When reading E.M Foster’s “Maurice”, I could not help but think of the issues addressed in Jagose’s “Queer Theory”. Jagose defines homosexuality as, “commonly and widely understood sexual attraction for those of the one’s own sex” (Jagose 6). It was made evident that Clive was very much in love with Maurice and shared a sexual attraction, but his religious belief led him to believe that to consummate the relationship would mean his soul be damned to hell. Therefore, Clive believes that the act of homosexuality is wrong but to actually “act” on it is what condemns you to hell. In other words, he could have these feelings for Maurice without the chances of going to hell but he could never participate in the actual act of sex.
Clive’s way of thinking made me think of one of the claiming heterosexual men Jagose interviews. Jagose’s interview with the heterosexual, married man makes one question rather the “act” of sex makes you homosexual or simply the feelings of attraction toward to same sex. The interviewer says “I am not really gay. Gay sex is something I do 2-3 times a week. It amounts to so little of my time” (Jagose 7). Clive’s views on homosexuality in conjunction with Jagose’s interview made me question rather he even considered himself homosexual or gay. Since Clive has never participated in the act of what this interviewer calls “gay sex”, did Clive even consider himself homosexual? Is Clive homosexual? Does Clive’s choice to remain chaste save him from hell? Or have the emotional feelings he has towards Maurice canceled out his choice to be chaste?
I can’t really discuss religion/theology here — that’s for another class — but I think your question is spot on: Clive and Maurice view their sexuality/attraction quite differently, and part of what Forster seems to be doing is to present these different ways of experience attraction so that readers can see the complexities of “gay” lives. It’s really hard to get into the mindset of pre-1960s gay and lesbian people, and to understand how diverse that group was in thought since after 1969’s Stonewall Riots, LGBT people adopted a Civil Rights model of activism: unity, identity, civility — by unifying as an identity group we can attain civil rights; if we’re not a clearly defined “group” then we can’t make that argument. Before then, there were many men like the one Jagose interviewed and like Clive, who had feeling and intense male-male emotional relationships, but never “crossed that line.” There’s a telling moment at the end of the novel which seem stop suggest that Forster was pro-Maurice and a bit anti-Clive in this thinking: Clive is staring out the window and there’s a line there (pardon, I don’t have my book on me) where Forster writes about the “secret which he must forever keep from Anne.” The novel presents our first really pro-gay ending in many ways: the person who is being “honest” about his sexuality seems to be our hero, while the person who must forever keep “secrets” is being dishonest. Even though Clive and Anne seem happy together — as happy as many couples at the time — Forster seems to suggest that there’s something a bit wrong with their relationship, where the class-busting relationship that Maurice forms with Scudder seems more “true,” perhaps because it embraces a lot of the Existential values that simmer beneath the surface… Read more »
Nearing the end of the novel, I began to feel somewhat sad for Clive. Like you’ve stated, he did seem to have a happy, functioning relationship with Anne but at the same time it seemed as if he was missing something. In my mind I somewhat compared Clive’s situation to food. It’s like being on a diet and seeing great results, results you’ve always strived for while at the same time you long for that piece of chocolate cake, knowing that it would give you results opposite of the ones that you want. I think this analogy describes Clive’s issue with his sexuality in its most simplistic form. He wants something that he feels will diminish everything that he has worked for. He has put on this face and dug this hole for so long that he feels as if there is now no way out. Clive is well aware of the fact that being with Maurice or any other man will be much tougher than doing what everyone else expects and he truly believes it will impact his life after death. Therefore, he succumbs to the social norm by marrying a woman and living the supposed happily ever after. However, in my opinion, no matter what Clive does or who he marries, the longing for male companionship makes him homosexual rather he partakes in the actual act of sex or not.
I think another issue that compounds the relationship between Clive and Maurice in the novel is the environment in which they formed the relationship. They were boys/young men learning about their own identities at an all boys class at Cambridge. At a time when youth are discovering themselves and their sexuality, it is only natural to test those limits on the peers in your proximity.
Having said that, I do believe Clive is gay, but chooses societal expectations to retain his social status. Clive, then, has chosen to sin in a different way–he is lying to himself and those around him and using other people (Anne) to advance his social status.
I will be honest to say that, in my attempts to get a head start on Giovanni, I have not finished Maurice, which makes Stephanie and Tiffany’s questions a bit more difficult to answer, as they both heavily focus on Scudder. And it may also make some of my statements in this response incorrect, if the book ever revealed any further information on the subject.
