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    Maurice
    Maurice
    Maurice
    Ebook274 pages4 hours

    Maurice

    By E.M. Forster

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Written in 1914 by the Nobel Prize–nominated author of Howard’s End, this intimate portrait of homosexual desire “seems as relevant as ever” (The Guardian).
     
    From early adolescence to his college years at Cambridge and into professional life at his father’s firm, Maurice Hall plays the part of the conventional Englishman. All the while, he harbors a secret wish to lose himself from society and embrace who he truly is.
     
    Maurice’s first love, Clive Durham, introduces him to the ancient Greeks who embraced same-sex attraction. But when Clive marries a woman, Maurice is distraught enough to seek a hypnotist who might “cure” him of his homosexuality. In his quest to accept his true self, Maurice must ultimately go against the grain of society’s unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
     
    Though Forster completed Maurice in 1914, he left instructions for it be published only after his death. Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely praised and adapted for major stage productions as well as the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.
     
    “The work of an exceptional artist working close to the peak of his powers.” —The New York Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 2, 2015
    ISBN9780795346620
    Maurice
    Author

    E.M. Forster

    Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist, short story writer and essayist best known for his books A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India. Born in London as the only child to parents Edward and Lily Forster, Edward inherited a considerable sum of money from his paternal great-aunt that allowed him to embark on a career as a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent but did not enjoy his time there. He then went to King's College in Cambridge where he joined a secret society known as the Apostles, several members of which later helped form the Bloomsbury Group, a literary/philosophical society that boasted such early members as Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Vanessa Bell. Upon graduation, Forster went abroad - often escorted by his mother - and wrote of his travels extensively. Upon his return, he set up residence in Weybridge, Surrey where he would write all six of his novels. All of his books were written between 1908 and 1924 and his last, A Passage to India, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Forster was a homosexual and while he never married, he did have several affairs with male lovers during his lifetime, including a forty-year romance with married policeman Bob Buckingham, at whose home he collapsed and died at age 91 of a stroke. Forster explored his struggle with his own sexuality in his book Maurice. Forster was extremely critical of American foreign policy during his lifetime and rebuffed efforts to film adaptations of his novels due to the fact that the productions would likely use American financing. After his death, however, several of his books were made into films and three of them - A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India are among the most highly regarded films of the late 20th century.

