Maurice (Penguin Classics)
by E M Forster
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Book Summary Information
Author: E M ForsterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-28
ISBN: 0141441135
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Penguin Classics/Press
Book Reviews of Maurice (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: A Gay Classic Revisited
Summary: 5 Stars
Written in 1913-1914 E. M. Forster's MAURICE, at his direction, was not published until after his death in 1970 although in the "terminal note" at the end of the novel he says that he changed little of the story over the years. Unless you were a gay man living in 1971 and had been bombarded all your life with how awful homosexuality was, a crime, a sin and a mental illness, you cannot imagine the joy that reading this novel brought since the only person who dies in this novel is Maurice's grandfather. Of course Maurice is beset with self-loathing, fears, depression and loneliness as Edwardian society expected young men who went to Cambridge to marry and repopulate the earth. For instance, when Maurice attempts to discuss his inspeakable problem "of the Oscar Wilde sort," with a family friend Dr. Barry, the physician responded: "'Rubbish, rubbish!'" He further said that the worst thing he could do for Maurice was "discuss it." Maurice is able to rise above or work his way around this non-diagnosis, as well as a trip to a hypnotist to be cured, and have a life with another man.
Some critics say that MAURICE is significant only in a historical context. Let them tell that to the gay teenager who finds this novel in his high school library and reads the beautiful ending, much more possible now than when Forster wrote it. This novel has universal appeal in that Clive, Maurice's first love, takes the easy way out by marrying and having a respectable career (we all know a couple of Clive's), and Maurice, for all his snobbery, grows to understand that love between men can cross class lines. (Forster's biographers note that he had a lover in 1919 who was an Egyptian tram conducter and fell in love with a London policeman in 1930.)
In his fine memoir MISSISSIPPI SISSY Kevin Sessums recalls a conversation with the writer Eudora Welty who made him promise to read Forster's PASSAGE TO INDIA: "'MAURICE is not first-rate Forster, even though I understand the reasons why it would be the only work of his you've read.'" Being in the same boat with Sessums, I cannot disagree or agree with Ms. Welty. I can only say that this is a fine novel indeed. Forster, himself, said in ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL: "The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of friends and of anything else which we cannot define."
By Forster's own definition, he has written a great novel.
Summary of Maurice (Penguin Classics)
Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive's country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening. A tale of passion, bravery and defiance, this intensely personal novel was completed in 1914 but remained unpublished until after Forster's death in 1970. Compellingly honest and beautifully written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society, and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man's erotic and political self-discovery.Literature & Fiction Books
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