Disinterested Westerner in Asia: A Study of Maugham’s Travels in Asia

Abstract

The works of William Somerset Maugham has been profoundly influenced by his
travels all over the world. A consummate traveler, he undertook extensive travels to the
remote corners of the world, encompassing Europe, South-East Asia and the Pacific.
His travels have formed the source material for a variety of works in his oeuvre. The
purpose of his paper is to turn our focus through Maugham’s engagement with the idea
of Asia, particularly through the account of his stay in Burma and Indo-China as
described in his book The Gentleman in the Parlour. This paper seeks to analyze how
Maugham’s representation of Asia is not only ambiguous but also fraught with a
politics that is intensely personal and non-discursive. This study wishes to study his
travels in South-East Asia and how he undercuts the process of Imperial Travel Writing
and Imperial Meaning making. This paper aims to show the figure of the “Disinterested
Westerner” served as a counterpoint to the colonial European active in the Asian colony
and how it relates to the prevailing socio-political climate of a resurgent Asia in the mid
world-war period.