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    Reviews for Maurice

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      An aristocratic British ass battles his own homosexuality. His first love is a classmate, who later turns "normal," causing Maruice no end of torment. In the end he finds happiness with a working class man.Having loved "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India" I was quite disappointed with "Maurice." I think my dislike stems from two points: 1. Maurice is an extremely unlikable character. 2. I dislike it for the same reason I disliked "The Great Gatsby." That the characters are all so wealthy, aristocratic, and snobbish, that I was unable to relate to their world view at all.
    • 3/5
      As I read this, I wondered how it could have been accepted in the 1910's. Well, it wasn't. Written in 1914, it was not published until 1970, after Foster's death. An excellent look at what it must have been like to be homosexual in he early years of the 20th century in London. Maurice started out as a fairly insufferable character but he grew on me and I was glad to see a happy ending for him.
    • 4/5
      Nobody does hot, erotic passion simmering beneath a laced up, prim Edwardian exterior quite like E.M. Forster and Maurice is by far his most subversive novel. Published posthumously, Maurice is a gay version of Lady Chatterley's Lover in which the hero, Maurice, discovers his homosexuality with a school chum who loves him but refuses to *ahem* fuck him...and then ends up running away with an earthy, passionate gameskeeper who has no problem with fucking. Captures the thrill of discovering your sexuality and capacity for loving another human being (and to hell with what society thinks!) perfectly. If only Forster were alive today to see how far the gay community has come since his time.
    • 4/5
      Half a novel? A novella? A love-letter perhaps, and because not publuished in his lifetime, a secret text, perfumed with the longing of a whole age.
    • 4/5
      Published many years after his death due to the subject of the book, this is at once on par with his best known comedic observations of English behaviour in the early part of the twentieth century, and completely ahead of its time. The language of the book makes the occasionally stumble in the story excusable, there are some really lovely and well-put passages.
    • 4/5
      A powerfully emotive book that brings to the surface the way homosexuality was repressed and made a taboo subject in early twentieth century Britain. Forster writes in a compelling and powerful way that brings sympathetic undertones to the character Maurice. This is the first Forster novel I have read and I was impressed. I will definately read more of his works.
    • 4/5
      Maurice is a tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays, through university and beyond. It was written in 1913–1914, and revised in 1932 and 1959–1960. Although it was shown to selected friends it was only published in 1971 after Forster's death. It was this enterprise that Forster's friend, Christopher Isherwood supervised, seeing the publication of Maurice to fruition. In the novel after an introductory section Maurice goes up to Cambridge and soon makes friends with fellow student Clive Durham, who introduces him to the ancient Greek writings about homosexual love. For two years they have a committed if chaste romance, which they keep hidden from everyone they know. Maurice hopes for more from their platonic attachment, but it becomes clear that Clive intends to marry, even though Forster's prose leaves no doubts that his marriage will probably entail a mostly joyless union. It is later during a visit with the Durhams that he meets Alec Scudder, a young under-gamekeeper, and falls in love again. The story is a poignant and sensitive treatment of homosexual love complicated by class differences and Maurice's own difficulty in dealing with the reality of his sexual persona.Forster resisted publication because of public and legal attitudes to homosexuality — a note found on the manuscript read: "Publishable, but worth it?". Forster was particularly keen that his novel should have a happy ending, but knew that this would make the book too controversial. Thus the story is limited in a way, but it still benefits from Forster's fine prose style and a sensitivity that could only come from the heart.
    • 5/5
      Spoilers follow. When I write a review, I often avoid discussing plot points, but in this novel, as in much of Forster’s work, the interest lies far more in the telling than the plot. In fact, it is interesting to see how much warmth and life Forster can impart to such a simple story. (Boiled down to the bare essentials: Maurice Hall gradually becomes aware of his homosexuality and enters into a chaste but loving relationship with Clive Durham; Clive reverts to (or purports to revert to) heterosexuality and marries; Maurice visits Clive at his estate, Penge, and sleeps with his gamekeeper, Alec Scudder, and after some more conflict between Maurice and Alec, the book ends happily.)Much of the warmth comes from the typical Forsterian personality of the book, the tone often ironic but not cruel, critical but loving, and filled with poignant, lofty rhetoric. As another reviewer stated, Forster “captures the thrill of discovering your sexuality and capacity for loving another human being,” of coming to truly understand someone. “Love was harmonious, immense,” as Clive falls in love with Maurice; “He poured into it the dignity* as well as the richness of his being, and indeed in that well-tempered soul* the two were one.” When Maurice and Alec both panic and argue and threaten each other, it ends with Alec offering Maurice his hand. “Maurice took it, and they knew at that moment the greatest triumph ordinary man can win . . . He rejoiced because he had understood Alec’s infamy through his own—glimpsing, not for the first time, the genius who hides in man’s tormented soul.”Forster also gives life to the story through careful and liberal use of symbolism and imagery. In Forster, objects and descriptions are never wasted, never exist in a vacuum, but always contribute to the power and emotion of the story. In the opening scene, young Maurice’s schoolmaster, Mr. Ducie, cringingly informs him about "the mystery of sex” (which Mr. Ducie finds to be “rather a bother”) as they stroll along a grey sea reflecting the colorless sky. He scratches diagrams in the sand, which bear no resemblance to any feelings or thoughts inside Maurice (who is not yet aware of his homosexuality, but cannot quite understand this uniting of male and female). Mr. Ducie waxes poetically and priggishly about Man and Woman and God, but it is silly and passionless rhetoric, and when Maurice says he shall never marry, Mr. Ducie invites Maurice and his future wife to dine with him “ten years hence.” Then they walk off and the tide erases the drawings behind them, and "darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.”This event is not wasted; Maurice alludes to it after he first sleeps with Alec, and Mr. Ducie’s reappearance (probably some ten years hence!) during the chief conflict between Alec and Clive gives force, irony, and clarity to the situation. The colorless sea, the drawings in the sand, erased by the tide, are the sort of descriptive symbols that take a simple, straightforward scene and impart an unforgettable mythic, resonant quality. The windows at Cambridge and Penge, the primroses and the boathouse at Penge, Alec’s gun, the imagined “crack in the floor” at the hypnotist’s, these are the lifeblood of the work.Mirrors and echoes of characters and situations through the book provide further resonance and a pleasing sense of unity. Mr. Ducie’s appearances are one example. The interplay of the Clive/Maurice and