An Unheroic Hero: Somerset Maugham’s Autobiographical Fable of the Anglo-Boer War

Set during the Anglo-Boer War, The Hero is the story of a young man’s rebellion against the mores of fin de siècle England. It offers a fierce critique of military heroism, anticipating by some years the drastic demolition of military idealism that was to follow WWI. Ambiguous off-stage soldierly heroics, under the big skies of South Africa, take the novel far beneath the gently comic surface of life in Little Primpton to probe fundamental questions about human nature: war and sex, politics and combat, mating and marriage. Published in 1901, Maugham never permitted this novel to be republished. No reason was given, but this article proffers an explanation presenting the novel as a revealing autobiographical fable that establishes the philosophical roots of Maugham’s emerging aesthetic.