Book Review: Maurice

[osprey_archer]

“Love had failed. Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.”

This line is actually the antithesis of E. M. Forster’s Maurice, a novel that yearns to believe that love can do things; I quote it here both because I found it very arresting and because the novel, rather against its will, makes a strong argument in its favor. Forster wrote Maurice because he wanted a gay novel with a happy ending, for which reason he couldn’t publish it in his lifetime (although Mary Renault published The Charioteer in the 1950s, before Forster died; how did that slip through? Maybe the censor was a bit confused by Renault’s ending). It does have a happy ending - the scene where Maurice finds Alec asleep in the boathouse is beautiful - but up till then it’s one long slog of love failing to do things.

I actually tried to read this when I was in high school, and got surprisingly far - up to the point where Maurice complains in his mind about Clive only ever offering him half a thing, and now offering a mere one-quarter and claiming that it’s better than the whole - before giving it up because I couldn’t take the relentless slog of love failing to do anything. That is of course right before the book gets to Alec, so if my past self had just held on a little longer...

There are three main characters in Maurice: Maurice himself, purposefully designed to be utterly unlike Forster (being bluff, hearty, athletic, good-looking, and dim) except for being gay; Maurice’s Cambridge boyfriend, Clive; and Maurice’s endgame pairing, Alec, who is Clive’s gamekeeper. As Forster points out, he wrote the book before Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Apparently there was just something in the water at the time that made writers go “I bet a gamekeeper would be an absolutely feral lover.”

Maurice and Clive meet at Cambridge and have an intense, although chaste, love - Clive having evidently drunk deep of the Phaedrus - until Clive, at twenty-four, gets the flu, which makes him straight. I was at first a little puzzled by this development, but as far as I can tell Forster means us to take it absolutely literally. (I've read about other Englishmen around this time period who thought they were homosexual until they left the single-sex environment of English boarding school and university, and then experienced this weird sexuality flip, so... I guess that just happened sometimes?)

Anyway, Clive dumps Maurice and gets married. Maurice sinks into depression and hits on a grammar schoolboy who is staying in his family’s home. (I also found this part upsetting as a high school student.) But then, two-thirds of the way through the book, he meets his endgame lover, Alec! Who climbs through Maurice’s window while Maurice is staying at Clive’s house, leading to a whirlwind night of lovemaking, after which Alec sends Maurice love letters which Maurice is too terrified to answer. After a few unanswered letters, Alec threatens blackmail, possibly as an attempt to force Maurice to acknowledge his existence? When they actually meet up at the British Museum to discuss blackmail terms, they end up going to a hotel for another night of passion instead.

(Apparently in the movie Clive is aware of/implicated in the blackmail plot, but here he’s blithely oblivious and possibly too straight to care. Do the filmmakers embrace Clive’s flu-induced heterosexuality?)

Alas for Maurice, Alec has long-laid plans to emigrate to the Argentine: he’s quit his job as gamekeeper and bought tickets and everything. Maurice begs him to stay, Alec quite sensibly points out that he spent all his money on his emigration kit and what could they possibly live on, and after Alec leaves Maurice unleashes his cri de coeur about how “Love has failed.”

…I must confess I have a long-standing and deep-seated dislike of plots where one character gives up their plans for Love, which semi-spoiled the ending for me. Yes, it’s beautiful when Maurice finds Alec sleeping in the boathouse waiting for him, but a part of me was shouting at Alec, “You barely know Maurice! Also, he’s kind of boring! Go to the Argentine and have sex with the gauchos!”

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

The film has Clive have a mental breakdown after a queer professor at Cambridge gets convicted of gross indecency - which works much better imho. The screenwriter talks about the change here.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, I can see how "straightness by way of flu!" might be a hard sell to later generations.

[kore]

Maurice is interesting and it's beautifully written but the "happy ending" bit always frustrates me, because I was just like, "HOW? How is that a happy ending? Where are they going to live?" altho maybe you're supposed to handwave that part. But the rest of the book has been so realistic about the social dangers of queer life that it reads like an escape into fantasy, at least for me. But it's gorgeous.

(I once looong ago read a queer lit theory type paper that talked about Proust and Forster and other writers projecting queer desire onto their straight heroines, but of course I can't find it now....)

[osprey_archer]

I mean it's "happy" in the sense that they are both alive and together...? But yes, absolutely, I also was like "Alec has a good point, sir! What will you eat? Where will you live? Stop blathering on about this running away to the greenwood nonsense, you two bozos clearly can't live off the land!"

Or I guess maaaaybe Alec might have the skill, but Maurice definitely doesn't, and also it's not like England had great tracts of wilderness they can retreat to... And anyway Maurice doesn't really propose that as a viable solution, it's just something he muses about. But seriously. How WILL they live now they've both chucked their jobs? IS Alec going to look back on this decision in about three weeks and go "What the fuck was I thinking?"

[kore]

Oh Lord, the idea of Maurice trying to learn woodcraft is kind of horribly amusing. Maybe Alec could do some time-honoured labour down at the docks while Maurice reads or something? What is Maurice qualified to do anyway? Maybe Maurice should be the one down at the docks with the "Get It Here" sign.

[osprey_archer]

Maurice was a stockbroker and I'm fairly sure there is nothing else he is qualified to do that could possibly keep them in the style to which Maurice is accustomed. The gigolo business is not THAT lucrative.

Maybe Alec does actual dock work while Maurice does Stucky-style "dock" "work." Although TBH given that his only sexual experience is Alec, he's not really qualified for that either.

[kore]

Maybe Alec does actual dock work while Maurice does Stucky-style "dock" "work."

Yes!

Although TBH given that his only sexual experience is Alec, he's not really qualified for that either.

...well, you never know, some gentlemen might actually be willing to pay extra for lack of experience....

[osprey_archer]

I don't know! Is male virginity a thing that people pay extra for? And in any case he no longer has that, after Alec...

Now I'm wondering there's Alec/Maurice top/bottom wank.

[cleodoxa]

I couldn't really connect with this book because Maurice was just too dull. It seems praiseworthy for Forster to try and get inside the head of someone unlike himself and make him the protagonist rather than the object of desire, but as it is there seems to be so little going on inside Maurice that he could only be improved by someone showing us the view from outside.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah! Give us an Alec's eye view of Maurice, Forster! Clearly he sees something there if he's willing to throw up everything for Maurice.

[oracne]

Maybe they BOTH went to Argentina.

[osprey_archer]

Only if Maurice has enough money saved to buy them both tickets - Alec's ship sailed while he was waiting in the boathouse for Maurice. Or maybe Maurice has made enough money in his short years stockbroking that they can just live on that forever?

[minutia_r]

I am not part of the culture that Maurice and Lady Chatterly's Lover were written in, so I may be off-base here, but the gamekeeper thing seems like it's a combination of someone who is Rugged and In Touch With Nature, but also someone who an upper-class person could conceivably meet and spend time with in the course of their ordinary life, with a dash of power dynamics thrown in.

[osprey_archer]

Oh yeah. Lawrence in particular leans hard on the IN TOUCH WITH NATURE thing. The gamekeeper is in touch with his wild, masculine needs, unlike the denizens of our effete, mechanized civilization! Plus of course conveniently available to Lady Chatterly with a cottage where they can bang.