Alec/Maurice relationships provide the most parallels: Clive and Alec being, respectively, upper and lower class; richer and poorer; chaste and physical; blue-eyed and associated with the Blue Room at Penge, brown-eyed and associated with the Russet Room. Clive is first presented as homosexual, then heterosexual; when Alec first appears, he is flirting with two young women, but he then sleeps with Maurice. At the beginning, Clive and Maurice argue before Maurice climbs into Clive’s window; they reconcile, and later part with a bang. In one of their first encounters, Alec and Maurice have a little tiff, then reconcile; afterwards, Alec climbs into Maurice’s window and they sleep together. This encounter is so forceful as to cause a sort of echo effect, as a major eruption and reconciliation follows, then another separation and reconciliation.Between the mirrors and echoes of Clive and Alec lies a void in which Maurice falls into despair over the end of his relationship with Clive. I find this to be the weakest section of the book, as the energy slackens and the structure becomes a bit fuzzy. But there were still plenty of moments that kept my interest and attention, such as the oddly touching scene in which Maurice’s grandfather dies, which leads to character growth in Maurice, the cessation of suicidal thoughts in favor of a struggle for life. “Yet he was doing a fine thing—proving on how little the soul* can exist . . . He hadn’t a God, he hadn’t a lover—the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity* demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heaven.”In two of the quotes above, I starred the words “dignity” and “soul.” Widely separated in the book, the recurrence of these words is another example of Forsterian unity, the repetition of words, themes, phrases in a new context. There are many more examples of this sort of thing in the book, and this is one reason why I find rereading Forster to be rewarding—there’s always more to connect. (Much of what I have written above was heavily influenced by my understanding of the final chapter of Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, in which he discusses his notions of “pattern and rhythm”—I highly recommend that you read at least that chapter.)For a book in which our eyes are averted from physical encounters, no detail provided, the prose crackles with sexual energy. When Maurice first meets Clive (in Risley’s room, as Maurice is unconsciously drawn to the homosexual Risley), the sentences are peppered with innocuous uses of words and phrases like “come,” “want,” “kneeling,” “flushed,” “under me,” “firm,” “roughly,” and so forth. And I hardly think it is a coincidence that in this meeting, Clive has come to Risley’s room to borrow some piano rolls to “play on Featherstonhaugh’s pianola,” or that Clive rebukes Maurice when he reaches for the roll on the pianola, saying that Maurice would be too rough with it.As you can probably guess from the above, I developed an immediate and visceral love for this novel. I felt, pleaded, hoped for the characters. I can admit that it’s not Forster’s finest work, and that there are potential flaws—the characters not as finely drawn and fleshed out as they could be, occasional lapses into sentimentality, the ending perhaps improbably happy—but the last is a choice of idealism over realism that I’m ready to defend. The sense of liberation that it provides is an antidote to all that homosexuals in Edwardian England had to suffer, and that many people must still suffer in many parts of the world today. Go Forster.
    • 4/5
      Imperfect, but lovely.
    • 5/5
      Maurice follows this privileged young man from public school, through Cambridge and on into his mid twenties; and the two men with whom he becomes intimately involved. It also provides an interesting insight into the lives of the middles classes of the period and their attitudes, particularly towards those of lower class, and the prevailing attitude towards homosexuality.Forster is not sparing in his depiction of Maurice, at times being quite blunt about his character and his shortcomings and weaknesses, but he also imbues Maurice with many good qualities and over time Maurice becomes stronger and much more personable. Of the other two main characters, Clive, his lover at Cambridge is an intellectual of great intelligence and with high standards, a leader, but he lets himself down eventually in his treatment of Maurice. Alec, the gamekeeper who later wins Maurice's heart is a most interesting character, the wayward, wild son of a tradesman who causes his family much concern, a rough at the edges, who enjoys the outdoor life; however, unfortunately we do not get to know him quite as well as the others.Maurice is an absorbing and very atmospheric story, rich in period detail. Forster's lack of any sentimentality heightens our own involvement, allowing the reader to come to his own conclusions about the many and diverse individuals who people the story. A wonderful, moving and memorable novel.
    • 5/5
      This book is achingly beautiful, I remember thinking when I read this. It's infused with such strong emotion, and as a result, Forster is able to convey love and relationship in a way that transcends gender and sexual orientation. I lived it with him. Wonderful.
    • 4/5
      Written between 1913 and 1914, Forster’s novel of a young man’s awakening homosexuality was not published until 1971, a year after the author’s death. The novel caused a sensation when it was released, not just because of the subject matter, but because Forster dared to write a “happy ending.” Still, there is much distress for Maurice as he comes to terms with his “inclinations” and struggles to form a relationship that will be honest and true. But then, many a heterosexual young person also struggles to find true love and acceptance. I loved the way that Forster developed this character, showing Maurice’s confusion and naivete as a young man at boarding school, his headlong reckless nature as he pursued his pleasure and found first love, his despair when he thought all was lost and felt compelled to “find a cure” for his condition, and his eventual awakening to the possibilities that a mature and loving relationship might offer him. I was appalled by some of the attitudes expressed in the novel, but sadly recognize some of the same behavior in current society. While much has changed in regard to societal attitudes about homosexuality in the hundred years since the book was written, and even in the nearly 50 years since it was first published, there is still hatred and persecution aimed at the members of the GLBT community.
    • 5/5
      Probably the most revealing out of all of this author's books, Maurice was one of the first novels ever published that focuses its attention on homosexuality as a fact of life. It's particularly interesting (I think) to recall that it was published posthumously. Forster doesn't appear to have had an ax he wanted to grind; he wanted to celebrate the quality of love that can exist between two men as partners and to invite others to understand that the complications in same sex relationships might be the same as the complications in opposite sex relationships - i.e. concerns about image and how others will react to one's choice of partner.
    • 3/5
