The Blogger Lifestyle

Camille Gaudreau

Hi guys ! As my last post here I wanted to have a little chat with you about my experience as a blogger. First thing first, you must know that I am not really the social media type. I am the type of girl who goes on hikes because she loves it, not because she wants to take a picture at the top of the hill, you know. I must admit that I really liked my experience, it is really fun to have feedbacks from you guys and to be able to share a passion with so many people. The negative side of my review on the subject is that I have no life, I basically go to school, then go to work, then go to the gym, then sleep and start all over again the next day……. and I try to plug my homework in somewhere. To me, a girl working 30 hours a week and being in class 27 hours a week, it was quite hard to keep up with all the work a blog needs. It isn’t just writing about what you like, it is also choosing the right pictures, proofreading and so on. All I want to say is that although finishing this blog is kind of liberating since it was for a school project, I will miss it.

Pros and Cons of Writing A Blog

Florence Pageau 

Hello folks,

For my weekly blog post, I decided to do something a little bit different. Since the beginning of this blog, we have posted a ton of information about the Razor’s Edge, but we have not explained how we started the blog, what difficulties we have been through, and what are the tricks you can use. Below, I will give you a list of my top five advices and steps to start a blog on WordPress without giving you headaches.

1.    Find a title that will differentiate you from others. It needs to be easy for the viewers to get to your link by doing researches on your particular book. In our case, Razor’s edge SLC seems straightforward. Still, it is important to decide where we place the words and if we put spacings between them to create a different meaning.
2.    The division of your blog is also a priority. The accessibility people will have to a certain subject, such as characters or glossary, will create traffic on your blog. It will be easier for you to post in precise sections and you will be able to go back quickly to them and do appropriate modifications if necessary.
3.    The tags, that were the cause of many problems since we had not put any at first, are a very important part of getting traffic. The utility of tags is primordial since it is by those words that people will make research and be able to access your content. For example, in a glossary about the razor’s edge I used the tags literature, novel, book, the razor’s edge, learn, authors, and learning, which are all related to the post in different ways.
4.    Images and visual content is often forgotten at the expense of more energy on the content, but it is always more interesting to read something when you can relate on images to create links. In this case, we added images of the cities and places to show the ambiance surrounding those.
5.    This advice does not apply to everyone, but in a case of a blog with several writers, it is important to maintain a certain continuity in the content and the way it is posted. For example, writing in the form of paragraphs or bullet point, how many posts per week, the type, and the size of the writing have to be discussed so that they remain constant. You will create a more coherent blog by choosing the same options for everyone and even more if you have one person in charge of publishing and verifying the content. By the same occasion, take the time to proofread and check the quality of your content.

Hope that this will help you to create an outstanding blog.

Florence

Character Analysis

Evelyne Richard

Hi pals!

You surely noticed that the action of the novel, along with the evolution of the characters, moves very quickly. Here is a short analysis of the main characters discussed in Part 5 to help you to keep track over it all.

Maugham is involved in many situations in this chapter. First, he is the one who has to deal with Isabel when she panics over Sophie and Larry’s engagement. He even defies her point of view, which makes Isabel very angry, but he manages to bring back the harmony in their friendship. Then, he sees Sophie in Toulon after she broke the engagement. Thus, he gets to know the reason why she left Larry without notice. In the end, Maugham takes very good care of Elliott when he is sick. He comes to visit him every time he is having a bad day and he even manages to have a party invitation mailed to him, because the fact that he did not receive one upsets him to the highest point. In this part, Maugham is a very good support for many characters.

Isabel is very upset that Larry will marry Sophie Macdonald. She still loves him and she is very jealous that Sophie will be the one to marry him, since it should have been her many years ago. She manages to behave in the presence of Larry and Sophie, but she is very sensible to this whole situation. She is very glad when she learns that their engagement was broken.

Gray is so grateful to Larry for curing his headaches that he almost worships him.

Larry takes pity of Sophie Macdonald’s situation when they first meet her at the bar, and shortly after, he wants to marry her. His relationship with Sophie is very similar to the one he had with Suzanne Rouvier. He takes a vulnerable and troubled woman as his lover and he takes very good care of her. He ends up being disappointed since Sophie runs away just before the wedding.  

