Of Human Bondage , semiautobiographical novel by W. Somerset Maugham , published in and considered his masterwork. It is a perceptive depiction of the emotional isolation of a young man and his eventual insight into life. Born with a club foot, Philip Carey is acutely sensitive about his handicap.
Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor. And that is where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a formative, tortured and masochistic affair which very nearly ruins him. Its depiction of how a man can become enslaved by an unsuitable love is unsparing".
I n Aspects of the Novel , EM Forster wrote: "The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define. For English readers, this is a Bildungsroman we mostly first encounter as adolescents. It earns its place in this list for the edgy economy of its dark, often cruel narrative more than its style prosaic or its humanity tormented.
This is the story of an unforgettable fictional "character" named Philip Carey and his extremely tumultuous and tormented life from age 9 thru Poor Philip is only nine years of age when his beloved mother dies in childbirth and he is sent off to the vicarage to live with his strict, overbearing Uncle William and loving Aunt Louisa. Born with a club-foot and small for his age, Philip is shy and embarrass. Born with a club-foot and small for his age, Philip is shy and embarrassed by his deformity and is often lonely and pegged an outcast.