Maurice

1914, published posthumously 1971, this Norton edition 2006
E. M. Forster
Maurice
Bought new for $13.95
Very good condition paperback
B+

It's easy to see why this book wasn't published in Forster's lifetime.  Even in 1960, the time of his charming as ever "Terminal Note" (afterword), the year before Dirk Bogarde starred as Melville Farr in Victim, homosexual acts were still illegal in England.  This changed in 1967, with the Sexual Offenses Act.  And Forster knew that the most controversial part of this novel was the happy ending, that two men go off into the sunset together.  If you take a look at, for instance, mainstream movies or YA novels of the 1960s, you'll see that death or at least separation was the acceptable end for gay couples.

Not publishing the book in its time seems to have given Forster more freedom than usual.  It's seen in the profanity, as in the crude but insightful "You could call your cousin a shit if you liked, but not a eunuch."  And it's seen in the clear but not graphic contrast of Maurice's emotional but asexual relationship with Clive vs. his earthier and more honest relationship with Alec.  Clive is a hypocrite, but he's his own greatest victim.


The book is also about class, with the ironic suggestion that men can cross class lines more successfully than straight couples, if they're willing to risk everything.  Maurice learns, from his hypnotist, that homosexuals are tolerated much more in France and Italy.  Like Oscar Wilde, who's mentioned a few times as a type that Maurice sometimes fears to become, Maurice and his lover will find more acceptance in Paris.


The novel is also about education, from school and life.  Maurice and Clive meet at Cambridge, although their relationship indirectly causes Maurice to be expelled.  They have enough privacy in their rooms to flirt, but they do go off to the country on a motorcycle.  Forty-six years after finishing the novel, Forster saw the most dated aspect to be the disappearance of the "greenwood."  Miss Honeychurch could no longer be kissed among the violets, and Mr. Hall could no longer press his cheek against his lover's in a field.  The novel ends in 1912, and the older Forster knew that he couldn't have looked too far into the future, because the First World War was about to change everything.

I sort of like that Maurice and the other characters aren't exactly likable.  It makes him more heroic when he takes a stand.  Forster is quite blunt that Maurice and Clive are misogynists, especially towards their mothers and sisters.  (Poor Ada!)  Clive thinks he overcomes his homosexuality, so he marries, but the marriage is obviously as empty physically as his with Maurice, and without the deeper connection he has with Maurice.  I think of Alec as bisexual, but, unlike Clive, he isn't someone who cares about labels.  He can't even blackmail properly, so what's tragedy for Mr. Farr is comedy for Mr. Hall.

I think this book has more substance, more at stake, than Room with a View, but it's not as heavy and fatalistic as Howards End.  So it's better than both, but this is only my second reading, and I'm not sure how it'll stack up against A Passage to India (1924).  I do know it inspired the best Merchant Ivory adaptation of Forster I've seen, the 1987 film with Hugh Grant as Clive.  The movie isn't as good or as optimistic as the book-- with the Wilde-like Lord Risley being sentenced, a warning to the young couple-- but it's worth seeing.