Western Strangers in China, to Gaze and to Be Gazed: A Schutzian Comparative Reading of W. S. Maugham’s The Painted Veil and Eileen Chang’s ‘Steamed Osmanthus Flower’

ABSTRACT

Both W. S. Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil (1925) and Eileen Chang’s short story ‘Steamed Osmanthus Flower’ (1944) depict a foreigner’s life in China but offer two points of view. In light of Alfred Schutz’s reflection on a stranger’s life in a new social world, this study proposes a comparative reading of these two texts and answers the question of how foreigners in China gaze but are also gazed at by the Chinese natives, and how this new direction of observation challenges the conventional and over-generalised perception of the Western – Eastern (coloniser – colonised) power structure. Maugham’s heroine observes 1920s China and its natives through the lens of her British bias, but the way in which she and other Western strangers are the object of the gaze is neglected. In contrast, the point of view is different in 1944, in Chang’s story, in which Mr Garter’s middle-aged Chinese maid observes him with mixed feelings of contempt, pity, and only occasional maternal care. She is an active gazer and commentator even if she may be hastily judged as a colonised inferior without voice or visibility.

KEYWORDS:

• W. S. Maugham
• The Painted Veil
• Eileen Chang
• ‘Steamed Osmanthus Flower’
• Alfred Schutz
• ‘The Stranger’
• gaze
• comparative reading
• China
• foreigners

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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