Maurice by E. M. Forster

Source of book: I own this

 

Hey, this is my third annual Pride Month read. The others were Q.E.D. by Gertrude Stein, and The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. You can also check out my list of LGBTQ+ authors. 

 

Edward Morgan Forster is one of those authors that has kind of flown under the radar for decades. Everyone knows the great Victorian authors, even if they haven’t read any of them. American authors of the mid-20th Century also get a lot of press - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck - as they should. But the Edwardian authors seem to get little attention, which is a shame. 

 

E. M. Forster in particular is an egregious omission from today’s canon. I also realized that this is the first Forster book I have read since I started this blog - I loved Howard’s End very much, but then somehow never got back to him. Two things triggered this read. First was the simple fact that I found a used copy of Maurice in a used book store a couple years ago. If I hadn’t already picked Cather for last year, I would have read it then. The second thing was Zadie Smith’s excellent essay on Forster, which reminded me of why I liked him. 

 

For whatever reason, Forster was self-deprecating to a fault, never considering himself to be a good author, let alone a great one. This was unfair, for some very good reasons. I’ll let Zadie Smith explain:

 

In the taxonomy of English writing, E. M. Forster is not an exotic creature. We file him under Notable English Novelist, common or garden variety. Yet there is a sense in which Forster was something of a rare bird. He was largely free of vices commonly found in novelists of his generation - what’s unusual about Forster is what he didn’t do. He didn’t lean rightward with the years, or allow nostalgia to morph into misanthropy; he never knelt for the pope or queen, nor did he flirt (ideologically speaking) with Hitler, Stalin or Mao; he never believed the novel was dead or the hills alive, continued to read contemporary fiction after the age of fifty, harbored no special hatred for the generation below or above him, did not come to feel that England had gone to hell in a handbasket, that its language was doomed, that lunatics were running the asylum or foreigners swamping the cities.

 

Forster was, in a way, a bit like myself. He was conservative by temperament (as am I), but progressive when it came to the important issues of his day - class, race, warmongering, universal education. 

 

Oh, and there is one more thing: Forster was gay in an era when to be a gay man in England was to be a criminal.

 

While his sexual orientation was not exactly a well-kept secret, at least among his friends, he obviously couldn’t be open about it, or risk his freedom like Oscar Wilde. His longest relationship was with a married man - and probably the wife knew about it. Such was how things went in that time - LGBTQ people mostly had to stay in the closet if they wanted to survive. 

 

Maurice is the black sheep of Forster’s novels. Conceived in 1913, but mostly written in 1932, it was later revised slightly in 1960. Forster considered publishing it, but decided it was too risky. Instead, it was published in 1971, a year after Forster’s death. Critics weren’t all that fond of it, although it is difficult to separate out their artistic concerns from a hell of a lot of homophobia. 

 

The core problem has to do with the ending - and there are three different versions. (My copy has the 1932 version, which Forster apparently said he preferred.) The endings aren’t radically different, from what I can tell - in each case [spoiler] the ending is happy for the gay couple. 

 

And THAT is the fundamental reason that Forster felt he couldn’t publish the novel. If he had killed off his protagonist - preferably through suicide - it would have been fine. After all, there is nothing explicit in the book, unless you count a kiss. There is a brief reference to the pair of men having sex, but “I gave him everything including my body” is plenty PG. 

 

No, the problem was in the foundational message of the book: that homosexuality is a normal part of the human spectrum of existence, and that homosexual love is as beautiful and worthy as heterosexual love. 

 

Yeah, that was still a problem, even in 1960. Unfortunately, in some parts of the United States, the censors are again on the warpath, eager to suppress the truth about human (and indeed animal) sexuality in the name of religion. (You can read my recent post about the true root of anti-LGBTQ bigotry, which is misogyny here.) 

 

Maurice was inspired by the life of Forster’s friend, the poet and gay-rights activist Edward Carpenter. Like the fictional Maurice, Carpenter had a long-term relationship with a working-class man (a bit scandalous in itself, those cross-class relationships.) Forster likely also based part of the book on his own childhood and early adulthood. 

 

When the book opens, young Maurice Hall is given an awkward lecture on sex by a schoolteacher. At that moment, he realizes that marriage to a woman makes no sense to him as the goal of life. He returns home on vacation to find that the servant boy he used to play with has left, and he is heartbroken, yet cannot understand why?

 

The book then follows Maurice to Cambridge, where he has an intense (and essentially romantic) yet platonic relationship with another student. It is through this that he comes to understand his sexuality. After hypnosis fails to “cure” him, he realizes who he is. Later, he becomes involved with a working-class man, and decides to give up his social status to be with him. 

 

That is a really short summary, and omits a lot - particularly of Maurice’s inner life, which is one of Forster’s best skills. But it gives the idea. 

 

Like other Forster novels, the book isn’t primarily about what happens, but how the characters respond to it. By getting inside Maurice’s head, the book makes a compelling argument for acceptance of sexual orientation, and for the beauty of mutual erotic love, regardless of gender. 

 

One fascinating question concerns the character of Clive, who is Maurice’s great platonic love in college. It is never entirely clear what to make of Clive. He certainly seems to lean gay in many ways. Yet after an illness, he claims to have become completely heterosexual, and goes on to marry a woman. 

 

Yet this goes poorly. She is completely ignorant of sex, and freaks out on the wedding night, despite Clive’s gentleness and care. She kind of gets over it, and they do have a sex life of sorts, but it is always silent, in the dark, and they never see each other naked. And more than that, they never, ever talk about it. Yeesh. That’s really sad and depressing. Clive’s later words and actions also make one wonder if he is still gay, because he doesn’t take Maurice’s moving on from him particularly well. 

