Novel: Cakes and Ale

Overview
Cakes and Ale is W. Somerset Maugham's sly, bittersweet novel about art, memory, and the manufacture of literary reputation. Framed as the reminiscences of novelist William Ashenden, it contrasts the warm, unruly vitality of Rosie Driffield with the chilly propriety of those who seek to control the story of the great writer Edward Driffield. Part satire of the literary world and part elegy for a vanished, freer spirit, the book probes how truth gets tidied into legend and how a life force can be both muse and scandal.

Plot
Ashenden is approached by Alroy Kear, a smooth, fashionable novelist commissioned by Amy Driffield to prepare the official biography of her late husband, Edward Driffield, now canonized as a grand old man of English letters. Amy wants a dignified portrait; Kear wants a marketable one. Both prefer to omit Edward's first marriage to Rosie, a woman whose open sensuality and disregard for convention once caused a village uproar. The request sends Ashenden back to his youth in Blackstable, where he knew the Driffields before fame and respectability replaced gossip and delight.

In memory, Blackstable is provincial and censorious, and Edward's early genius is rough-hewn, nourished by observation and the generous energies of Rosie. Ashenden, a shy young man then, is dazzled by her frankness and kindness; she loves easily, without calculation, and refuses to be shamed for it. Scandal follows them to London, where Edward writes the books that later make his name. Eventually Rosie slips away with another man, acting from an ungovernable impulse to love rather than malice. Edward is hurt, but time and work steady him. He remarries. Amy, prim and capable, organizes his life, guides his career, and later tends his posthumous reputation with curatorial zeal.

Years later, after Amy and Kear press for anecdotes that will keep the past neat, Ashenden encounters Rosie again abroad. She is older, still radiant with a serene gaiety, untouched by remorse. She speaks simply about having loved as she pleased and about how men used her image while scorning her person. She keeps Edward's letters, tender and revealing, but asks Ashenden to burn them, unwilling to let her private truth be embalmed in a pious narrative. He does, and when Kear publishes the official life, Rosie appears only as a vulgar footnote, the inconvenient spark snuffed out on the page though not in Ashenden's memory.

Characters and Themes
Rosie stands at the heart of the book, a figure of generosity who embodies appetite, kindness, and candor. Amy Driffield represents respectability and control, intent on smoothing a life into a monument. Alroy Kear is a deft opportunist whose charm hides timidity and a devotion to fashion over truth. Edward Driffield himself is seen obliquely: a craftsman whose finest work is rooted in the rough soil of his first marriage, later preserved in marble by his second.

The novel weighs art against morality, authenticity against reputation, and celebrates the unruly sources from which literature often springs. It mocks the genteel falsities of official biography while honoring the messy, unclassifiable life that art depends on.

Significance of Title and Ending
The title echoes Shakespeare's cheeky defense of pleasure: cakes and ale endure despite piety. By consigning Edward's letters to fire and keeping Rosie alive in recollection, Ashenden chooses life over legend. The last notes are tender and ironic: the public shelf holds the sanitized statue, while the real animating spirit remains offstage, laughing.