The Moon and Sixpence Summary

The narrator explains that he plans to write about painter Charles Strickland, whose greatness was only recognized after his death. The narrator, an author who published his first book as a young man, meets Strickland in London through his wife, Mrs. Strickland, who liked to throw parties for writers. At first, the narrator finds Strickland conventional and boring. He later hears gossip that Strickland has abandoned Mrs. Strickland and their two children to live in Paris. A few days later, Mrs. Strickland asks the narrator to travel to Paris and talk to Strickland: she thinks Strickland has left her for another woman, but she is willing to forgive him if he returns to her.

In Paris, the narrator finds Strickland at a shabby hotel. The two men go to dinner, where Strickland callously rejects the narrator’s appeals about Mrs. Strickland’s misery and the Strickland children’s needs. Strickland reveals that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks of his decision and that he didn’t leave his wife for another woman—he left to become a painter. Unable to convince Strickland to come back to his wife, the narrator returns to London and tells Mrs. Strickland what happened. Mrs. Strickland is furious that Strickland left her for art as opposed to another woman, but she puts on a brave face socially and starts a typist business to support herself.

Five years later, the narrator moves to Paris, where he meets up with his painter friend Dirk Stroeve and Stroeve’s new wife Blanche. When the narrator asks whether Stroeve knows Strickland, Stroeve—who has excellent taste in art, though his own paintings are hackneyed—announces that Strickland is a genius. Later, Stroeve reintroduces the narrator to Strickland, who is happily painting in Paris though he lives in poverty. Around Christmas, Stroeve decides to invite the narrator and Strickland over to celebrate—at which point he and the narrator discover Strickland in bed in his apartment, feverish and very sick. Stroeve asks Blanche whether they can take Strickland into their home and care for him. At first Blanche refuses, saying that she loathes Strickland and that she senses something terrible will happen if they take him in. Yet Stroeve’s pleas wear her down, and she agrees. Over many weeks, the Stroeves nurse Strickland.

Then one day, a tearful Stroeve visits the narrator and announces that Blanche has left him for Strickland. The shocked narrator tries to persuade Stroeve to leave Paris for a while, but Stroeve insists that Strickland will make Blanche terribly unhappy and that he wants to be around in case she needs him. Several weeks later, Stroeve bursts into the narrator’s apartment and announces that Strickland left Blanche and that Blanche drank oxalic acid in a suicide attempt. She is currently in the hospital, refusing to see anyone. Later, Stroeve and the narrator go to the hospital. Blanche refuses to see either of them. When Stroeve asks the nurse to tell Blanche that they’ll bring “anyone” she wants to see her—clearly meaning Strickland—they overhear Blanche repeating “no” to the nurse over and over. A week later, Blanche dies of her injuries.

About a week after Blanche’s funeral, Stroeve and the narrator go out to dinner. Stroeve announces that he’s returning home to Holland—and admits that he went to see Strickland. Stroeve explains that he went back to the studio that he had once shared with Blanche and that she subsequently shared with Strickland. There, Stroeve found a nude that Strickland had painted of Blanche. Furious, Stroeve almost destroyed the nude—but stopped when he realized it was a work of genius. Instead he went and asked Strickland to come to Holland with him, thinking that Strickland might need a change of scenery to mourn Blanche too. Strickland declined but gave the nude to Stroeve as a gift.

After Stroeve leaves Paris, the narrator runs into Strickland in the street. To the narrator’s annoyance, Strickland insists on accompanying the narrator home. Strickland denies feeling any guilt about Stroeve’s misery or Blanche’s suicide. When the narrator asks why Strickland even conducted a relationship with Blanche, Strickland says that he simply desired her—but once he had painted her nude, he had no more use for her. Strickland adds that he has no interest in love and thinks of women only as outlets for his sexual gratification. Then he insists that the narrator come see his paintings. At his studio, he shows the narrator about 30 paintings. To the narrator, the paintings seem almost ugly—yet full of power. Shortly after, Strickland travels to Marseilles. The narrator never sees him again.

Fifteen years later, the narrator travels to Tahiti, where Strickland had been living until his death. By talking to various people who knew Strickland in Tahiti, the narrator pieces together an account of Strickland’s life after he left Paris.

After leaving Paris, Strickland is homeless in Marseilles but takes jobs on ships in order to travel from Marseilles to Australia and eventually to Tahiti. In Tahiti, a hotel owner named Tiaré Johnson introduces Strickland to his second wife, a then-17-year-old Tahitian girl named Ata who owns a rural property where Strickland can paint. For three years after the marriage, Strickland and Ata live together in rural Tahiti with Ata’s extended family while Strickland works on his painting. When one acquaintance asks Strickland whether he is happy with Ata, Strickland replies that Ata gives him what he wants from a woman: space to do his painting and absolute obedience.

Yet one day, a sobbing girl comes to fetch a local doctor, Dr. Coutras, to come see Strickland out in the country. When Dr. Coutras arrives at Strickland and Ata’s rural home, he diagnoses Strickland with leprosy. Strickland tells Ata he plans to quarantine himself in a more rural area—yet Ata forcefully insists that she won’t leave her husband. Strickland begins crying, but he also sardonically comments that women are strange: they’ll love you even if you beat them constantly.

About two years later, Dr. Coutras visits again. He discovers that one of Ata and Strickland’s children has died. Strickland himself refuses to see the doctor. A few years later again, Dr. Coutras gets word that Strickland is dying. When he arrives at the rural house, he finds Strickland dead on the floor—and the walls painted with a masterpiece resembling the Garden of Eden. Dr. Coutras is astonished when, upon examining Strickland’s corpse, he discovered that Strickland had been blind for some time. Shortly thereafter, Ata—following Strickland’s instructions—burns the house down behind her, destroying the masterpiece. Then she and her surviving child go to live with relatives.

After learning all this, the narrator leaves Tahiti. When he returns to London, he visits Mrs. Strickland—who has been talking to an art critic about the now-famous Strickland to make herself feel important. Strickland’s children by his first marriage, now adults, are also present. When the narrator tells about Strickland’s death—omitting any mention of Ata—Strickland’s son Robert quotes a proverb to suggest Strickland got what was coming to him. The narrator, in turn, silently condemns Strickland’s first family.