 

Clive isn’t a bad guy, either. You feel for him, even though he hurts Maurice deeply. Both are caught up in a brew of social expectations, personal beliefs, and the usual human drama involving sex and relationships. He and Maurice are not a true match, as they both eventually realize. But it still hurts. 

 

This too is classic Forster. I think he writes about heartbreak and doomed relationships as well as anyone, and his understated style allows the catastrophes to hit even harder. 

 

There are some outstanding lines in this book.

 

As soon as he thought about other people as real, Maurice became modest and conscious of sin: in all creation there could be no one as file as himself: no wonder he pretended to be a piece of cardboard; if known as he was, he would be hounded out of the world.

 

This, I think, is the experience of a lot of gay people of my generation - and even more so before. For those raised with the idea that to be gay was the worst possible sin, this seems a sad inevitability. One reason that the Fundies are freaked out about any book that explains the truth of human sexuality is that they depend on creating intense self-loathing to preserve their dogmas. And they are willing to see LGBTQ kids commit suicide as a better alternative to them finding self-acceptance of who they are. 

 

I also liked this perceptive description of Maurice’s torment after Clive “goes hetero.” 

 

A refined nature would have behaved better and perhaps have suffered less. Maurice was not intellectual, nor religious, nor had he that strange solace of self-pity that is granted to some. Except on one point his temperament was normal, and he behaved as would the average man who after two years of happiness had been betrayed by his wife. 

 

Again, Forster does such a great job of humanizing and normalizing this. And that is why the book couldn’t be published. He refused to pathologize and dehumanize LGBTQ people. 

 

Also telling is the passage in which Maurice consults a doctor. Who unfortunately is unable to actually understand what Maurice is clearly saying - that this is how he is, how he was born. 

 

Dr. Barry had given the best advice he could. He had read no scientific works on Maurice’s subject. None had existed when he walked the hospitals, and any published since were in German, and therefore suspect. Averse to it by temperament, he endorsed the verdict of society gladly; that is to say, his verdict was theological. He held that only the most depraved could glance at Sodom, and so, when a man of good antecedents and physique confessed the tendency, “Rubbish, rubbish!” was his natural reply. 

 

This raises several interesting points. First, those German researchers who studied gay and transgender people were the ones whose works were largely destroyed by Hitler. (NEVER forget that Hitler targeted LGBTQ people as ferociously as he did Jewish people.) 

 

Second, this illustrates a key part of my growth toward full acceptance and inclusion of LGBTQ people, despite growing up Fundamentalist. I started noticing that it wasn’t “depraved” people I knew who were coming out as gay. Often, they were thoroughly devout, moral and ethical people who were horrified to discover their own sexual orientation. I realized that what I had been taught was false. People were just born gay, and didn’t become that way through increasing depravity. I mean, twelve years old. Think about that. 

 

The priest in the story, while also not a bad person, is likewise completely unhelpful. He becomes obsessed with getting Alec baptized before he leaves for South America. In part, this is because he wants to make sure that the Church will not have any culpability if Alec goes wrong. Maurice nails it:

 

“I’m awfully stupid, but I think I see: you want to make sure that he and not the Church shall be to blame in the future. Well, sir, that may be your idea of religion but it isn’t mine and it wasn’t Christ’s.” 

 

I have written recently about why I think the whole “go out and make converts” thing is shit, and this to a large degree encapsulates it. It is more about “avoiding blame” than actually living how Christ taught. I feel like this is also how my parents (particularly my mom) have been in regard to me and my family. Long gone is any willingness to live in harmony and mutual understanding. Rather, she is focused on making her disapproval of us clear, so she avoids blame if we go wrong - it wasn’t HER fault. Lost entirely is the possibility of a relationship. 

 

As a final quote, I want to mention the conversation Maurice has with his hypnotist, who has given up on curing him. Instead, Mr. Lasker Jones advises Maurice to leave England, and go live some place where homosexuality isn’t criminalized. Perhaps Italy or France. Maurice asks if that will ever happen in England. Jones replies:

 

“I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

 

The same might be said of the United States, particularly the Bible Belt. 

 

In fact, it wasn’t until 1967 - three years before Forster’s death, that England decriminalized consensual male homosexual acts. And even then, the lack of free speech rights left Forster unconvinced that he could publish Maurice without criminal charges. 

 

England (and the US) still lag behind other countries when it comes to Transgender rights, unfortunately. Mr. Lasker Jones had it right - we remain disinclined to accept human nature. Particularly when reality challenges dogma - and hierarchy. 

 

One thing that struck me the most about this book was the way that Forster is able to boldly proclaim the truth. For all his self-doubts about his own abilities, for all his gentle self-deprecation, he knew the truth of who he was, and the purity of his own love. That is the single point that Maurice refuses to compromise on. LGBTQ+ people are normal and natural. Their love is as transcendent as that of cishet people. Their reality is as real as that of cishet people. The fault lies not in them, but in the society that refuses to accept human nature. 

 

A final thought about this book: the one thing the critics were right about is that this book isn’t as superbly written as, say, Howard’s End. On the plus side, Maurice is intensely personal, and that is its strength. On the flip side, because it is so personal, Forster’s rapier wit and satirical ability are not able to be displayed as fully as in his books about heterosexual relationships. The book has its dull parts, but these are outweighed by the fascinating passages, and the keen psychological perception. 

 

I guess the way I would say it is that you can start with Maurice, but don’t take it as the very best of Forster. Be sure to read his best masterpieces before you decide what you think of him. But as a persuasive work of fiction, Maurice is indeed a true work of art.