Control Breaking Under Stress
Somerset Maugham was a master of illuminating how extreme stress can drive even the stiffest of British upper lips to tremble like San Francisco after an earthquake. Leslie Crosbie enjoys a reputation of stolidity or the appearance thereof. Her face is drawn tight to reveal as little emotional uncertainty as possible, but the stress of the murderous and adulterous circumstances is simply too much to bear. On one level, “The Letter” can be enjoyed simply as a masterful portrait of control coming apart at the seams and bursting beyond all expectations into a volcanic fury.
The Pernicious Persistence of Colonialism
The letter which gives the story its title is an important plot point precisely because it reveals the full extent of Leslie Crosbie’s humiliation at the hands of her husband. Like any wife, she is devastated by the betrayal of her husband finding comfort in the arms of another woman. What drives her over the edge of simmering agent and into grip of a murderous madness, however, is the revelation that the other woman is a Chinese. The stress of living in British colonial Singapore as a proper British woman begins to collapse under the unbearable weight of her husband actually choosing on one of the natives as his mistress. Why should this be any worse than her husband sleeping with a white woman? Because the very system of British imperialism by definition managed to convince generations of citizens like Mrs. Crosbie of the inherent superiority that must exist within the strain of those who conquer versus those who are conquered.
Based on a True Story
Somerset Maugham made a career out of recognizing a good story when he heard it. Like so many other stories for which he is famous, “The Letter” barely qualifies as fiction. Maugham is the unqualified master of the thinly disguised fictionalization of true events. While reading the Singapore newspaper put out on April 23, 1911, he became fascinated the story the wife of a Kuala Lumpur school headmaster shooting a mine manager on her front porch amid claims that he had tries to assault her while her husband was not home. This incomplete and misleading narratives turns out to have very much in common with the story that Maugham tells in “The Letter.” In fact, with only a little minor tweaking to transfer the story to a rubber plantation in Singapore, the details of fact and fiction manage to blend together almost seamlessly. And yet, there is no denying that in characterization and the elegant use of prose to lift the lurid story from its tabloid patina, “The Letter” is also unquestionably more Somerset Maugham than the Singapore Daily News.
