The Gioconda Smile (1922) – Aldous Huxley

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Picking up the Wednesday literature segment where we last left off with The Force of Circumstance (1924) – W. Somerset Maugham, today I bring to you another short story from my last read – The Penguin Book of Short Stories (image inset). This anthology features some of the most celebrated names in literature, including Dickens, Huxley, Joyce, Maugham, Wells, and Woolf. Its themes span the supernatural, colonialism, cultural and societal tensions, and madness – to name just a few.

Today’s featured story – The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley is the last I will present here from the above collection of short stories. Huxley is an English writer and philosopher and best known for his dystopian classic about the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress- Brave New World (1932). I featured a two-part series here on that novel in December in 2020. Huxley’s bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

The Gioconda Smile is a sharp, dark little story with a twist towards the end to die-for. In just a few pages, Huxley creates a whole world full of quiet tension, dry humour, and characters who aren’t quite what they seem.

Mr. Hutton seems friendly and polished, but underneath, he’s careless. Miss Janet is smart and quiet, always noticing things. And Mrs. Hutton… you’ll find out. Every person in the story has more going on than you expect, and Huxley slowly reveals their true selves in a calm, clever way.

The tone shifts between light and unsettling. One moment I was enjoying the witty conversation, the next I felt uneasy, like something wasn’t right. And sure enough, something wasn’t. It’s about an hour long read, but it feels complete – like a whole novel squeezed into one strong shot.

If you like clever stories that are a little dark and a little twisted, The Gioconda Smile is worth your time. It’s a polite smile that hides something cold underneath – and it sticks with you. It reminded me a lot of Oscar Wilde’s book – The Picture of Dorian Gray which I featured here in a 4 part series in 2019. The hedonistic and amoral Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray shares much in common with Mr. Hutton, the flawed protagonist of The Gioconda Smile.

The extract below from The Gioconda Smile is my favourite part. It shows Mr. Hutton at his most honest and strangely likeable, even in all his weakness. After a lifetime of chasing pleasure and avoiding responsibility, something shifts – just for a moment. He hits a low point, sees how empty his life has become, and suddenly feels a kind of grace wash over him. He makes a promise to change – to live better, think deeper, and use his time wisely. And after seven days of trying, he finally gets what feels like a reward: seven and a half hours of sleep. A solid, peaceful rest — like a small redemption. But Huxley, with his sharp humour and dark honesty, doesn’t let that hope last long.

The story captures that bittersweet truth: sometimes even our best intentions dissolve in the light of day. This is a classic case of How Freud viewed the Main Conflicts of Man where we are driven more by our innate and natural aggression instincts and sexual urges. The rationalist conscious over-pinning barely just tinkers.

Extract from The Gioconda Smile

What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There were only Doris’s little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself—always himself….

Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: “I will, I will.” The sound of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: “I will, I will.” There had been New Year’s days and solemn anniversaries in the past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would be so.

In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed in the best modern way—silos and artificial manures and continuous cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so long—The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation.

Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had been transformed by a good night’s rest into his customary cheerfulness. It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good anecdote in Skelton’s jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil.

On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar handwriting which he knew to be Doris’s. He opened it, and began to read. She didn’t know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife dying like that, and so suddenly—it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on:

“Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or depressed, then I can’t help remembering it is there so close, and I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless without you. I didn’t mean to write to you; I meant to wait till you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn’t help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love me a little, don’t you, Teddy Bear?”

Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, worshipped for having seduced the girl—it was too much. It had just been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew beforehand—so well, so well—that there was no interest or pleasure to be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife’s maid, and Edith, the girl on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and others—there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet…. Experience doesn’t teach.

Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he wouldn’t see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old bailiff was more irritating than usual.

Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was hopeless, hopeless.

For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.

The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.

“Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?” The question came faintly from distant worlds of love.

You can read the entire story here or listen to it below. Thanks for reading.