      This is a novel about an English man discovering and embracing his homosexuality in a society where school boys routinely had "crushes" on one another, but frank and open same sex relationships were illegal. Forster wrote this novel in 1913; he never attempted to publish it during his lifetime, although he did give it to selected friends to read. It was published by his estate in 1971, shortly after his death. I'm afraid this book suffered from its reputation, for me. I expected more of it than I found in it. I acknowledge its importance, but reading it felt like a duty. I had issues with the style; there was a bit too much dated jargon (Forster recognized this himself in a note written in 1960) and I tripped over several sentences that just didn't convey any meaning to me. I couldn't raise much sympathy for Maurice, didn't like him or his lover, who I couldn't help viewing as just a bit of "rough trade". Critical comparisons to Lady Chatterley and her gameskeeper don't quite work. That relationship was much more fully developed than That of Maurice and Alec. Although Forster is praised for giving us a story in which we're meant to understand that these two men will live happily ever after outside of the strictures of "class", I don't buy it. Just what will keep a gameskeeper and a stockbrocker interested in one another after the honeymoon is over, if neither of them can work, and they can't associate with their families or make friends, and the law would have them in the dock if their relationship were known? What are their common interests? What will their daily life be like? Maybe I'm too practical, or have read too much, but giving it all up for love rarely works, even in fiction. Forster stopped writing just where the tale was likely to get the most interesting---if he could have shown us how this relationship might prosper, now that would have been worth reading. I thought he might have sent Maurice off to the Argentine with Alec, rather than have Alec stay behind in England. Having no familiarity at all with the Argentine of the early 1900's, I would have been prepared to accept their happy future more readily in that case.
    • 3/5
      I found Maurice and his relationships with Clive and Alec quite sweet and touching. Clive, I expected better from you!
    • 4/5
      SPOILERS BELOWThe titular protagonist of Maurice is a prime example of emotional and sexual repression that functions as a reflection of English society as a whole. In boyhood, Maurice is told that when he is an adult he will find a wife and start a family, that such a path is the right and expected one to take. Maurice's internal emotional response is “liar, coward, he’s told me nothing …” (15). Early in the novel, Forster illustrates the socially constructed nature of heterosexual union and family life by this rejection. Maurice’s first real acknowledgement of his identity occurs when he is at Cambridge and he falls for Clive. Clive expresses non-normativity through his disavowal of religion and belief in god, and their conversations about this lead to breeching the subject of Plato’s Symposium and homosexuality. Their actual acknowledgment of their feelings for each other takes longer to manifest, and at least for Clive their relationship and desire for each other remains perpetually entrenched in intellectual terms. Maurice saw Clive’s long tangents while they embraced as “charming nonsense”, and this sort of fashioning of erotic intimacy into intellectual exercise foreshadows Clive’s later rejection of Maurice and integration into “normal” society. While Maurice throughout the novel gradually discovers himself and his identity, Clive rejects his as a schoolboy immaturity and outright malady, trying to help Maurice to also become normal. Maurice’s reappearing self doubt and attempts to “fix” himself manifest through work and psychiatric treatment. According to Quentin Bailey, “by focusing on work, a privileged mode of existence in the imperial realm, Maurice strives to overcome his surprisingly ‘native’ predilections” (337)1. As Clive has masked himself in social convention and respectability, Maurice tries to do the same through work. By doing so, he tries to establish a purpose within himself, but this failing, he must retreat from a mode of privilege into a mode of “disease”. He succumbs to the notion that he not in need of distraction, but of a cure, and thus he is sick. He moves from the privilege of work to the otherness of mental disease.Maurice’s sexual encounters with Alec, the gamekeeper, affirm this otherness through class difference and “by pleasuring the body […] he had confirmed his spirt in its perversion” (214). With Clive, same sex love manifested only in abstract intellectualism, but it is through Alec that Maurice realizes physical passion between men. In his and Clive’s own class, sodomy is not permissible, not among “gentleman”. By subverting class allegiances and fully experiencing his sexuality, Maurice realizes his otherness.Alec’s threats of blackmail to Maurice are tools, perhaps the only ones available to him, to express his sorrow at Maurice’s avoidance of him after their first encounter. Maurice realizes “he had understood Alec’s infamy through his own–glimpsing, not for the first time, the genius who hides in man’s tormented soul” (226). In recognizing first the love of the body, and then in recognizing his similarity to Alec as one who is apart from society, and then his love for Alec, Maurice realizes and then affirms his otherness, allowing him to at last locate and assert his identity.
    • 4/5
      I read this book in two sittings -- honestly an achievement, these days! -- and was so pleasantly surprised by the ending. I had been meaning to read for years, and am very glad I finally managed to, as it was much more interesting (and hopeful) than I had really expected it to be.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Best of Best. Good to read. I really love this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A subtle story of self discovery, class, emotional turmoil, friendship over a lifetime. Several characters are gay, and this is significant; the achievement of the novel is not, however, dependent upon this.Forster's prose again astounds in its limpid presentation of abstractions: emotions, social currents, interpersonal dynamics. While I did not find any instance of those supernatural events I found so curiously compelling in Celestial Omnibus, there were suggestive parallels. Chief example came at the close of Part One, with Maurice fleeing Clive's utterance ("Hall, don't be grotesque."). What reads on the page as a dream of Maurice's, or perhaps a waking vision -- it is not immediately clear what occurs bodily and what only as sensation -- easily could substitute for the supernatural occurrences in the short stories, the inner voice of Maurice's heart standing in for the titular Curate's Friend. "It [his heart] cried: 'You love and are loved.' He looked round the court. It cried, 'You are strong, he weak and alone,' won over his will." [66] I did not remark this parallel upon my initial reading of the passage, and wonder now whether several other "disguised" appearances escaped notice.Another point of interest was the question of whether the "disagreeable narrator" -- central to the Celestial short stories -- would make an appearance here, as well. Forster sidesteps this with his choice of third-person omniscient, and only later did it occur to me that any appearance would be in another voice: a disagreeable character but not narrator, with that character's voice directed not to the reader but to other characters. The personality coming closest would be Dr Barry, especially their conversation in Maurice's consultation [K31]. Again, a second reading with this parallel in mind would be worthwhile.//Forster in what is styled a TERMINAL NOTE admits that he created Maurice essentially as the opposite of himself. Alongside my interpretation of Clive and Maurice as essentially contrasting ideal types of gay men in British society, this suggests that Clive could be autobiographical. Particularly interesting insofar as Clive is not presented altogether sympathetically or even apologetically, in the course of events.
    • 4/5
      "Publishable, but worth it?" Was the question E.M Forster wrote in his own margins of the manuscript of this novel.

