The Painted Veil

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the novel over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Consider the novel’s attitude towards romantic love and the extent to which the characters can rely on their experiences with the opposite sex to provide a sense of stability and fulfilment.

• Within both Kitty and Walter’s marriage and Kitty and Townsend’s affair, how does Maugham show that romantic relationships fail to meet the characters’ expectations? (topic sentence)
• Closely read one scene between Kitty and Walter and one scene between Kitty and Townsend; for each, detail how the characters’ romantic attachments lead to sorrow and regret.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, compare Kitty’s two relationships, stating whether the dynamics have anything in common and whether there could be a contextual reason for this. Finally, summarize your overall impression of the text’s attitude towards love.