Women vs. Men Theme Analysis

The Moon and Sixpence presents an essentialist view of gender in which women fundamentally derive identity and meaning from their relationships with men, whereas men fundamentally derive identity and meaning from their own accomplishments. Thus, from the novel’s perspective, women are always trying to entrap and control men to secure meaningful lives, whereas men are always trying to escape female captivity to accomplish something important. It is only when a woman submits totally to male control, by contrast, that a woman and man can live happily together. This dynamic is clearest in the romantic relationships of Charles Strickland, a conventional English stockbroker who abandons his family to become a painter. The novel’s unnamed narrator describes Strickland’s wife, Mrs. Strickland, as devastated by her husband’s abandonment not so much because she loves him as because she must work to support herself without him—changing her identity from upper-class “lady of leisure” to crass, middle-class businesswoman. The narrator describes Strickland’s next lover, married Blanche Stroeve, as trying desperately to distract Strickland from his painting with her wiles in an inherently unequal relationship: she derived the meaning of her life from her love of him, whereas he derived the meaning of his life from his art. It is only when middle-aged Strickland marries a 17-year-old Tahitian girl, Ata, who submits to him beating her, obeys his every command, never disturbs his painting, and refuses to leave him even when he’s dying of leprosy, that the novel represents a heterosexual relationship as somehow “happy” and stable. In this way, the novel actually valorizes of Strickland’s relationship with Ata and thus seems to validate the notion that girls and women should minimize themselves in service of male ambition.