The Razor's Edge

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1944

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 5, Chapters 1-3 Summary

Larry remains in Paris, and he, Maugham, and the Maturins spend a great deal of time together. Maugham believes it is Larry’s presence that makes the time so idyllic. Larry says very little, but he radiates a peace and happiness that makes everything around him seem golden. They are out driving when Maugham notices Isabel staring, riveted, at Larry’s exposed wrist resting on the back of the seat in front of her. She is frozen with desire. After a few minutes, she shudders, collapses into the corner of the seat, and asks Maugham for a cigarette.

Isabel wants to tour the dives of Paris. They are drinking at a café when a very drunk woman approaches them and greets them by name. It is Sophie, whom Maugham met 10 years ago at a party with Isabel and her friends. She is wearing thick makeup and dirty clothes, and Maugham suspects she is also “doped.” Nevertheless, he feels there is something attractive about her “bold-faced shamelessness.” As they talk with her, Larry watches her soberly.

After Sophie leaves, Isabel tells Maugham that Sophie had married and had a baby but that her husband and child died in a car accident. Sophie, who survived the crash, was so distraught that she began to drink alcohol and, when inebriated, have frequent indiscriminate sex. Gray pities her, but Isabel concludes that Sophie must have been “rotten” and “naturally unbalanced” from the very beginning; the loss of her husband and child merely brought it out of her. Maugham reflects that Isabel’s love for her own husband and children, while genuine, isn’t passionate.

Larry knew Sophie better than the others when they were children. He describes her as having been idealistic, innocent, and intellectually curious. She read a lot and wrote poetry. Larry doesn’t notice Isabel’s jealousy when she hears him talking this way about Sophie.

Leaving Paris, Maugham visits Elliott. Elliott is not well, but he is delighted to tell Maugham all about the little church in Italy that he has purchased and restored with his typical good (and expensive) taste. He has made arrangements to be buried in the church in front of the altar.

Part 5, Chapters 4-6 Summary

Maugham is back in Paris when he receives a note from Isabel begging him to visit her. When he arrives, she tells him that Larry is engaged to marry Sophie and that they are planning to go to Greece on their honeymoon just as Larry had suggested doing with Isabel. Isabel is “frantic,” believing Larry can’t marry such a “bad” woman. Maugham asks what makes her think Sophie is bad. Isabel replies that Sophie is drunk all day long and sleeps with abusive men. Maugham points out that those are only bad habits. Real badness, he says, is lying, cheating, or unkindness.

Maugham agrees that marrying Sophie would be a disaster for Larry, but there is nothing they can do about it. Maugham recounts a modified version of the story from the biblical Book of Matthew (Chapter 4:1-11): After 40 days in the wilderness, the devil offers Jesus three temptations, and Jesus rejects each one. In Maugham’s version, the tempter returns for a final time and tells Jesus that he can save the world by sacrificing himself on the cross. Jesus falls for this temptation.

Maugham’s point is that Larry is prepared to sacrifice himself to save Sophie, and self-sacrifice is too great a temptation for Larry to resist. If Isabel wants to keep Larry’s friendship, she will have to be kind to Sophie. Isabel finally agrees, but there is something in her eyes that makes Maugham think she is up to something.

Maugham arranges an intimate dinner party to celebrate Larry and Sophie’s engagement. Sophie is sober and modestly dressed, she somehow seems listless and dispirited. Elliott orders a bottle of Polish vodka and invites the rest of the party to try it. Most of them decline, but Isabel, not usually a drinker, goes into raptures, praising it at length. Sophie is obviously uncomfortable.

Two weeks later, Maugham hears from Elliott that Sophie disappeared three days before the wedding. A few months after this, Maugham encounters Sophie. She is drunk and under the influence of opium, but she is alive again in a way she wasn’t when she was with Larry. She tells him, “Darling, when it came to the point I couldn’t see myself being Mary Magdalene to his Jesus Christ” (176). Sophie tells him that Isabel had offered to take Sophie shopping, but she left Sophie alone in the sitting room with a bottle of the Polish vodka she had gushed about the night before. Sophie gave in to temptation, and under the influence of the alcohol, felt happy again in a way she hadn’t in the three months that was sober and engaged to Larry. She has returned to her old life of drugs and rough men. Maugham tells her that one day, she is likely to get her throat cut, but she seems unperturbed, saying “Good riddance.”

