Book Review - E.M. Forster's Maurice
Maurice by E.M. Forster
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1971
Format: Hardcover, 319 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Maurice Hall leads an unexceptional life. He is neither brilliant nor dense. He is comfortably middle of the road. But ever since his teacher took him aside one day when he was fourteen to tell him about the facts of life, due to Maurice's father being dead, Maurice has known he was different. He felt removed from marriage as being life's goal. He spent years lost in the fog of puberty and adolescence to one day find a hand reaching out of the mist to him making everything clear. That hand belonged to Clive Durham, and Maurice thought that Clive would be the love of his life. Because that is how Maurice is different, he has always been attracted to men, but never known the truth of himself till Clive. They were together throughout their years at Cambridge, Clive introducing him to the world of the Greeks. In fact Clive and Maurice spend several happy years together until one day Clive says that after his recent illness he is no longer attracted to men and now wants to marry and settle down with the woman of his dreams. Maurice doesn't know how to handle this new information. How does going to Rome turn you heterosexual? He is at sea and can only see two ways out, he shall either kill himself or cure himself. Perhaps hypnotism is the answer? A doctor whom he visits says he has a fifty percent success rate. Though it's clear that Maurice can not cure who he is. Yet little does he realize that perhaps Clive wasn't the love of his life. Perhaps life can go on without Clive. Biting the bullet and visiting Clive and his new wife at the ancestral pile, Penge, Maurice meets an insolent young under-gamekeeper, Alec Scudder, who answers Maurice's cry of need in the night. But does Alec spell ruin or redemption for Maurice? Either way, it spells the end of the comfortable suburban life he has been living till now. Because who knows if homosexual relationships, true human nature, will ever be accepted in England.
Maurice was written right before the outbreak of WWI yet was never published during Forster's lifetime. A select group of friends read it and passed it around between them but Forster didn't seem to think that it was worth it to publish the book during his lifetime. This is of course due to the public perception of homosexuality combined with his book having a happy ending. It would have been obscene libel and might have gone the way of Lady Chatterley's Lover. But there's a part of me that really wishes he had published it. To have an established author release a book that was a homosexual love story might have shaken up the society of the time and deservedly so. It shows two different, yet loving, homosexual relationships between consenting adults. I can't help but wonder if Maurice was published earlier, if more authors of the time showed that this is just human nature, that maybe, just maybe, acceptance would be more prolific. And perhaps it wouldn't have taken until 1967 to decriminalise homosexual acts in private between consenting adults. The publication of Maurice being delayed made it an odd duck. It felt like it's time had already been and gone, missing the boat completely. Not to mention that the execution is lackluster with Maurice almost being a caricature. And yet it was so refreshing to find characters who just accepted who they were. Clive Durham never denied that he preferred men. Never. From his youngest yearnings he was honest with himself and his honesty let Maurice realize his own truth, that he too had always been only attracted to men. But was Forster really advocating for being openly in love? Maurice tells Alec that two against the world can do anything. Well, to me, that means to live in defiance of society, to take on the world. To Maurice it means to retire from society and hide in the greenwood like actual fairies. WHAT!?! I thought two against the world can do anything? So true love is acceptable only by complete removal from the society that is trying to conform them? The choice offered here isn't really a choice. You can make yourself an outcast, and let society win, or conform with society and let society win. Don't you get it? Love wins!
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