We should note that Maugham’ s early life experience, being a doctor, plays an important role in his writing career。 He published his first novel Liza of Lambeth in 1897。 In this novel, he successfully described a young woman’ s lively image and unfortunate destiny according to his experience in Lambeth slums when he was a doctor。 This novel had been held in the good graces of the critics after publication, which encouraged Maugham to abandon medicine for literature。 In the following years, as poor he was, he never gave up creating works and he gradually found his own way and formed his style。 Of Human Bondage, published in 1915, is Maugham’ s major work。 This novel shows Philip’ s thirty years’ life experience, which is also a reflective of Maugham’ s life, including his miserable student life in the old education system, his attempt to escape from societal norms, rebellion against religion and so on。 Later his novels The Moon and Sixpence and The Razor Edge are still big hits but different from the former writing style。 It is not difficult to find that in Maugham’ s works the protagonists share the same personality on some level。 They all hold a determined attitude to their dreams and have an obsessive attention to the life。 When what they have is different from what they want, they dare to buck the trend, seek self and pursue passions in life。 This kind of way of life exploration becomes a main character of Maugham’ s writing style。

    In The Moon and Sixpence, the story is told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist。 When reading The Moon and Sixpence, many readers find it hard to understand why Maugham puts these two totally different images together and uses it as the name of this work。 Actually, it is widely believed that Maugham takes the title from the earlier novel Of Human Bondage, because it is written “Like so many young men he (Philip) was so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet”。 And after reading The Moon and Sixpence, we can also draw the conclusion that the moon here refers to the artistic dream which is beautiful but far from our real life, and the sixpence is just the life we have。 These two images give us a brief introduction to what the author wants to talk。 That is how Strickland makes a choice between life and art and how the art makes an impact on Strickland。 In this book, Maugham shapes an image of an artist, a cynic who persists in searching for the freedom of heart, and he holds a firm belief all the time that one can find the true meaning of life through the art。 Strickland, completely discarding social norms and cutting himself off from the world, shows a real sense of spirit, from which we can also see his perseverance of sticking to his own way without fear。

  In the whole story, art is what can not be ignored, and throughout Strickland’ s life, art plays a significant role when he puts his life in a different track。 So what is art? What does the art mean to Strickland, or we can say to Maugham? We already know that different people have different attitudes to the same thing because their views on life or values are not the same。 Thus there must be various kinds of opinions to the art。 In this paper, I will focus on Maugham’ s attitude to art。 Though many people think Strickland’s story is in part based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, we can not deny that while creating this novel, Maugham puts his personal opinions into the protagonist’s thoughts inevitably。 Through the story, the protagonist and the figures in this work, we can see that to Maugham, art is a way of self-fulfillment and self-improvement。文献综述