also senses in them “real power” and some important spiritual secret that Strickland is fighting to express. He tells Strickland that maybe Strickland has “mistaken his medium” for expression and could better convey his insights in some form other than painting.
The narrator’s failure to appreciate the beauty of Strickland’s paintings from the start recalls earlier claims by Stroeve that the viewer of an innovative painting has to repeat the artist’s journey in creating an artwork to truly appreciate the work: because the narrator has not yet retraced Strickland’s life journey, he doesn’t yet hold the key to understanding Strickland’s artistic self-expression. Nevertheless, the narrator once again associates Strickland’s art with powerful spirituality in contrast with mere physical beauty. His claim that Strickland has “mistaken his medium” means that he thinks Strickland might be able to express his artistic ideas better in some type of art other than painting. This claim may suggest that the novel as a whole is the narrator’s attempt to express in writing what Strickland was attempting to express in painting.
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After seeing the paintings, the narrator is more confused by Strickland than ever, but he suspects that Strickland is trying to free himself from some unknown “power.” He contemplates how difficult it is for any individual, trapped in his own consciousness, to communicate his truth to others. To his own surprise, he feels intense "compassion” for Strickland. Aloud, he tells Strickland that he understands now why Strickland “surrendered” to his lust for Blanche—he had a momentary lapse in bravery in his quest for some ideal, and he sought refuge in Blanche. When that refuge failed, he came to loathe her. In reply Strickland calls the narrator a “dreadful sentimentalist.” The following week, Strickland travels to Marseilles, and he and the narrator never meet again.
Previously, the narrator has compared Strickland to someone possessed by a demon; now, he talks about Strickland struggling against some unknown and controlling “power.” Here, the narrator seems to speculate that the “power” Strickland is struggling against is the inherent isolation of being an individual consciousness separate from others: Strickland is trying to communicate an internal truth to others. Readers may suspect that the narrator is only half correct: Strickland may be trying to express a truth in his painting, but it’s not clear that he wants to communicate it to others, as he doesn’t seem to care about social approval or even being understood. Meanwhile, the narrator’s speculation that Blanche represented for Strickland a refuge from individual striving once again associates women with society, conformity, and physical comfort as against authentic individualism and the life of the mind. When Strickland calls the narrator a “dreadful sentimentalist,” however, it indicates that Strickland rejects the narrator’s interpretations of his behavior as excessively emotional.
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