Elliott is getting old and his health condition deteriorates throughout the chapter. On his deathbed, the main thing that makes him upset is that he has not been invited to Edna Novemali’s party, which is pathetic according to Maugham. He dies at last, preserving the same values he cherished throughout his life, namely, pride and prestige.

Sophie Macdonald is an old friend of Isabel and Larry when they all lived at Marvin. Sophie was deeply in love and had a child, but both her husband and their baby were killed in a car accident. After their deaths, she was devastated. She moved to Paris and started to live a very different lifestyle. She developed a dependence to alcohol and to opium, and she slept with a great number of men. She enters the story when Larry, Gray, Isabel and Maugham meet her in a bar on Rue de Lappe. Shortly after this event, Larry and her decide to get married. She quits her bad habits for him, but she definitely does not seem healthy nor happy. One day, while waiting for Isabel in her apartment, she gets drunk and she runs away. Larry looks for her everywhere, but he cannot find her, so the wedding is called off. Then, Maugham sees her in Toulon, and she explains that she could not resist to her bad habits and that she had to leave Larry for this reason.

Joseph is Elliott’s servant. He is very involved in Elliott’s life and he takes very good care of him while he is sick.

Edna Novemali is a very wealthy American woman. She married a Roman prince, which conferred her the title of Princess Novemali. According to Maugham she is a very nice person, but she has a “malicious tongue.” She is known to host amazing parties, but she did not invite Elliott to her next one, because he revealed to a number of people that she was having an affair with her chauffeur.

Miss Keith is Princess Novemali’s secretary. She is very faithful to Edna, but she makes an exception when Maugham asks her to take an invitation card so that he could mail it to Elliott and so that he would stop being upset because he was not invited to the party. Besides, even if Edna does not like Elliott very much, Miss Keith thinks he is a gentleman and she feels pity for him.

Paul Barton is reintroduced in the story. Elliott still hates him because of his ungratefulness towards what Elliott did for him so that he could enter society. This time, Paul has the nerve to come to see Elliott on his deathbed to ask him if he could borrow a precious costume that he wants to wear to Princess Novemali’s party, to which Elliott was not even invited.

Chapter Summary

 

Élisabeth Lacombe

Maugham spends a lot of time with Isabel, Larry and Gray. Gray is getting better and better with the help of Larry’s treatment. Just before getting back to the Riviera, on his last night in Paris, he meets Sophie Macdonald. It was on an evening where the four friends hung out in a café on Rue de Lappe. Sophie came up to their table and started to talk with them. She knew the four of them, but Maugham had no recognition of her. From Isabel’s attitude, we can easily notice that she did not appreciate Sophie. Sophie was very drunk and impolite, she was making a fool of herself in front of everybody. When she left, Isabel told Maugham her story; she lost her husband and her child in a car accident and has been an alcoholic since then. Larry admits that he has known her since she was fourteen. He use to be her confident and they would read poetry to one another, Sophie writing poetry herself.

Then, Maugham went to see Elliott in the Antibes and he looked very well. He continued to go to parties, although he felt a detachment toward the new upper-class and felt embarrassed to be in such company. However, he became a constant visitor of his new neighbor, a retired actress. Afterwards, Elliott and Maugham went to Paris together. When Maugham got to his hotel, he received a note from Isabel telling him to meet her as soon as possible. She warned him that Larry would marry Sophie, the friend from Chicago. Isabel wanted Maugham to persuade Larry to not marry her. She asked him because she thought he had a great deal of influence on him. After arguing on the subject, Isabel admitted that she still loves Larry. Maugham suggested to Isabel to go shopping with Sophie, but she said that she would rather invite Sophie and Larry to lunch. They accepted, and they all went to  Ritz. After lunch, Isabel brought Sophie to see a dress show. The wedding finally never happened. Sophie disappeared three days before, and Larry looked for her everywhere.

A year later, Maugham ran into Sophie in Toulon. She tells him the reason she did not marry Larry. In fact, it was because while she was with him, she had not smoke nor drink, and she realised that she could not live this way anymore. She took a train to Toulon where she went at a friend’s place during three days, smoking opium and sleeping with men.

