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Illustrated portrait of Doris Garstin

A character in The Painted Veil

Doris Garstin

Kitty's younger sister, whose engagement and pregnancy expose the marriage competition Mrs. Garstin created between her daughters.

What they want

To receive the family approval and secure position long associated with her more admired older sister.

The book

Cover of The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
The Painted VeilW. Somerset Maugham, 1925

After an affair destroys her marriage, a young Englishwoman enters a cholera epidemic and begins the harder work of understanding herself.

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At a glance

Family
Younger daughter of Bernard and Mrs. Garstin
Sister
Kitty Fane
Marriage
Geoffrey Dennison
Children
A son, with another child expected

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Doris grows up in Kitty's shadow. Mrs. Garstin judges her plain and less socially valuable, yet Doris secures the marriage her mother wants: she becomes engaged to Geoffrey Dennison, the son and heir of a baronet. The news makes Kitty feel that remaining unmarried has become unbearable.

Doris does not knowingly force Kitty to marry Walter. Her importance lies in the family system around them. The sisters have learned to experience marriage, beauty, children, and rank as a competition. By the ending, Doris is pregnant again and still living within that conventional success.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • Plain by her mother's standardsThe novel gives her a long nose and what her family calls a poor figure. These descriptions reflect a household that measures daughters cruelly by appearance.
  • Openly emotionalShe cries freely after Mrs. Garstin's death, unlike Kitty, who has learned to distrust her own displays of feeling.
  • Conventional successHer marriage and sons satisfy the social program Mrs. Garstin designed for both daughters.
  • A catalyst, not a rival mastermindKitty turns Doris's engagement into a personal humiliation; Doris herself does not engineer Kitty's rushed marriage.
  • An awkward dancerThe novel says she dances badly, another trait her family uses to underestimate her prospects before her engagement.
  • Pregnant in mourningAt the ending, Kitty sees Doris in black after their mother's death and notices that she is expecting another child.
Doris at the endingHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Doris appears after their mother's death, pregnant and grieving. Kitty sees that Doris remains inside the life their mother valued, while Kitty must attempt a different future without knowing whether it will be better.

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