Maurice

Ahead of its time. Sad and beautiful.

I read this after watching the movie when I found out there was a book! I love it- it's such a classic and just very nice writing. Not a bad read at all.

MAURICE is a novel of homosexual love, the first one I have ever read, but more than that it is a very direct description, perhaps as honest as could be---without either sensationalism or trivialization---of the inner feelings of a homosexual man. It begins when the main character, Maurice Hall, is a school boy, traces his emotional life through Cambridge and into the world of work, and ends in an upbeat, if rather abrupt fashion. In the confusion of early years, Maurice does not realize his true nature, but loses himself in sports, hi-jinks and studies. He devotes himself to his mother and two sisters. In short, his is the life of a typical English public school boy at the time (pre-WW I) Only at university does he recognize his real nature, though he'd had intimations mostly ignored, and truly falls in love with Clive Durham, a fellow student. Forster traces the ups and downs of this affair, leading the reader through all the ups and downs of homosexual love affairs. Maurice joins a financial investment firm, leading a totally conventional life in Britain's rigid class society, except for his sexual orientation. Eventually events take an unplanned course, Maurice winds up with another man, of a different class and nature. He experiences hitherto unknown problems. The ending, given Forster's rather pessimistic outlook on life, is unexpected. This novel may not be for everybody, but if you attempt it, you will admire the skillful writing of E.M. Forster and you will come away appreciating his honesty. The dialogues sound very alien to an American in the early 21st century---a whole different way of using the English language---but no doubt they add a special flavor to the book, a period piece after all. I would say that a person who does not try to understand all aspects of the human condition has not truly lived, has not truly understood himself/herself. This is to readers who may not see the point of reading a novel about homosexual love. If you can't appreciate it as the great literature it is, perhaps you will think about the courage it took to write such a novel in 1914. Even then, it was not published until 1971, a year after Forster's death. Perhaps you will imagine what it is to become a great writer and still not touch upon a subject so close to your heart.

I think I'm setting myself up to be abused for an imperfect understanding of Forster's work, but I love Maurice, and I only like everything else he wrote. Forster's plots to me are so controlled that his novels become more like chess games than stories--his characters move entirely according to their classist/symbolic value; their minds are types, their types interact. Sometimes this interaction is delightful, as in Room with a View. Sometimes it is genuinely touching, as in Where Angels Fear to Tread. But it is always highly regimented. This criticism extends for me to his prose, which I find to be too rule-bound--he always leaves the same words out; his style is symbolic of delicate subtlety without necessarily being so.But in Maurice, Forster lets go some of this reserve. His prose, which I find formulaic in his later stuff, is here undeveloped enough to be idiosyncratic, un-stylized, and gorgeous. Maurice as a character is wonderfully, wonderfully real, and I appreciate the detailed development of the plot because Forster brings home with such ability the hazards of Maurice's struggle, the ever-present possibility of failure, the balance between lesser and more important goals, and the way in which Forster makes clear that these goals, as Maurice knows when he "listens beneath" words, are not the ends that he is really achieving as he achieves them. Maurice himself is drawn with Jane Austen-ian precision: Forster mixes the divine heroism--beauty and brutality--in Maurice's essential, private life with his utterly mundane non-essentials--politics, understanding, relationships with family, opinions, way of talking, appearance, job.This is a heroic book. It moves me to tears every time I read it.

A fascinating glimpse into the world of "the love that dare not speak its name." The book details the realities of being gay in Edwardian England as well as presenting a beautiful love story. Something to read more for ideas than action, more so than Forster's other works. As someone who grew up in an EXTREMELY liberal household, it was a real eye-opener, putting emotional substance onto my intellectual knowledge about intolerance. I read this sandwiched between twice seeing Tom Stoppard's "The Invention of Love" about A.E. Housman, and found them enormously complementary; each really adding to my understanding of the other.

I have to confess, I watched the movie first (which I watched three times in a span of two days). I enjoyed the movie so much that after the third time, I ran out and bought the book. The book is absolutely beautiful. I remember sitting on the subway reading Maurice and forgetting where I was, ingnoring everyone around me, and letting the book whisk me away to a time and place obviously different, yet unfortunately similar in attitude towards same-sex relationships (I missed my stop). I couldn't believe Maurice was written over 80 years ago. The subject matter seems too contemporary to be written about during that time, and I suppose that's why E.M. Forster's novel is so great. He manages to capture effortlessly the relationship of Maurice and Clive, as well as to paint a picture of what life was like back then for gay folk. Readers can easily transpose many of the events and experiences in the novel to the present day, which makes empathizing with Maurice so much easier. This novel should no doubt be a required read. It shares many of the complexities as Forster's other work, yet perhaps it is glossed over more because of its subject matter--which, if true, is such a shame.

The film of "Maurice" produced by Merchant Ivory a number of years ago is one my favorite films. I was curious, having never read E.M. Forster before, to see how much of the issue of homosexuality was a product of the book and how much was played-up for the film. The book did not dissapoint. An honest, self-aware writer, E.M. Forster tells a beautiful story of a fairly unremarkable young man who is forced to (by virtue of being gay) become remarkable. Problems of English repugnance at homosexuality (a feeling he shares himself at first) and of class make him into a grownup, into a real man. In the book this becomes a wonderful liberation--that does not come through as well in the film. A marvelous read. Not published until after his death in 1970. Only a few read it when he actually wrote it in the teens. Too dangerous. A shame. Far ahead of it's time.