I hadn’t read this before; it was a disappointment. Its history is fairly well-known: written fairly impulsively in 1913-1914 as a novel which the author knew could not be published, it did not appear until 1971, shortly after the author’s death. It could have been published before then but the elderly author (quite reasonably) did not want the hassle it would create - not so much legal, since there is little in the book which even the most vicious lawyer in the Mervyn-Griffiths-Jones mould could seize upon, as personal - Forster was Establishment at the highest level: Fellow of King's, Order of Merit, Companion of Honour. The novel can be summarised as a gay male coming out story with more than a suggestion of a happy-ever-after ending.
In terms of structure
and style it is unremarkable, a chronological story told more or less in plain
prose. The author’s effort was presumably focussed on
the challenging because fairly novel task of actually writing about male
homosexual love and/or sex. He has two shots at it: Maurice’s anguished first affair
with fellow Cambridge student Clive is framed by the Platonic ideal of the Phaedo: they do sort of have sex, but
not much, and it’s not the important thing. Maurice’s second post-Cambridge affair
is thrust upon him by an importunate gamekeeper, Alec, interested in physical
sex as the gateway to whatever else might be possible between two men. Maurice
decides - very rapidly - that a bit of rough is what he has always needed and
throws up his conventional life to embrace a chance which won’t repeat itself;
Alec also throws up a life. It’s Bernardine Evaristo stuff, if you will excuse
the anachronism.
Over a hundred years on
from its composition, this either-or framing in terms of Platonic soul and decidedly
non-platonic body can only seem rather dated or, at least, limited. As a
result, I guess that for most readers, the novel will present itself as a
period piece which reminds us of how anguishing it was to be young and gay -
and middle-class - in early twentieth
century England..
