# XI: Fear explained — On a Chinese Screen

> Chapter companion for On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham.

## What happens

The narrator stays with Mr. Wingrove, a missionary in China, and observes the stark contrast between his refined tastes and his wife's vulgarity. Through subtle cues—his tortured eyes, strained voice, and physical revulsion toward the Chinese—the narrator realizes that Wingrove secretly loathes the very people he has devoted his life to saving. The chapter explores Wingrove's inner torment: he married beneath his class and cut himself off from the Oxford life he loved, driven by a religious compulsion he could not resist, and now martyrs his soul daily.

## Themes in this chapter

### Hypocrisy and Moral Compromise

Wingrove outwardly praises the Chinese while inwardly feeling revulsion, embodying a deep hypocrisy between his professed faith and his true feelings.

### Colonial Ennui and Isolation

Wingrove's loneliness and spiritual exhaustion in a foreign land, cut off from the intellectual life he once loved, illustrate colonial ennui.

## Character check-ins

### Mr. Wingrove

A former Oxford tutor turned missionary, now haunted by disgust for his work and the Chinese people, yet bound by religious duty.

### Mrs. Wingrove

Mr. Wingrove's wife, a vulgar woman with gold-rimmed spectacles, who dislikes Chinese art and embodies the class difference between them.

## Key lines

> I saw the disgust in his soul for all that his will loved.

The narrator realized that Wingrove's will forced him to love what his soul actually hated.

_Captures the central revelation of Wingrove's inner conflict._

> He martyred his tortured soul with a passionate exasperation.

Wingrove deliberately inflicted suffering on himself out of a fierce, frustrated devotion.

_Summarizes Wingrove's self-destructive religious zeal._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/chapters/xi-fear
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/chapters