The Impossible Rebirth: The Subjectivities in the Age of Finance Capitalism in The Razor’s Edge

Abstract

This paper analyzes how Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1944) represents the advent of finance capitalism during the interwar years. Specifically, this paper pays attention to a series of subjectivities featuring the social milieu based on finance capital set loose over the globe. Maugham has been criticized for focusing on the characters’ externals in a conventional fashion. As a result, he has been marginalized from the academic discourse on the early twentieth-century literature dominated by modernist studies. This paper will prove that Maugham’s attention to the externals is part of his literary design for effectively representing characters who embody the uncontrolled and perpetual proliferation of finance capital without an independent and reflective consciousness. In particular, Larry, the novel’s central character, becomes disillusioned with the declining Western civilization and then travels to foreign soils in search of the opportunity to be symbolically reborn. This paper will prove that the novel eventually debunks the fetishistic nature of this imperial search and unveils it as another cultural expression of supranational finance capitalism. Ultimately, this paper aims to contribute to the reevaluation of Maugham’s literary achievement by highlighting his pioneering representation of the post-modern world.