Later in this chapter, Maugham received a message saying that Elliott was ill, he had an attack of uremia. However, he still goes to social gatherings and parties even if his doctor forbade him to leave his room. Elliott was very mad because he had not been invited to the best party of the season, which is Princess Edna Novemali’s party. In fact, Elliot had introduced her to everyone she knew and he got nothing in return. Maugham managed to find him an invitation to flatter his ego. Elliott, close to death, responded to the invitation and declined it. He dies a couple hours after, in Maugham’s company.

Character relationship

Dear readers,

For this week’s post on characters relationship, I decided to do a little something different for you. In fact, I decided to do an update on current relationships and introduce new ones discovered in part four of the book. So, here is a short straight-to-the-point update on the character relationships. I hope you will enjoy!

To start off, it is important to know that the Maturins moved into Elliot’s apartment on the Left Bank after the crash, and that Isabel and Gray moved into Elliot’s apartment in Paris.

Later in this chapter, Maugham and Isabel meet up after ten years without seeing each other. Even if they have not seen each other in a long time and never spent a lot of time together, it feels like the age gap between them does not exist and they behave like old friends. Maugham is introduced to Isabel’s two daughters, Joan, the elder, and Priscilla. They are respectively eight years old and six years old. He keeps in touch with them and visits the family about four times a week.

Isabel asks Maugham if he has had any news from Larry, but he unfortunately has nothing to tell her since he has not seen him for a few years. However, it does not take long before he runs into him. In fact, while he was having a drink on a terrace, Larry goes to him but he is unrecognizable. They end up having a drink together, and they catch up a little. Larry then explains to Maugham that he is coming back from India and that he is staying in Paris for a while.

Maugham tells Isabel and Gray about the happy news, and soon after, Larry visits them. They are all very happy to see each other after such a long time, but we can feel a psychological gap between the three characters and Larry. In fact, he has not changed physically, but he became a whole other person. He grew spiritually, and as Isabel became a woman and a mother, their mental connection has been affected by their opposite life path. However, this does not prevent Larry from developing a strong relationship with Gray and her as he is curing Gray from his headaches. In fact, Gray develops a ‘childlike trust’ (maugham p.160) in Larry.

Afterwards, Maugham points out to Isabel that her daughters worship her, but do not love her as they love their father. She is a great mother, she educates them well, but she is not wrapping them up with love and affection. Isabel then confesses to Maugham that she does not regret marrying Gray instead of Larry. She admits that at that time, she only had a physical attraction for Larry, but that she would have never been happy with him, although she said before that Larry is the only man she ever loved.

By the end of part four, we are introduced to a new character; Suzanne Rouvier, who is Monsieur Achille Gauvain’s mistress. Maugham and her are good friends. Maugham later learns that Larry and Suzanne know each other. She practically fell in love with him when they were younger. It was about seven years ago, when Odette was five. She met him when she lived at Marcel’s, and Larry took care of Odette and her when Suzanne was going through a harsh period.

Elisabeth

Glossary

Alexane Drolet

Hi readers!

This week I want to help you with some terms I found difficult and to provide  secondary sources in order to increase the comprehension of your reading. Do not hesitate for further explanations, I am here to help you!

Here are some references I found important to define.

Mortefontaine: This is a community in the Oise department in Northern France. It was bought by Joseph Bonaparte, the elder brother of Napoléon!

Tuileries Gardens: It is a very beautiful public garden. It is located in the 1st arrondissement in Paris, near the Louvre Museum.

Burma: This is a country in Asia. This country contains more than 100 different ethnic groups.

Farm in Illinois: These farms are known to be very beautiful and peaceful. The average size of an Illinois farm is 358 acres.

Duc de Guise: His name is Henry I. He was born on December 1550 and assassinated in 1588.

André Gide’s journal: The founder’s real name was André Paul Guillaume Gide. He is a well-known French author who won a Nobel prize for his work in literature.

Boulevard St. Germain: This is a major street in Paris. This street is 3.5 km long and is beautiful. Many tourists want to see this street.

Avenue Foch: This is also a well-known street in Paris. It has been named after the first World War. This is one the most prestigious streets in Paris.

Larue’s and the Café de Paris: This is a very peaceful coffeehouse on Larue street, also located in Paris. This place is more for French people than for tourists.

Montmartre: This is a large hill in Paris’ 18th arrondissement. Montmartre is often compared to Disney Land.

Boulevard du Montparnasse: This is a two-way boulevard in Montparnasse. It is located in the 6th, 14th and 15th arrondissement.