      My answer is yes. Yes, absolutely, yes.

      This is a story of same-sex love in Edwardian times between a man called Maurice (said like Morris) his various relationships and finally the man he falls in love with.

      I love Forster's tone in this - he's very witty, his writing is layers and layers of comments on class, and gender, and privilege and it's all very subtle. This book can be quite masculine, quite dark, a little bit bitter and bleak, but there's a warmth to it, and an honesty to it.

      This book wasn't published until 1971 - after Forster's death. As a queer woman, it makes me wonder what other books were written throughout history and never published, because they had a theme of same-sex love.

      This book is an absolute triumph - even its 1987 film adaption with a very young Rupert Graves, Hugh Grant and James Wilby is brilliant.

      You should definitely give this book a try. You'll be surprised.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I'm really torn as to how to rate this or what to think about that ending... I'll need to brood for a bit
    • 5/5
      Forster completed writing Maurice in 1914 and the manuscript remained unpublished until 1970 because of its content.Maurice Hall is a young man growing up confident in his privileged status and aware of his place in society. He also finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex, including men from his own social status and those beneath him. I found it interesting that views and opinions have not changed in some countries. Maurice is a beautiful story set in an era now gone; values and culture that is slowly changing. The story is beautifully presented, the characters are strong and believable and overall Maurice is an honest representation of what life was like for homosexuals in England at the time.
    • 4/5
      One of the most challenging things about reading stories of queer persons from decades past is that these can often be horror stories, in a way. The societal abuses and legal trouble people faced in the past for pursuing love and consenting relationships is nothing less than horrifying. This is certainly true when reading stories which come from the decade of my formative years, the 1980s. Even more so when reading stories set in the early twentieth century, as with the case of “Maurice” by E. M. Forster.The way in which the titular character navigates being gay in England in the early 1900s is so frustrating and heartbreaking. He tries to get “cured” even as he realizes being “like Oscar Wilde” is something that’s just a part of his deepest self. The way others in whom Maurice confides react to him can be just as difficult to read. And, these scenes are difficult to read because they describe real-life horror instead of something fantastic. It’s like what my community faced in the 1980s, only much worse.And there’s also the issue of language. This book, while first published in the early 1970s after the author’s death, was written in 1913-14 (per Wikipedia). Conventions of language that I learned are very different from what’s used in this work. And that’s not even taking into consideration the differences between British English and American English in terms of vocabulary and slang.The tone, and settings, of “Maurice” remind me somewhat of “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall. However it’s been so long since I read that book, I don’t remember enough of its details to really make a true comparison between it and “Maurice.”I first learned of this novel from coworkers, which lead to me looking it up on Bookshop.org and that’s where I got my copy. The fact that the book was reputed to have a happy ending is what sold me on it. But the more I read the book, the more I began to wonder how happy the ending would be. Fortunately for my sensitive self, Forster gave me a happy ending indeed.I recommend this book, and I wish the author were still alive for me to tell him how much I enjoyed it. I found that it took careful reading, for the language reasons I mentioned above. But that really is the primary complaint I have. “Maurice” was a wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      First off, Maurice has the peculiar honor of having been read by me serially from three separate books - two in different libraries and one in the Yale Bookstore. This happened not out of reluctance to finish it, but because I spent a lot of time hanging around New Haven recently without a library card. Finally I got it out from the library and finished it today.

      It's a totally charming book! I am a sucker for early 20th century Britain with its mixture of Victorian ideals and modern ideas, its cricket and country estates and class snobbery and public school slang. Maurice in particular was written on the cusp of WWI and represents the end of an era. I enjoyed Forster's poetic yet didactic style, which sometimes produces effects invisibly and sometimes sits down and tells you how it is in classic storyteller fashion.

      The human interactions were real, romantic, and moving. Maurice could have become a mere argument piece or allegory, and certainly it had a strong message about English society and the English class system, but its characters felt, for the most part, alive on the page.

      Maurice is about what it means to be, in Forster's words, "embedded in society" and defined by its expectations and strictures. His Romantic vision of freedom from social bonds is more cheerful than other novels on the subject - The Mill on the Floss and The Age of Innocence, for instance, have rather less optimistic forecasts - but I think Maurice's bravery in prescribing a happy ending is really something.

      Because, yes, Maurice is a novel about a gay man, written in 1914. Not only that, it actually manages to be a good novel and not merely a self-aware protest piece, and the main characters don't die or end up in an asylum or in loveless marriages or alone for eternity. They live happily ever after. (Spoiler, yes, but this is basically how the book advertises itself on every jacket copy I've seen. This is why it's really worth reading.)

      Forster knew no one would publish it. As he explains in the postscript, written forty-six years later, "it will probably have to remain in manuscript. If it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well, for there is no pornography or seduction of minors. But the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime."

      The extreme irony that nearly a century later we think Brokeback Mountain (a great movie, don't get me wrong) shows how progressive popular storytelling has become, when it's the same gay tragedy that's been retold for the last ninety years.

      There actually is a film of Maurice from the eighties. Starring Hugh Grant as Clive! That might have to go on the top of my soon-to-be-purchased Netflix queue....

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Midway through reading, I glanced at the copyright page to find out when this novel was first published and nearly fell over - 1970! But no, E M Forster actually finished writing Maurice in 1914, which fits much better with the characters and social setting, and was waiting for the outcome of the Wolfenden report (1967) before releasing his manuscript for publication. In the end, the novel was published posthumously.This is a very bizarre choice for me, but I actually enjoyed the story and the characters, especially the befuddled and frustrated Maurice. I'm always surprised when a nineteenth/early twentieth century novel is still readable and relatable! Basically, Maurice discovers that he is 'an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort', as he puts it, and falls in love for the first time with Clive Durham at university. For a few years they share an 'understanding', then after illness and a trip to Greece, Clive decides he is 'normal' and wants to get married. Maurice is devastated and sets about 'curing' himself too, including a session or two of hypnotherapy, but of course that doesn't work. He eventually finds love again at Clive's country estate and disappears into the 'greenwood' with his new lover.I love Forster's droll and insightful narration, which holds true long after attitudes to homosexuality have changed. Maurice, for instance, is described as 'constitutionally lazy', belatedly discovering that 'people turned out to be alive', not cardboard cutouts like himself, and only admits his true feelings after 'the man who returned his love had been lost'. There are a couple of 'love scenes', tacked on after the fact, but more romantic than erotic. And I am glad that 'a happy ending was imperative'!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Pretty tame by today's standards, this was one of the first books to deal with a homosexual relationship. Forster seems to have romanticized things a bit too much by our modern-day standards and so the book gets relegated to the realm of the "dated." Still worth a read for the insight it gives us into his time. And also, insight into a male relationship jeapardized by class...And, as part of our history.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is the third or fourth time I've read Maurice, and I never get tired of rereading it. I marvel at the way Forster writes a character who isn't particularly likable but for whom the reader still has a great deal of sympathy. I desperately want Maurice to be okay despite shuddering at the thought of having to sit down to a meal with him. Forster has a great knack for putting things, especially things going on in a character's thoughts, just so. Over and over I think to myself, "Oh, come now, that's just too, too navel-gazey" and then on second thought realizing that, no, that's just the way of it! And how clever of him to have figured out how to say so. The end is a bit "isn't it pretty to think so," but bless him for doing it, for writing a happy ending for his character who feels "the love that dare not speak its name," even if the book couldn't be published for decades after it was first written.***For Book Club.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I've loved Forster for years and have been saving this particular book until I had a really difficult journey ahead of me. It didn't let me down--it's excellent. Forster says, "In Maurice I tried to create...someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad businessman and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him."

