Today is Valentine’s Day. I’m going to write about the love line in the book of Painted Veil, which is what have attracted me through reading.
There are three main characters in the book, Walter, Kitty, Charlie. Walter and Kitty are couples, Kitty and Charlie are lovers.
Walter is a bacteriologist（细菌学家）, he is considerate, timid, sober（冷静的、严肃的）in Kitty’s eyes. He is so different from Kitty. But he loves Kitty. After he has discovered the secret love between his wife Kitty and Charlie, he still said,
“I had no illusion about you. I knew you were silly and frivolous（轻佻的） and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar(庸俗) and commonplace（平凡）. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you.”
However Kitty doesn’t love him. She married him because when she was 25 years old she wanted to marry before her younger sister to avoid awkwardness.
After getting married for 2 years she meets Charlie, the secretary of colony in Hongkong who is very charming, articulate (善于表达的) and powerful in Kitty’s eyes. As Kitty says she loves him with all her heart and soul. Their love is everything and he is her whole life. Oh, for woman in love, love is the most important thing in the world. After her husband discovering her secret with her lover, she has the illusion of getting married with Charlie.
How about Charlie? As Charlies says, he loves her too. Yes, he loves her beauty and gaiety and thinks she is the lily in the vase. Man loves a woman but without any disturbance of his life. When she needed to get married with him after her husband discovering, he said,
“There’s nothing in this world I’d love more than to marry you.
We can’t think of ourselves in this world… I have got my boys to think of, haven’t I? And naturally I don’t want to make her(his wife) unhappy. We’ve always get on very well together. She’s been an awfully good wife to me, you know… I don’t mind telling you that I depend on her more than any one has any idea of…
I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but really I must tell you the truth. I’m very keen on my career… You know , when you ask me to get my wife, to whom I’m very much attached, to devoice me, and ruin my career by marrying you, you’re asking a good deal.”
Even though when he knew if she could not marry him she would go to Meitanfu, where the cholera outbroke, he said like this,
“At the first moment I can quite believe it was a shock, but when you come to look at it calmly you’ll be all right.
After hearing his selfish remarks, Kitty gives a cry of despair. It is dreadful that she should love him so devotedly and yet feel such bitterness toward him.
I think the dialogues between them are very authentic (真实的) and vivid, the author are very good at describing the details of inner feeling, which has attracted me to listen and read again and again without feeling bored.
And I think this is the part I of the story----before going to Meitanfu. I will go on to read and find out the details of how does Kitty look for another love in her life.
