On THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by W.S. Maugham

Many believe that Maugham was inspired by the life of the French primitivist Paul Gauguin to create Strickland, who deserts his wealth, his wife and young daughter to live his second life embracing painting. Even hunger and leprosy cannot deter him from pursuing his ultimate artistic goal till his last days.

According to the story told, Maugham the author doesn't seem to perceive much of his protagonist, and he also seems not to pretend he does. Much less still does he tell about those two poor women who irrationally adore the extremely selfish and egoistic painter.

Could it be that Maugham chooses to avoid telling what he actually is aware about all that, just like he deliberately doesn't give a clue for how the MOON up there should have something to do with a SIXPENCE down here?
I would boldly guess, if Maugham were not homosexual, and were much older when he wrote the novel, he'd rather let the heterosexual Strickland himself tell his own story than that ME do the task with quite limited capability.
The Dutchman's English wife who is spellbound and the Tahitian teen girl who likes white men are both no more than a means by which Strickland achieves temporary settlement of his uncontrollable, yet very artistic urges. Such urges definitely have something to do with the basic male animal instinct of reproduction, of which he has already had substantial outcome with his wife of an Indian blood. She has born him a beautiful daughter who must be really beautiful.

To this genius, a real whole woman of flesh and soul is primitive and raw, and the meaning of such would become null once the superficial beauty of the body has been transferred onto the canvas of primitivism, absolutely superficially with rawness of course, through his primeval senses and sophisticated, yet seriously distorting artistic perceptions.

Yet to the eyes of an absolute artistic beholder, the image of a naked woman on a canvas is anything but skin-deep, it has to have three souls, namely that of the object woman, that of the painter, and that of the beholder; while the real woman has only one, normally with characteristics and defects that can hardly be transferred onto the canvas by applying paints.

It happens that the ordinary, normal Dutchman is capable of perceiving a very prodigious genius through Strickland's paintings. But he has no idea about the great artist's soaking in certain incomprehensible senses and perceptions. He is fascinated with the spectacular works of the artist in terms of the light reflecting from the canvas, yet he doesn't see the very source of creativity hidden deep in the mind of this very masculine human being, in the forms of humble bio-molecules.

Deep inside this singular Strickland, the reproduction instinct is ornamented and diverted to an extent that certain irrelevant things, or beings, such as the moon, or a coconut tree, etc. could be perceived as something extremely appealing with the strong instinctive effect of sexual interest. His sensuality is subconsciously switched to such irrelevant objects, more or less in a sexual fetishistic manner with either heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual nature. Such subconscious diversion might have come from certain intricate implications from God knows where and of God knows what kinds. It is simply untold to the readers. Maugham had never studied modern psychology, I guess.
As Strickland cannot actually have simple intimacy with the moon or a coconut tree, painting them like he does the female body is the furthest he can go, and also the only one-way relationship he can actually enjoy with the object as a form of sensuality.
It seems that Strickland would paint whatever nude female body he can take. The three women are of no significance at all in terms of the inspiration of the rather insane yet extremely artistic behaviour of the primitivist. He has been very much self-inspired. Unlike Maugham and Gauguin, his creativity is very much original.

I would boldly suggest that this genius might even have an incestuous desire for painting his own lovely young daughter nude. This might be the only plausible reason that perfectly justifies his leaving abruptly his wife and daughter for good as though he hates them so very much, giving such an extremely absurd yet simple reason that he wants to paint! Fractions of his consciousness and morals might still have prevented him from doing something too destructive to his wife and daughter. And this could be something Maugham, if he is subtly aware of, doesn't want to explicate. He simply leaves it to the readers for guessing, together with the puzzling title consisting of two round objects some 300 thousand kilometres apart.

Now we know that Maugham the author was homosexual. He could be no more empathetic for Strickland, than that clubfooted Philip Carey in his other novel OF HUMAN BONDAGE. Strickland and Carey are both heterosexual. If a man's sexual interest is oriented not to the fair sex so as to serve Mother Nature's purpose, I would speculate, he could have more empathy for a person who admires the beauty of a sixpence as exactly he does that of the bright full moon.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE's Carey's deformity in the eyes of the vulgar Mildred, which is believed by many to correspond to the author's homosexuality, is unspeakable to the medical 'stoodent' himself, so is Strickland's real reason for abandoning his wife and daughter altogether.