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    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this short novel about homosexual men set just before World War I. The characters are so well drawn -- torn by their sexuality which society, and even their inner beliefs, tells them in wrong -- but fully drawn men who have feelings of love, lust, power, ambition, obligation. They are not stereotypes or archetypes. Maurice and Clive meet and fall in love at University. After that, life takes them along different paths. Clive disavows his homosexuality and marries. Maurice struggles over his lost love then seeks a "cure" through hypnotism. Through it all, the men sometimes succeed in life and in conforming; other times, they succeed in being true to themselves. Many of the issues faced by the characters in Maurice continue to exist today. While homosexuality is much more accepted, gay people remain the victims of discrimination and, too often, violence. E.M. Forster's book is one that should be widely read as it shows that we are all the same in our struggles and dreams.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is thrilling because it introduced two novel concepts at the same time. Homosexually is not wrong, supported by beautiful imagery and symbolism, and class distinctions are wrong, proven by love. Maurice may be dull and average, but that is who he is; the average Edwardian Englishman, upon whom homosexuality is thrust. The action of the novel ensues as he copes with his birth trait. This is a point in itself. Homosexuals are no one particular or special, they are average.

      Clive's propensity to see the world in shades only of good and bad is paralleled in his fate in opposition to Maurice's happy ending. Clive is delivered in a few chapters as transformed, as turned away from men to women. While this transformation is possible, it is not as he would have it, he has chosen a path of great unhappiness, overwhelmed by society and thus he conforms to the idea that his platonic love for Maurice is wrong, thus it ends. Between the lines, Clive has forced the change. It was not natural for him, even though he thinks himself 'normal' thereafter. Much of these thoughts lie for the reader to interpret in Forster's subtle poetry.

      Maurice's fate, much happier and very controversial in it's support of homosexuality and of inter-class love, is fantasy balanced by the average archetype that he is. This novel portrays him as a very basic upper-middle class man who can do or be anything the author wants, all is believable about him, and indeed, he is perfectly naive. It is through him that we understand a grander motif of the destruction love can do. Maurice is selfish and childish in love, but that is love. He is no great person or hero. He is the everyman. And the everyman in love, true love, is a slave to his passions, and once a sad and lonely man finds them, if he ever does, why should he let go?

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Maurice - E.M. Forster

    PART

    One

    1

    Once a term the whole school went for a walk—that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. It was usually a pleasant outing, and everyone looked forward to it, forgot old scores, and behaved with freedom. Lest discipline should suffer, it took place just before the holidays, when leniency does no harm, and indeed it seemed more like a treat at home than school, for Mrs Abrahams, the Principal’s wife, would meet them at the tea place with some lady friends, and be hospitable and motherly.

    Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world. There is much to be said for apathy in education, and Mr Abrahams’s pupils did not do badly in the long run, became parents in their turn, and in some cases sent him their sons. Mr Read, the junior assistant, was a master of the same type, only stupider, while Mr Ducie, the senior, acted as a stimulant, and prevented the whole concern from going to sleep. They did not like him much, but knew that he was necessary. Mr Ducie was an able man, orthodox, but not out of touch with the world, nor incapable of seeing both sides of a question. He was unsuitable for parents and the denser boys, but good for the first form, and had even coached pupils into a scholarship. Nor was he a bad organizer. While affecting to hold the reins and to prefer Mr Read, Mr Abrahams really allowed Mr Ducie a free hand and ended by taking him into partnership.

    Mr Ducie always had something on his mind. On this occasion it was Hall, one of the older boys, who was leaving them to go to a public school. He wanted to have a good talk with Hall, during the outing. His colleagues objected, since it would leave them more to do, and the Principal remarked that he had already talked to Hall, and that the boy would prefer to take his last walk with his school-fellows. This was probable, but Mr Ducie was never deterred from doing what is right. He smiled and was silent. Mr Read knew what the good talk would be, for early in their acquaintance they had touched on a certain theme professionally. Mr Read had disapproved. Thin ice, he had said. The Principal neither knew nor would have wished to know. Parting from his pupils when they were fourteen, he forgot they had developed into men. They seemed to him a race small but complete, like the New Guinea pygmies, my boys. And they were even easier to understand than pygmies, because they never married and seldom died. Celibate and immortal, the long procession passed before him, its thickness varying from twenty-five to forty at a time. I see no use in books on education. Boys began before education was thought of. Mr Ducie would smile, for he was soaked in evolution.

    ***

    From this to the boys.

    Sir, may I hold your hand…. Sir, you promised me…. Both Mr. Abrahams’s hands were bagged and all Mr Read’s…. Oh sir, did you hear that? He thinks Mr Read has three hands!… I didn’t, I said ‘fingers’. Green eye! Green eye!

    When you have quite finished—!

    Sir!

    I’m going to walk with Hall alone.

    There were cries of disappointment. The other masters, seeing that it was no good, called the pack off, and marshalled them along the cliff towards the downs. Hall, triumphant, sprang to Mr Ducie’s side, and felt too old to take his hand. He was a plump, pretty lad, not in any way remarkable. In this he resembled his father, who had passed in the procession twenty-five years before, vanished into a public school, married, begotten a son and two daughters, and recently died of pneumonia. Mr Hall had been a good citizen, but lethargic. Mr Ducie had informed himself about him before they began the walk.

    Well, Hall, expecting a pi-jaw, eh?

    I don’t know, sir—Mr Abrahams’ given me one with ‘Those Holy Fields’. Mrs Abrahams’ given me sleeve links. The fellows have given me a set of Guatemalas up to two dollars. Look, sir! The ones with the parrot on the pillar on.

    Splendid, splendid! What did Mr Abrahams say? Told you you were a miserable sinner, I hope.

