Kitty’s+social+background

**A. Kazakova **
 * Kitty's social background **

I have read a wonderful novel, written by W. S. Mougham "The Painted Veil." One of the main heroes was Kitty Fane. She was a beauty. She gave promise of being when she was still a child, for she had large, dark eyes, brown, curling hair in which there was a reddish tint, exquisite teeth and a lovely skin. Her beauty depended a good deal on her youth, and her mother realized that she must marry in the first flush of her maidenhood. She had a charming gaiety and the desire to please. Kitty had been brought up with the knowledge that she was going to be a beautiful woman and she more than suspected her mother's ambitions. Kitty's mother was a hard, cruel, managing, ambitious and stupid woman. Her husband, Mr. Garstin, was on the Nothern Curcuit. He had seemed then a youg man on promise and her father said he would go far. He hadn't. He was painstaking, industrious, and capable, but he hadn't the will to advance himself. Mrs. Garstin despised him. But she realized that she could only achieve success through him, and she set herself to drive him on the way she desired to go. She hagged him without mercy. In twenty-five years Mrs. Garstin never invited any one to dine at her house because she liked him. She gave large dinner parties at regular intervals. She hated to spend money. She made her husband stand for parliament. The fact of his standing had brought her in contact with a number of prominent persons. But his misgivings were justified. He made no headway as a leader and his briefs were few. His daughters had never looked upon him as anything but a source of income; it had always seemed perfectly natural that he should lead a dog's life in order to provide them with board and lodging, clothes, holidays and money for odds and ends. He was a stranger to them, but because he was their father they took it for granted that he should love and cherish them. So, Kitty spent her life visiting parties and theatres, playing games and flirting with men. She used to spend it for pleasure. That is why when she came to Mei-tan-fu with her husband Walter Fane, she had a great shock. She could see another life, grey life with deseases and sorrow, a death life. But there was a light in all that darkness. It were the nuns. They tought Kitty that the most important thing in the man's life is peace. The peace not only around you, but the peace inside you. Kitty left Mei-tan-fu absolutely different person.