Walter is very nerdy, bookish, Introverted, I would say, and not confident in social settings.
When he meets Kitty, she’s a very beautiful and attractive young lady, and he also believes he can’t really do any better than her. And he really loves her for kind of mysterious reasons. And Kitty doesn’t find Walter charismatic or attractive at all, it was just a marriage of convenience from her perspective.
The thing is when they get into this town where cholera is raging, she starts to hears thing about him from other people, fox example, Mr. Waddington tells her what a jerk Charlie is and what a decent person Walter is, even Mr. Waddington again doesn’t really like anybody but he realizes that Walter is person of character and decency and has really done all he at his disposal to help those sick and needy.
The nuns love Walter as well, because he shows true care and concern for those orphans and again for the general people who were suffering in such a hideous way and that’s another thing which is kind of interesting about how this is written and everything is told very much from Kitty’s perspectives, so in order to meet these characters, it really is presented in this organic way where she’s talking to Charlie directly and then she goes and talks to Mr. Waddington a great deal who sheds a light on the other characters which she has to, at first reluctantly but eventually she comes to understand what he’s talking about and she realizes she’s been used by Charlie and Walter has always loved her from a place of respect, and until you know the affair was found out and the same goes for the sisters.
So again, everything’s from her respective which makes it a little heavy at times, but you feel like you very much enveloped in the story.
This movie/book is really reflective of real life, when you
On thing in particular is that Walter is there everyday working tirelessly and what really struck me was the fact that you know, he was terribly hurt by what Kitty did to him and what he’s done is that he’s transferred his love to the sick and poor people in Mei-tan-fu.
He no longer has any feelings for her that’s made pretty clear and he has poured himself into a noble mission of his, but still treats her with respect and cares about her, apart from that there’s no chemical left between them.
When Kitty starts to see his qualities and also starts to see that he doesn’t love her anymore, there’s an immense depression that comes over her as we can imagine.
A few other things that I just want to touch on before I kind of get towards the end of the book and the bigger picture that I was taking from this story. There’s this whole problem of Kitty’s adultery and just the way how she perceives what happened and she’s not really taking responsibility for what she did, and she considers it as regrettable and shocking even, but to be forgotten rather than to be repented of. It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.
She really tries to downplay what she has done and that in itself is preventing her from finding this piece that she sees in the sisters and this is further compounded by the fact that she’s quite sure the Mother superior knows what she did but still includes in fact at one point she becomes so frustrated with herself, Kitty does, she decides to come work for the mother Superior and tend to the orphans in the convent and again though she still can not find even in that kind of selfless work acts if you will, acts of kindness, she can not find that piece in becomes even more disturbed I would say at what has happened.
And again, it ties back into this phrase, regrettable and shocking, not something to be repented of and without repentance you can not find salvation, that’s a theme of The painted veil which is so painfully demonstrated in what happens to Kitty.
So, I’m going to have to go into the spoiler territory now, major spoilers, the whole ending of the book. I high recommend it.
So throughout the book, I was really reading it as an allegory and at first I was thinking that’s just me, I’m trying to read my own opinions into this, etc.… But there’re so many things in the book that I feel really point to this idea of an allegory, I just think that, well, I wanted to talk about that and if you’ve read the book, let me know your thoughts on that interpretation.
There is this underlying theme of Kitty needing redemption but not just redemption, reconciliation and reconciliation with who, so let’s go back to her family for a minute, So I mentioned in the earlier statement that she’s got a domineering mother and a week father, and the family, the mother, the two daughters view him as just a breadwinner, they don’t try to develop a meaningful relationship with him and they don’t just care about him at all.
And it’s this weak relationship that Kitty has with this weak father that set her up for this incredibly negative relationship with the charismatic man of Hong Kong Charlie Townsend and the lack of dynamic, the broken relationship becomes a really twisted relationship with Charlie, he becomes a surrogate father of sorts and you know, she talks about this almost spiritual relationship which she has with him and whenever she’s feeling lonely and empty, she wants to be with this guy who clearly throughout the book is shown to be an abuser and a womanizer and really couldn’t care less about her in the long run.
Contrasted with the younger man Walter who is the one loves Kitty at first certainly and I would say throughout the book, unconditionally, he respects her and treats as well as can be expected and he feels the sense, you know this honor bound duty towards her and not just duty by actual love.
Marian, I just finished this book and was absolutely blown away. I’m writing my review and finding it difficult to find the words to express how much this book meant to me. What’s interesting to me and it hit me like a brick as I was listening to your thoughts that Kitty wanted so desperately to find peace esp once she saw that the nuns had it…after that she was on a hunt for it, but she couldn’t figure out why she didn’t get to experience it. Well, I remembered that the last word of the book is the word, “peace”. I don’t think that was intentional by the author but for me, it seems like an incredible coincidence; and intended or not, it felt like magic. I want to think that Kitty found it after all, or was on the road to finding it. This book. It has moved into my all time favorite list. It’s THAT good!
