Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard is a novel by British author William Somerset Maugham. It is often alleged to be a thinly veiled roman à clef examining contemporary novelists Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole — though Maugham maintained he had created both characters as composites and in fact explicitly denies any connection to Hardy in his own introduction to later editions of the novel. Maugham exposes the misguided social snobbery leveled at the character Rosie Driffield , whose frankness, honesty and sexual freedom make her a target of conservative propriety. Her... character is treated favourably by the book's narrator, Ashenden, who understands her sexual energy to be a muse to the many artists who surround her.
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