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A review by elerireads
Maurice by E.M. Forster
3.0
Bit of a jumble of thoughts about this, so here’s some bullet-pointed word vomit :-) :
• Call me old fashioned but I’m a sucker for a likeable main character I can identify with, and Maurice is definitely that. Kind-hearted and thoughtful, but full of flaws that are both frustrating and endearing at the same time, especially his perpetually muddled thoughts that prevent him from seeing the obvious.
• I love the way E. M. Forster writes. He somehow manages the perfect blend of rich descriptions and startling directness.
• I got the impression Forster was enjoying making us hate Clive, and it made me enjoy it too! We really want to hate him vindictively for suddenly becoming ‘normal’ and dropping Maurice but that’s not really fair, so we were then helpfully given a whole load of legitimate reasons :-)
• Even though Clive turned out to be a complete knob, I at least understood the development of his relationship with Maurice, whereas Alec and Maurice seemed to go from barely having said 10 words to each other and then sleeping together to declarations of love??? It just didn’t gel for me, and then in the note at the end Forster said that he’d had to add in the museum and hotel scenes to flesh out their relationship, so (a) originally the relationship made even less sense; and (b) those scenes now seem retrospectively to stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the narrative.
• Can’t really think of a non-patronising way of saying that this was waaaay ahead of its time. I almost can’t believe such a frank interrogation of sexual identity and its resulting confusion and isolation and loneliness and fear and ultimately potential for joy, in a gay love story featuring a bisexual character (at least that’s how I read Alec) WITH A HAPPY ENDING was written over a century ago.
• The overall tone is kind of cautiously optimistic although Maurice and Alec do have to run away to get their happiness. Then the ‘terminal note’ written in 1960 was horribly, horribly depressing and just put a dampener on the whole thing. Seemed like life had just crushed that optimism out of Forster and he basically concluded that things were still crap but now there was nowhere to run away to.
• The whole second half of this reminded me so much of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and not just because of the whole shagging the gamekeeper thing - all that irritating waffle about nature and ‘the greenwood’ (I’m just really not a fan of the whole romanticising nature thing), although this was nowhere near as bad. Turns out D.H. Lawrence had actually read Maurice and was influenced by it!
• Solidly and consistently misogynistic throughout.... And I'm not sure how much to let it off. It seemed entirely realistic since Maurice barely met any women and had no interest in them at all, and at one point he actually explicitly acknowledged the misogyny, but on the other hand he treated the women he did meet like shit so... meh?
• Call me old fashioned but I’m a sucker for a likeable main character I can identify with, and Maurice is definitely that. Kind-hearted and thoughtful, but full of flaws that are both frustrating and endearing at the same time, especially his perpetually muddled thoughts that prevent him from seeing the obvious.
• I love the way E. M. Forster writes. He somehow manages the perfect blend of rich descriptions and startling directness.
Spoiler
• Fascinating that class was seen as the main obstacle to Alec and Maurice’s relationship (even by Clive), although this did seem quite forced in places.• I got the impression Forster was enjoying making us hate Clive, and it made me enjoy it too! We really want to hate him vindictively for suddenly becoming ‘normal’ and dropping Maurice but that’s not really fair, so we were then helpfully given a whole load of legitimate reasons :-)
• Even though Clive turned out to be a complete knob, I at least understood the development of his relationship with Maurice, whereas Alec and Maurice seemed to go from barely having said 10 words to each other and then sleeping together to declarations of love??? It just didn’t gel for me, and then in the note at the end Forster said that he’d had to add in the museum and hotel scenes to flesh out their relationship, so (a) originally the relationship made even less sense; and (b) those scenes now seem retrospectively to stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the narrative.
• Can’t really think of a non-patronising way of saying that this was waaaay ahead of its time. I almost can’t believe such a frank interrogation of sexual identity and its resulting confusion and isolation and loneliness and fear and ultimately potential for joy, in a gay love story featuring a bisexual character (at least that’s how I read Alec) WITH A HAPPY ENDING was written over a century ago.
• The overall tone is kind of cautiously optimistic although Maurice and Alec do have to run away to get their happiness. Then the ‘terminal note’ written in 1960 was horribly, horribly depressing and just put a dampener on the whole thing. Seemed like life had just crushed that optimism out of Forster and he basically concluded that things were still crap but now there was nowhere to run away to.
• The whole second half of this reminded me so much of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and not just because of the whole shagging the gamekeeper thing - all that irritating waffle about nature and ‘the greenwood’ (I’m just really not a fan of the whole romanticising nature thing), although this was nowhere near as bad. Turns out D.H. Lawrence had actually read Maurice and was influenced by it!
• Solidly and consistently misogynistic throughout.... And I'm not sure how much to let it off. It seemed entirely realistic since Maurice barely met any women and had no interest in them at all, and at one point he actually explicitly acknowledged the misogyny, but on the other hand he treated the women he did meet like shit so... meh?