Lion de Belfort: This is a monumental sculpture of a lion. It has been constructed by Frederic Bartholdi, who also made the Statue of Liberty!

Arnold Bennett: He is an English writer. Mostly known as a novelist, but he worked in the fields of theatre and journalism as well.

Café du Dome: This is a café in Montparnasse, Paris. It is now widely known for being a “Anglo-American café”.

The cure at Montecatini: This cure is all about the Regina water, which would help many stressful person to relax. The cure at Montecatini is referred as spa, which uses different natural product.

Romanesque church: These church are constructed by having the medieval style in mind. There are still some romanesque churches in Paris but it is not as popular as it use to be.

Now, I wanted to do a glossary, which is different from the other ones. This is quiz time everybody!!

Here are 5 complicated words. Try to find what it means. The answers are below.

“But now, she was as slender as anyone could wish.” p.136

a) Thin, slight and small.
b) Huge and obese
c) Very tall
d) Beautiful and stunning.
      
    2. “ her frocks had been somewhat on the showy side.” p.136

a) Fancy shoes
b) gown/dress worn by a girl
c) Attitude towards the poor
d) Way of thinking that is somehow different

3. 
   “ her hazel eyes” p.138
   
   a)  green
   b) Different color
   c) Weird and small
   d) Light golden brown
   
   4. “ She smiled engagingly.” p.140
   
   a) Winning and pleasing
   b) With attitude
   c) Having something else in mind
   d) With confidence
   
   5. “They looked frail.” p.142
   
   a) Broke
   b) Poor
   c) Rich
   d) Fragile
   
   See you  next week for the answers! 

 

Part Summary

The fourth part of the book happens during Maugham’s visit in Paris. He first visits Isabel, whom he had not seen for ten years, Gray and their daughters. The family is very happy in Paris in Elliott’s apartment, but Gray is worried because he is not in good conditions to get a job. A few days later, Maugham runs into Larry on a terrace. Larry says that he has been in Paris for a month, but that he spent the last five years in India. They talk about Isabel, and Larry says he will be very glad to visit the family. Five days later, he comes to the apartment while Maugham is there, and they all have dinner together. They arrange to dine together in two days, but when Maugham and Larry arrive, Gray has a headache that keeps him from going. Larry exercises a practice on Gray, that he probably learned in India, and Gray’s headache goes away. The next day, Isabel and Maugham have a long discussion about her relationship with Larry and the feelings she has towards him. She says that Larry is the only man she has ever loved, but that even if she does not love Gray, he is a loving husband and he has many other qualities. Maugham starts to talk about love and it makes Isabel question the reciprocity of her feelings for Larry. After leaving Isabel’s apartment, Maugham thinks about Suzanne Rouvier, a friend of his. He retells her whole life. She was mostly going from painter to painter to offer herself as a muse and as a lover. She had a child with one of the painters, Odette, but she was not able to take care of her. She gave Odette to her mother so that someone would take care of her. Suzanne had a tough time and she got sick. After she got better, she met Monsieur Achille Gauvain, a manufacturer who wanted to take her as a mistress during his occasional visits in Paris. He was willing to pay for her apartment and to give her two thousand francs a month in exchange, so she accepted his offer. One night, while Suzanne and Maugham were having dinner, they ran into Larry who surprisingly knew Suzanne. Later, Suzanne explains that the reason why she knows him is that he was the friend of one of her lovers. Six years ago, when she was sick and alone, she met him accidentally. He took care of her and he decided to take Odette and her in the country for her to get better. They were having a very good time together and Suzanne almost fell in love, but when she was better, he left her.

Evelyne

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to all of you, passionate readers! You are now entering a 100% student made blog where you will be able to get access to all the juicy details and analysis behind Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge”. This Masterpiece of information has been created by seven passionate students; Alexane, Justine, Florence, Camille, Elizabeth, Mathieu & Evelyne who read the whole novel and analyzed every part of it thoroughly for your own pleasure and success.

During the upcoming weeks, you will have access to many articles discussing every part of the novel including summaries. Characters, glossaries and many other articles will be provided in different formats, all of them being user friendly.

We hope you enjoy. Feel free to comment on our posts!

Justine, Évelyne, Camille, Mathieu, Alexane & Élisabeth