Part 5, Chapters 7-9 Summary

Elliott is ill and peevish because he wasn’t invited to the fancy-dress party hosted by the Princess Novamali. Now that he is too old and ill to entertain, he has been forgotten. Sad to see Elliott abandoned, Maugham arranges to visit the princess. Once at her estate, when he has a moment to himself, he slips into her secretary’s office. The secretary allows Maugham to appropriate one of the unused invitation cards, which he sends to Elliott in the princess’ name.

Elliott is delighted to receive the invitation and is determined to attend despite his illness. However, his health declines sharply. Because of Elliott’s generosity to the Church, the bishop himself comes to give him the last rites. Afterward, Maugham visits him. Elliott is in good spirits. It’s an honor to be attended by the bishop, and his dignity is restored; he expects to move in the highest circles in heaven. Struck by a mischievous impulse, he asks Maugham to write out his response to Princess Novamali’s invitation. In it, he declines the invitation on the grounds that he has received a better one from his maker. His last words on earth are to call her an “old bitch.”

Part 5 Analysis

Part 5 highlights themes of redemption and salvation, though these concepts become convoluted. For example, Isabel essentially claims she wants to save Larry from a bad marriage to Sophie, but her motives are suspect, and her feelings are obvious to Maugham. In addition to the incident in the car (where Maugham catches her gazing transfixed at Larry’s wrist), she is clearly jealous of Larry’s sympathy for Sophie, and this underpins her brutal judgment of Sophie’s reaction to losing her husband and child. Isabel is probably correct when she says that she herself would never be so destroyed by losing her family; she shows resilience when recovering from the shock of Gray’s financial ruin. However, she also lacks Sophie’s depth of feeling; Sophie’s devastation at her loss evinces that depth

Isabel claims that she gave Larry up for the sake of his happiness. However, if Maugham is truly a reliable narrator, then the reader can trust his interpretation of Isabel—that if there was a sacrifice on her part, it wasn’t made for Larry’s happiness. Isabel desired opulence, and this outweighed her desire for Larry—so she broke off her engagement with him. Isabel’s animosity toward Sophie comes from Isabel’s possessiveness: She simply doesn’t want another woman to have Larry.

Through this plotline with Sophie, Isabel’s hypocrisy is on full display. In one sense, even if Isabel exploited Sophie’s addiction out of jealousy, Isabel indeed saved Larry from a mistake that might have ruined his life. However, in her abusive ruse, she fulfilled each of Maugham’s criteria for badness: She lied when she told Maugham she would try to be kind to Sophie, she cheated by leaving the bottle of vodka within Sophie’s reach, and she was unkind in her ruthless destruction of the other woman’s chance for redemption. Isabel regards Sophie as “bad” because Sophie does things Isabel finds immoral—but, while Sophie is hurting only herself, Isabel set out to knowingly do harm to another person.

At the point when Larry meets Sophie again, the reader has already witnessed Larry’s ability to heal minor hurts and emotional trauma. Larry also showed his compassion for Suzanne. His sympathy for Sophie’s pain is a clear warning that he will attempt to save her. Nevertheless, Larry’s attempt to save Sophie is doomed. He has fallen to the temptation of self-sacrifice. In the past, he was able to help people because they wanted to be helped. Because Sophie doesn’t truly want to be saved, Larry is dominating her and breaking her spirit. His failure is an opportunity for him to learn that he has no right to force redemption on another person, but it’s unclear whether he ever realizes this.

In both cases, Larry and Isabel each do harm in the name of saving someone who hasn’t asked to be saved (the difference is that, with Isabel, saving Larry is a pretense, while Larry’s motives are genuine). Sophie’s reference to Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ reflects Larry’s progression toward his ultimate role as a messianic figure offering enlightenment and redemption to those who seek it.

Elliott, too, partakes in the theme of complicated redemption. After a lifetime of courting the upper echelon of society, it is the Church, not Elliott’s rarified social connections, that honors him for his kindness and generosity. The implication is that Elliott’s pursuit of worldly acclaim has ended in abandonment and that spiritual pursuit is ultimately more satisfactory than worldly acclaim. However, instead of wholly embracing spiritual virtue or the actual spiritual purpose of the Catholic Church, Elliott finds a compromise: He regards the Church as a kind of select club, which gives him a sense of superiority. Having received the last rites from the bishop himself—a privilege that Elliott sees partly as a status symbol—he expects to move in the highest social circles in heaven. This allows him to die happy, having achieved his life’s ambition. His final message to the princess is to snub her, implying that she is his social inferior, and his last words signify his repudiation of the society he leaves behind. Elliott hasn’t abandoned his vanity; his values are as superficial as ever. However, his piety is genuine, and he has given to the Church monuments that will last long after his death. In that sense, he earns his redemption.