    The boy laughed. He did not understand Mr Ducie, but knew that he was meaning to be funny. He felt at ease because it was his last day at school, and even if he did wrong he would not get into a row. Besides, Mr Abrahams had declared him a success. We are proud of him; he will do us honour at Sunnington: he had seen the beginning of the letter to his mother. And the boys had showered presents on him, declaring he was brave. A great mistake—he wasn’t brave: he was afraid of the dark. But no one knew this.

    Well, what did Mr Abrahams say? repeated Mr Ducie, when they reached the sands. A long talk threatened, and the boy wished he was up on the cliff with his friends, but he knew that wishing is useless when boy meets man.

    Mr Abrahams told me to copy my father, sir.

    Anything else?

    I am never to do anything I should be ashamed to have mother see me do. No one can go wrong then, and the public school will be very different from this.

    Did Mr Abrahams say how?

    All kinds of difficulties—more like the world.

    Did he tell you what the world is like?

    No.

    Did you ask him?

    No, sir.

    That wasn’t very sensible of you, Hall. Clear things up. Mr Abrahams and I are here to answer your questions. What do you suppose the world—the world of grown-up people is like?

    I can’t tell. I’m a boy, he said, very sincerely. Are they very treacherous, sir?

    Mr Ducie was amused and asked him what examples of treachery he had seen. He replied that grown-up people would not be unkind to boys, but were they not always cheating one another? Losing his schoolboy manner, he began to talk like a child, and became fanciful and amusing. Mr Ducie lay down on the sand to listen to him, lit his pipe, and looked up to the sky. The little watering-place where they lived was now far behind, the rest of the school away in front. The day was gray and windless, with little distinction between clouds and sun.

    You live with your mother, don’t you? he interrupted, seeing that the boy had gained confidence.

    Yes, sir.

    Have you any elder brothers?

    No, sir—only Ada and Kitty.

    Any uncles?

    No.

    So you don’t know many men?

    Mother keeps a coachman and George in the garden, but of course you mean gentlemen. Mother has three maid-servants to look after the house, but they are so idle that they will not mend Ada’s stockings. Ada is my eldest little sister.

    How old are you?

    Fourteen and three quarters.

    Well, you’re an ignorant little beggar. They laughed. After a pause he said, When I was your age, my father told me something that proved very useful and helped me a good deal. This was untrue: his father had never told him anything. But he needed a prelude to what he was going to say.

    Did he, sir?

    Shall I tell you what it was?

    Please, sir.

    I am going to talk to you for a few moments as if I were your father, Maurice! I shall call you by your real name. Then, very simply and kindly, he approached the mystery of sex. He spoke of male and female, created by God in the beginning in order that the earth might be peopled, and of the period when the male and female receive their powers. You are just becoming a man now, Maurice; that is why I am telling you about this. It is not a thing that your mother can tell you, and you should not mention it to her nor to any lady, and if at your next school boys mention it to you, just shut them up; tell them you know. Have you heard about it before?

    No, sir.

    Not a word?

    No, sir.

    Still smoking his pipe, Mr Ducie got up, and choosing a smooth piece of sand drew diagrams upon it with his walkingstick. This will make it easier, he said to the boy, who watched dully: it bore no relation to his experiences. He was attentive, as was natural when he was the only one in the class, and he knew that the subject was serious and related to his own body. But he could not himself relate it; it fell to pieces as soon as Mr Ducie put it together, like an impossible sum. In vain he tried. His torpid brain would not awake. Puberty was there, but not intelligence, and manhood was stealing on him, as it always must, in a trance. Useless to break in upon that trance. Useless to describe it, however scientifically and sympathetically. The boy assents and is dragged back into sleep, not to be enticed there before his hour.

    Mr Ducie, whatever his science, was sympathetic. Indeed he was too sympathetic; he attributed cultivated feelings to Maurice, and did not realize that he must either understand nothing or be overwhelmed. All this is rather a bother, he said, but one must get it over, one mustn’t make a mystery of it. Then come the great things—Love, Life. He was fluent, having talked to boys in this way before, and he knew the kind of question they would ask. Maurice would not ask: he only said, I see, I see, I see, and at first Mr Ducie feared he did not see. He examined him. The replies were satisfactory. They boy’s memory was good and—so curious a fabric is the human—he even developed a spurious intelligence, a surface flicker to respond to the beaconing glow of the man’s. In the end he did ask one or two questions about sex, and they were to the point. Mr Ducie was much pleased. That’s right, he said. You need never be puzzled or bothered now.

    Love and life still remained, and he touched on them as they strolled forward by the colourless sea. He spoke of the ideal man—chaste with asceticism. He sketched the glory of Woman. Engaged to be married himself, he grew more human, and his eyes coloured up behind the strong spectacles; his cheek flushed. To love a noble woman, to protect and serve her—this, he told the little boy, was the crown of life. You can’t understand now, you will some day, and when you do understand it, remember the poor old pedagogue who put you on the track. It all hangs together—all—and God’s in his heaven, All’s right with the world. Male and female! Ah wonderful!

    I think I shall not marry, remarked Maurice.

    This day ten years hence—I invite you and your wife to dinner with my wife and me. Will you accept?

    Oh sir! He smiled with pleasure.

    It’s a bargain, then! It was at all events a good joke to end with. Maurice was flattered and began to contemplate marriage. But while they were easing off Mr Ducie stopped, and held his cheek as though every tooth ached. He turned and looked at the long expanse of sand behind.

    I never scratched out those infernal diagrams, he said slowly.

    At the further end of the bay some people were following them, also by the edge of the sea. Their course would take them by the very spot where Mr Ducie had illustrated sex, and one of them was a lady. He ran back sweating with fear.

    Sir, won’t it be all right? Maurice cried. The tide’ll have covered them by now.

    Good Heavens… thank God… the tide’s rising.

    And suddenly for an instant of time, the boy despised him. Liar, he thought. Liar, coward, he’s told me nothing.… Then darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.

