The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.
Illustrated portrait of The Manchu woman

A character in The Painted Veil

The Manchu woman

Waddington's unnamed Chinese partner, whose quiet self-possession makes Kitty recognize a life beyond her colonial social world.

What they want

To remain with Waddington and preserve the private life she chose despite pressure from her family.

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.

View the book

At a glance

Name
Not given
Background
From a Manchu family
Partner
Waddington
Interests
Painting and poetry

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

The novel never gives Waddington's partner a personal name. She comes from a Manchu family and left her relatives to stay with him when he returned inland. Waddington says that her family offered money if she would leave him; she refused.

Kitty meets her over jasmine tea. Because the women do not share a language, Waddington translates. The Manchu woman paints, writes poetry, smokes in moderation, laughs at the difference in their shoe sizes, and gives Kitty a pair of embroidered shoes.

Kitty's response mixes respect with the exoticizing language of her period. The clearest facts are simpler: this is a composed artist who has made a costly adult choice, manages her own household, and receives Kitty with curiosity and courtesy.

How the book draws them

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

  • Tall, slim, and assuredShe moves slowly and confidently in a long embroidered gown and pale-green silk jacket.
  • Elaborately dressed black hairShe wears the headdress of a Manchu woman, with carefully arranged hair and formal cosmetics.
  • Large dark eyesHer wary, self-possessed gaze gives Kitty the strongest sense of a person whose thoughts she cannot easily interpret.
  • Long elegant handsKitty notices her slender hands and painted nails while they sit at the blackwood table with tea.
  • A high, light voiceShe speaks briefly in a voice Kitty compares to birds in an orchard, with Waddington translating the conversation.
  • Formal hospitalityShe offers jasmine tea and cigarettes, asks about Kitty's age and children, and later gives her embroidered shoes after a shared laugh.
What her relationship revealsHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

She remains with Waddington despite family pressure and exile from her former life. Her choice makes Kitty reconsider her assumption that love is proved mainly through glamorous speech. The novel, however, does not give her enough voice to explain the relationship in her own terms.

If you like The Painted Veil

Four books that share themes, tone, or setting with this one.

If you like W. Somerset Maugham

Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.

  • Illustrated portrait of Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley

    English occultist, writer, mountaineer and founder of Thelema whose long relationship with Paris connected ritual magic to the city’s Belle Époque and interwar artistic worlds.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Simone de Beauvoir

    Simone de Beauvoir

    French writer and philosopher whose novels, memoirs, and social analysis examined freedom, gender, responsibility, aging, and the material conditions that shape a life.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Louis-Ferdinand Céline

    Louis-Ferdinand Céline

    The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.

    View author
Back to The Painted Veil