PNU | College of Art | Department of English Language and Literature | Prose | First Year

Louise
by W. Semerset Maugham
the best English short story writer

Born | 25 January 1874

Died | 16 December 1965

Characters
Louise
The Narrator
Tom Maitland
George Hobhouse
Ires

Sarabdulaziz © 2010
 PNU | College of Art | Department of English Language and Literature | Prose | First Year

Characterization
The narrator - main character - antagonist.
Louise - major character - protagonist.
Tom Maitland, George Hobhouse, Ires - minor characters.

Analyzing Louise’s character

Is Louise sick?
Appearance Reality

Louise’s parents knew that she has a weak
heart and she might die.
Tom Maitland, her first husband said that she’s
been to the best heart specialists and all of
them told him that her life is hanging on a
thread.
That’s lead us to believe that she’s sick.
she can walk eight miles.
she can dance.
she can stay up late until the morning.
she can marry two husbands and still survive.
she manages to control everybody around her.
everybody around her does what she want him/
her to do.

to explain that let’s say maybe as her 1st husband said: “she has an unconquerable spirit.” And this is probably
enabled her to live this side of life, and maybe the sickness itself made her think of getting what she can get out
of life before leaving it. And that’s why she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life on a bed, she wants to
have fun.
Now we cannot hold her guilty for wanting to enjoy life. But, we can hold her guilty for abusing the love of her
family to to get things that she want.

Her relationships
this has to do with the sub-theme, Louise takes advantage of her family love and makes them do things her way.
First her parents, then her first husband, then her second husband, then her daughter. Her relationship with her
daughter is the one we need to stop at because it’s not normal, there’s reversal roles. We all know the role of
the father is to support his family, the role of the mother is to take care of the children. Here it’s the opposite,
we see the daughter taking care of her mother.
So Louise’s husbands and daughter are the manipulated side in this relationship. Because she’s taking power,
she has an unconquerable spirit that she shouldn’t exercise on the people who love her. but she dominated them
and used them to show that she’s taking control.

Is she guilty?
maybe and maybe not, maybe if she’s doing what she does consciously. If we look at the story there’re times
when the narrator keeps reminding her “you’re doing what you want not what your husband want.”, “you’re
making people do what you want.”
Let’s say the one clear mistake done by Louise is making Ires feel guilty for doing what she want.

Why did she die?

the narrator is saying that because she’s devilish and want her daughter to feel guilty. But Louise couldn’t
manage to die in that particular day even if she wanted to. The explanation of her death on that day is because
all throughout she didn’t die although she’s sick because she has that great power in her, the unconquerable
spirit. Now her unconquerable spirit was pushed down when her daughter decided to go against her will and get
married. The influence of that action have weaken her spirit and she become vulnerable, easily hurt, that’s how
sickness revolt of her and her life ended.

Sarabdulaziz © 2010
 PNU | College of Art | Department of English Language and Literature | Prose | First Year

Tone
Sarcastic; because the narrator makes fun of Louise, he’s a first person narrator (subjective) meaning when he
talk about anything he’s involved, and effected by his own believes or his own emotion. So the first person
narrator takes side, and here we notice:
“disliked.”
“in that gentle way of hers.”
“she had too much delicacy ever to make a direct statement.”
“she was the most submissive wife.”

Style (Literary Devices)

Irony - “in that gentle way of hers.”
Imagery - “I saw the face behind the mask.”
Imagery - “as a pair of crooks.”
Irony - “by a coincidence she had a heart attack.”
Irony - “devilish woman.” Because he’s calling her devilish but he’s more devilish than she is; she’s not
unsympathetic to a friend who’s dead.

Point of View
the narrator P.O.V is 1st person narrator (subjective). Not just subjective but he’s antagonist because he
prejudice against Louise, he made his judgement that she’s a “devilish” woman even after her death, he cannot
forgive her.
He’s an unsympathetic narrator, blinded by his hatred for Louise, not ready to change his opinion even at the
end when Louise is dead.

Theme
appearance verses reality.
the narrator said that Louise is pretending something which is not a reality. The difference between pretending
and appearance is that when you pretend you make the action to make people believe what is not true, while
when you appear to be something you don’t do anything to affect people’s thoughts about you.

Sub-theme
the word (sub) means a division in a big section.
the sub-them has to do with familial or social relationships.

Setting
places - Monte Carlo, Deauville, London.

Plot
conflict: “She had an uneasy suspicion that I didn’t believe in her; and if that was why she did not like me, it
was also why she sought my acquaintance: it galled her that I alone should look upon her as a comic figure and
she couldn’t rest till I acknowledged myself mistaken and defeated.”

Sarabdulaziz © 2010