Morality Theme Analysis

The Moon and Sixpence represents morality as a form of social control: according to the novel’s unnamed narrator, morality is not individual conscience, but rather an internalization of social norms meant to protect society from individualistic behavior. Fittingly, the novel’s individualistic “hero,” Charles Strickland, is someone who casts aside morality and social norms in order to express himself. Strickland abandons his wife (Mrs. Strickland) and children in London to become a painter in Paris. From there, he conducts an affair with his friend’s wife Blanche Stroeve simply because he sexually desires her. He then expresses indifference when Blanche dies by suicide after he abandons her in turn. Later, he marries a 17-year-old Tahitian girl named Ata to take care of his sexual and domestic needs but regularly beats her. Though the novel’s unnamed narrator at various times criticizes Strickland’s selfish, callous, and immoral behavior, the narrator can never fully condemn Strickland for two reasons. First, the narrator feels that all moral judgment is inherently smug and inauthentic, so he can’t take it entirely seriously. Second, the narrator feels that morality is essentially about curbing authentic individual impulses—impulses the narrator valorizes—so he must demonize morality to some degree. By having Strickland reject morality and having the narrator valorize Strickland for that rejection, the novel suggests that morality is a form of inauthentic social control that individuals can and should cast aside.