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The Painted Veil has often been hailed as a proto-feminist work: Kitty Fane shows a growth and dynamism that the men around her lack, and is ultimately able to move past the bad choices. In writing The Painted Veil, he decided to bring this story into a modern setting and change the ending. Maugham was intrigued by the idea of a jilted husband who forced his wife into a dangerous situation, and what the woman might experience there. He took her down to his castle in the Maremma and hoped that the noxious vapors there would end her life, but when she did not fall ill he threw her out of the window. Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with his ring." A tutor told Maugham that these lines were spoken by Pia, a women from Siena whose husband suspected her of adultery but was afraid to kill her because of her powerful family. The Purgatorio section of the Comedy contains the lines "Pray, when you are returned to the world, and rested from the long journey, remember me, who am Pia. Maugham's story of an unfaithful woman who follows her husband into a cholera epidemic and ultimately earns redemption was inspired by a story in Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
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