A Gay Writer and His Lover in Penang, 1921
A review of ‘The House of Doors’ by Tan Twan Eng
Apart from the gay lives this novel depicts, The House of Doors (2023) is a compelling read for both its historical and physical settings. The greater part of the story takes place on the island of Penang, Malaysia in 1910 and 1921, when it was under British control. The island was at that time a lush tropical home for a small community made up of a wide assortment of inhabitants, including Europeans, Malays, Chinese, Indians, Siamese, Tamils, and Indonesians. In 1910–11 it was also a fundraising centre for the efforts of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty.
The novel opens with the arrival on the island of the writer Somerset Maugham, known to his friends as Willie, and his secretary, and lover, Gerald Haxton, whom Willie supports financially. They are to stay for two weeks at the home of Willie’s old friend Robert Hamlyn, a lawyer, and his wife Lesley. It becomes apparent early in the story that Robert, who is older and suffers from serious respiratory problems, and Lesley no longer sleep together.
Lesley, who narrates half the story in the first person — the other half is told in the third person from Willie’s point of view — was born on Penang and speaks Malay and the local Chinese dialect of Hokkien; she assists the followers of Sun Yat-sen in their fundraising campaign by polishing translations of articles, pamphlets, and other documents. The Hamlyns have two young children and a number of servants.
The relationships in the novel — and not just the gay ones — are complicated, at times dangerous, and filled with secrets. Willie is a highly successful and wealthy novelist, short story writer, and playwright. He is married to Syrie, a London socialite, and they have one child, a daughter. But Willie is gay, and he is deeply in love with Gerald, a younger man whom he met when they were both in the Red Cross ambulance service in France in the Great War.
Gerald is a drinker and a gambler, and highly promiscuous, and as a result of an act of public indecency in a London lavatory, and through the machinations of Syrie, who has connections in lofty places, he has been exiled from England and is never allowed to return. In order to be with Gerald, and to spend as little time as possible with Syrie, Maugham travels extensively with his secretary, writing stories, fictional and non-fictional, about the people and the places he encounters on his travels. This is how he ends up in Penang.
Willie is a product of the Victorian era and thus very much concerned about concealing his homosexuality, while Gerald is uninhibited and manages easily to hook up with men wherever he and Willie find themselves. Willie allows his secretary free reign to pursue his activities and to have sex with as many men as he likes as long as he does not bring anyone back to their hotel or the private home they happen to be staying in.
While the two men occupy separate rooms in the Hamlyn house, it does not take Lesley long to discern the nature of their relationship. “The idea of the two of them writhing about in bed, the very idea of two men in bed was grotesque.”
Yet she soon becomes fascinated with Willie as she discovers their shared interest in China and in Sun Yat-sen. Their relationship deepens into a kind of tentative friendship as she tells him her secrets and reveals the complicated struggles of her life in Penang while probing and poking into his reticence and learning more about his life as a closeted gay man. No spoilers beyond this point.
While deeply closeted (“He was a famous writer and a married man; he had his reputation to preserve.”) and forced to live outside England in order to be with his lover, Willie Maugham was more fortunate than the vast majority of his fellow gay men at the time. He was wealthy and could afford to both travel extensively with Gerald and maintain an upper class home and life for his wife and daughter in London. Nevertheless, life was a delicate balancing act, and one lived under the constant danger of being exposed.
A word about Lesley: she is the star of this novel. A complex character, she is a strong, and rather angry feminist who expresses her opinions freely and often sharply to the men in her circle. She is on the one hand trapped in a traditional role in a rigid society, yet she finds ways to assert her independence, to employ her skills in support of a noble cause, to manage a busy household, including hosting guests of whom she does not necessarily approve. In the end she trades her anger and frustration for empathy, acceptance, and contentment.
Tan Twan Eng has given us a deliciously complex story, with characters who must reconcile their status as outsiders — in a society that is hostile to those who do not conform — with their own need to find love, recognition of their individual humanity, and contentment.