    2

    Maurice’s mother lived near London, in a comfortable villa among some pines. There he and his sisters had been born, and thence his father had gone up to business every day, thither returning. They nearly left when the church was built, but they became accustomed to it, as to everything, and even found it a convenience. Church was the only place Mrs Hall had to go to—the shops delivered. The station was not far either, nor was a tolerable day school for the girls. It was a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for, and success was indistinguishable from failure.

    Maurice liked his home, and recognized his mother as its presiding genius. Without her there would be no soft chairs or food or easy games, and he was grateful to her for providing so much, and loved her. He liked his sisters also. When he arrived they ran out with cries of joy, took off his greatcoat, and dropped it for the servants on the floor of the hall. It was nice to be the centre of attraction and show off about school. His Guatemala stamps were admired—so were Those Holy Fields and a Holbein photograph that Mr Ducie had given him. After tea the weather cleared, and Mrs Hall put on her goloshes and walked with him round the grounds. They went kissing one another and conversing aimlessly.

    Morrie…

    Mummie…

    Now I must give my Morrie a lovely time.

    Where’s George?

    Such a splendid report from Mr Abrahams. He says you remind him of your poor father…. Now what shall we do these holidays?

    I like here best.

    Darling boy… She embraced him, more affectionately than ever.

    There is nothing like home, as everyone finds. Yes, tomatoes— she liked reciting the names of vegetables. Tomatoes, radishes, broccoli, onions—

    Tomatoes, broccoli, onions, purple potatoes, white potatoes, droned the little boy.

    Turnip tops—

    Mother, where’s George?

    He left last week.

    Why did George leave? he asked.

    He was getting too old. Howell always changes the boy every two years.

    Oh.

    Turnip tops, she continued, potatoes again, beetroot—Morrie, how would you like to pay a little visit to grandpapa and Aunt Ida if they ask us? I want you to have a very nice time this holiday, dear—you have been so good, but then Mr Abrahams is such a good man; you see, your father was at his school too, and we are sending you to your father’s old public school too—Sunnington—in order that you may grow up like your dear father in every way.

    A sob interrupted her.

    "Morrie, darling—"

    The little boy was in tears.

    My pet, what is it?

    I don’t know… I don’t know…

    Why, Maurice…

    He shook his head. She was grieved at her failure to make him happy, and began to cry too. The girls ran out, exclaiming, Mother, what’s wrong with Maurice?

    Oh, don’t, he wailed. Kitty, get out—

    He’s overtired, said Mrs Hall—her explanation for everything.

    I’m overtired.

    Come to your room, Morrie—Oh my sweet, this is really too dreadful.

    No—I’m all right. He clenched his teeth, and a great mass of sorrow that had overwhelmed him by rising to the surface began to sink. He could feel it going down into his heart until he was conscious of it no longer. I’m all right. He looked around him fiercely and dried his eyes. I’ll play Halma, I think. Before the pieces were set, he was talking as before; the childish collapse was over.

    He beat Ada, who worshipped him, and Kitty, who did not, and then ran into the garden again to see the coachman. How d’ye do, Howell. How’s Mrs Howell? How d’ye do, Mrs Howell, and so on, speaking in a patronizing voice, different from that he used to gentlefolks. Then altering back, Isn’t it a new garden boy?

    Yes, Master Maurice.

    Was George too old?

    No, Master Maurice. He wanted to better himself.

    Oh, you mean he gave notice.

    That’s right.

    Mother said he was too old and you gave him notice.

    No, Master Maurice.

    My poor woodstacks’ll be glad, said Mrs Howell. Maurice and the late garden boy had been used to play about in them.

    They are Mother’s woodstacks, not yours, said Maurice and went indoors. The Howells were not offended, though they pretended to be so to one another. They had been servants all their lives, and liked a gentleman to be a snob. He has quite a way with him already, they told the cook. More like his father.

    The Barrys, who came to dinner, were of the same opinion. Dr Barry was an old friend, or rather neighbour, of the family, and took a moderate interest in them. No one could be deeply interested in the Halls. Kitty he liked—she had hints of grit in her—but the girls were in bed, and he told his wife afterwards that Maurice ought to have been there too. And stop there all his life. As he will. Like his father. What is the use of such people?

    When Maurice did go to bed, it was reluctantly. That room always frightened him. He had been such a man all the evening, but the old feeling came over him as soon as his mother had kissed him good night. The trouble was the looking-glass. He did not mind seeing his face in it, nor casting a shadow on the ceiling, but he did mind seeing his shadow on the ceiling reflected in the glass. He would arrange the candle so as to avoid the combination, and then dare himself to put it back and be gripped with fear. He knew what it was, it reminded him of nothing horrible. But he was afraid. In the end he would dash out the candle and leap into bed. Total darkness he could bear, but this room had the further defect of being opposite a street lamp. On good nights the light would penetrate the curtains un-alarmingly, but sometimes blots like skulls fell over the furniture. His heart beat violently, and he lay in terror, with all his household close at hand.

    As he opened his eyes to look whether the blots had grown smaller, he remembered George. Something stirred in the unfathomable depths of his heart. He whispered, George, George. Who was George? Nobody—just a common servant. Mother and Ada and Kitty were far more important. But he was too little to argue this. He did not even know that when he yielded to this sorrow he overcame the spectral and fell asleep.

    3

    Sunnington was the next stage in Maurice’s career.

    He traversed it without attracting attention. He was not good at work, though better than he pretended, nor colossally good at games. If people noticed him they liked him, for he had a bright friendly face and responded to attention; but there were so many boys of his type—they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra. He did the usual things—was kept in, once caned, rose from form to form on the classical side till he clung precariously to the sixth, and he became a house prefect, and later a school prefect and member of the first fifteen. Though clumsy, he had strength and physical pluck: at cricket he did not do so well. Having been bullied as a new

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