Maurice - a book review by Hailie
The reason why I was once obsessive with Britain may largely attribute to those great English writers, in whose writings Britain is always full of fascination: misty streets, endless lawns and youths wandering in Oxford and Cambridge with poetry in their hands. Having been deeply touched by the film adaptation “Maurice”(1987) directed by James Ivory, I found the original work to read afterwards. Like most English literature, the mood in the book is restrained and controlled. Forster manages to describe the emotions of gay love by eluding to it but never the vulgar, how elegant it is.
Written in the 1910s, but not released until 1971, after author’s death, Maurice is an Edwardian story about love, class, traditions, finding oneself and values of an era gone by. Maurice has been said to be the work where Forster proposes a possible reconciliation of class differences, whereas the rest of his work explores the opposite idea. Certainly, this novel displays Forster’s most optimistic, hopeful and even romantic facets. The title character is a young man who comes to understand that he is homosexual, for a time bringing him lots of pains and confusion in society where there was no place for gay men. We see Maurice through two relationships: first with his Cambridge schoolmate Clive, who unfortunately goes into the closet and becomes “normal”, breaking Maurice’s heart ; Second, with Alec, a game keeper who works on Clive’s estate, and in which relationship Maurice may finally find happiness.
I did not realize Forster is also homosexual until I checked out his profile. Under the circumstances - knowing it could not be published, so many decades before homosexuality was decriminalized - it is a remarkably honest and open book. I found it very sad to read about the character’s struggle within himself for mere acceptance or happiness. The self - doubt and agony the character suffered Forster probably went through the same. This book makes us rethink the relationship between love and social ethics: love is about two people in love becoming one. However, from the perspective of social ethics, it is all about breeding decedents, just contradicting what Clive said to Maurice in the novel “Why children? Why always Children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and nature knows it”. Sadly, majority agrees with love should be producing offspring and demand others to follow suit. Anyone who goes against it would be considered as an abomination of society, and an abnormal creature needs to be “cured”. I think Maurice is a book Forster wrote for himself, for the love he dares not to enjoy in Britain at that time. Though criticized by many people as “unnatural ”, Forster insisted to give this novel a happy ending. What he can not imagine in reality, he decided to make it happen in fictional world. “For a better year.” Forster wrote in the dedication. This maybe his best wishes for himself, although it would be a long time before the better year came.