An LGBT reading event: Maurice

While I bought Maurice by E.M. Forster some decades ago together with a Room with a View, I had not bothered until now to actually read it.  Being a teenager at the time, the romantic aspect of A Room immediately got my full attention, leaving Maurice in the dark...

So much so, that I didn't even know about its storyline or about it being published post-humously.  Not to worry, Adam provided the opportunity for me to dust the book, open it (finally!) and immese myself into puritan early 20th century England... Reader's delight was waiting around the corner!

The story is about Maurice, a young boy who, through his journey to adulthood will realise his attraction to men and will have to come to terms with his own beliefs as well as those of the society he lives in.

Forster does not engage in aggressive rhetoric against the seemingly puritan society he himeself lived in, and I liked that.  His narration of Maurice, his early encounters with the teachers and his family, everything is told in a calm, structured manner, with very few instances of excitement.  I believe this is the point he wanted to make:  homosexuality does not happen to extraordinary people, it happens even the more boring, the more average human being next to us.  The important question is how will one live true to their own feelings and not succumb to society's expectations... This is 1914, and relations in general were pretty well scripted from childhood onwards.  As Dr. Barry tells Maurice, the natural order of things is to finish university, get a job, get married, have children, die...

There was no way of straying from these guidelines, unless one was prepared to be shunned from society and live on the run, as homosexual conduct was still regarded a criminal act.  For this reason, a lot of people would actually try to "cure" themselves, as Maurice himself does a couple of times.  The essence, I suppose, of the book is what is the "nature" of the human soul.   How can one say what is natural and what not?  Can this ever be dictated by society? Stories from those days (but also as late as the 1980's in my own country) talk of people living a double life, trying to fit in with society's norms, but being miserable underneath.  Clive in the book got to loathe himself, and in the end intended to get married to regain his place among his fellow humans.  He lacked the strength that is required to stand up to his own beliefs and face criticism.

Maurice, on the other hand, goes through a progressive transformation that will in the end make it easier to accept himself.  While he drops out of university, he nevertheless manages to keep a well-paying job, and a respected profile in society.  The ending proves to be the one intense part in the novel, in which Maurice and Alec, after going through a tiny spell of blackmail, admit their love for one another and decide to live together, knowing that this will mean being on the run for the remainder of their lives.

I enjoyed reading Maurice, and found it to be a well-thought novel (for lack of a better word).  As I said, there were no overly-emotional descriptions, which for me would have a negative effect.  Rather, by remaining "firmly on the ground", Forster made a very good case on why we should tolerate each other. The characters he chose provide all the material evidence that show how detrimental imposed norms can be on people, which will certainly have an (negative) impact on society as a whole...

Still, I could not reason Forster's decision to have the novel published post-humously:  Reading Maurice, I gather Forster's personal beliefs with regard to homosexuality but also on the "comme il faut" restrictions of society at that time.  I can imagine why he refrained from publishing it then - he wanted to live a tranquil life, which I can accept. But if he deemed the novel not worth publishing in 1914, why wait to have it publish after his death in 1971?  surely the social norms had already changed long before, and the intended impact of the novel would still have been strong had it been published e.g. in the 1940s.  But then I had an in-depth discussion with a friend, who not only holds a degree in English Literature, but also knows the customs of British literary society.  Apparently, things had not changed that much by the 1970s with regard to accepting homosexuality, so  Forster would probably not have survived the uproar created by such a publication ...

I read this book for The Literary Others: An LGBT Reading Event hosted by Adam of Roof Beam Reader. For more information and signing up, visit this link.