Clive’s return from his travels bothered me. His sudden change in belief and attitude, that he was no longer attracted to men, and now only to women, was the low point of what I’ve read of the book. I have no issues with Clive and Maurice’s relationship falling apart, and I very much enjoyed the lead-up to its ending, but this section seemed to me almost like…a ‘cure.’ It wasn’t that he decided it would be easier to live as a heteronormative person, find a wife, and be accepted by, and acceptable to, society. It wasn’t that he simply grew to hate Maurice. No. He had suddenly become straight (before such words were used to describe it). I know that sexuality can be fluid and ever changing, and treating it as such in a piece of writing today would be commendable. But the way it was portrayed here, instead, made Clive’s sexuality seem like that clichéd phrase so many movies and TV shows would have us believe all initially unaccepting parents say about their homosexual children:
Clive’s sudden shift bothered me, too; however, I never believe he truly changed. First, he’s the one who propositioned Maurice while at Cambridge. While their relationship could be written off as a school boy tryst, as a way for Maurice and Clive to explore their sexuality and emotions in an environment where they were only surrounded by the same-sex, this argument does not quite hold as you evaluate Clive’s relationship with women, particularly Anne. In actuality, Clive’s relationship with Anne is more platonic, in the same way he describes what his adult relationships with Maurice should be. Clive and Anne have sex, but never take off their clothes and they have sex as expectation. There is no physical intimacy. Rather, they come off as friends who do respect each other and get along. The offensive thing about Clive’s change is his ability to use Anne to secure his spot in society. He didn’t want his comforts taken away from him if others found out about his love for Maurice (Forster 127)
This is a fair interpretation. I feel it is very reasonable to assume that Clive was wrong in his appraisal of himself and his own feelings. A part of me felt the same way, but without any explicit statement of such from Clive himself in the book, it’s only conjecture. And so I still feel that what the book is telling me is that “You can change!” And yeah. This is my own biases and baggage coming into play. But I’m okay with that 😛
A frustrating part of the novel for sure, but not uncommon or even odd at the time. Given the long history of homosocial/same-sex school relationships, particularly at English public schools (boarding school for the wealthy), these relationships were common as mud, but they didn’t continue into adulthood. I think we see Forster falling back on those a bit, where Clive played around and experimented in his youth but thinks of it as ONLY a youthful folly … Maurice, though, begs the question, what happens when these feeling are not just childish experimentation? I’ve never quite understood the suddenness of it all, either, though, chalking it up to the struggle for a writer to tell this sort of story …
And this is probably a problem for me because I know very little of English public / boarding schools in the early 20th century, so I can’t relate. Wish I could though. My high school years were no where near that much fun.
Nor, indeed, were mine, sadly … 🙁 I find these sort of homosocial spaces in history fascinating for what they allowed without allowing it and then squashed as youthful folly … I sometimes wish I had more youthful folly …
A big issue I had with this book is that I really could not connect with the namesake character of Maurice. He is immature, relies on his physicality, and is not particularly intellectual. While his ability to consider things in deeper thought develops more by the end of the novel, he really is not a likeable character. He is lustful, and, as he ages, is increasingly disrespectful toward his mother and sisters. His disdain for women is understandable given his sexual preference; however, for him to be directly rude and disrespectful toward his family, including his mother, who raised him after his father’s death, is not a redeeming feature for his character. He is disinterested in most things in life aside from sex, yet does little to nothing to effect societal change and acceptance for the one thing he holds most valuable and pleasurable in life (being able to have a same-sex lover). While Clive’s behavior is not to be applauded, I feel the readers get more inside Clive’s head and can grasp more of an understanding of his reasons for his life decisions.
I hadn’t really ever thought of Maurice that way, but I can see your point. There’s a sort of adolescence that Maurice never matures out of — that sort of petulant rudeness to his mother and sister are good examples — that I’ve always read as adolescent, as stunted — since he’s never able to form an adult relationship that’s meaningful, he’s stuck in a space of anger and frustration, which compromises all of his adult relationships. It seems to me that Forster present a figure in Maurice who demonstrates what happens when our whole humanity is compromised or devalued — we cannot be fully human, fully ethical and aware. I certain see Maurice as resentful for the happiness that he sees in other who have or have had (like his mother) sustaining relationships. I don’t read Maurice as only being interested in sex, but it’s such an important part of intimacy, I can also empathize with how hard it must be to face a life of loneliness …
I agree that Maurice is far more lustful and immature in the novel, and that the way that Clive handles his situation is not necessarily noble, but I found the beginnings of their relationship to be based on far more than just physicality. The two spend “perfect days” together that lack any sexual encounters at all. I think Clive’s behavior is completely expected for the time period, and that his decision makes complete sense to the reader. I think Forester also does a decent job showing the difference in the relationships between Clive and Maurice and Clive and Anne. There is an obvious deep connection between the men that lacks with Clive and Anne. Perhaps that missing connection is a part of the reason there is not a physical connection there and the sex is simply out of duty (aside from the fact that Clive is gay, of course).
When reading E.M Foster’s “Maurice”, I could not help but think of the issues addressed in Jagose’s “Queer Theory”. Jagose defines homosexuality as, “commonly and widely understood sexual attraction for those of the one’s own sex” (Jagose 6). It was made evident that Clive was very much in love with Maurice and shared a sexual attraction, but his religious belief led him to believe that to consummate the relationship would mean his soul be damned to hell. Therefore, Clive believes that the act of homosexuality is wrong but to actually “act” on it is what condemns you to hell. In other words, he could have these feelings for Maurice without the chances of going to hell but he could never participate in the actual act of sex.
Clive’s way of thinking made me think of one of the claiming heterosexual men Jagose interviews. Jagose’s interview with the heterosexual, married man makes one question rather the “act” of sex makes you homosexual or simply the feelings of attraction toward to same sex. The interviewer says “I am not really gay. Gay sex is something I do 2-3 times a week. It amounts to so little of my time” (Jagose 7). Clive’s views on homosexuality in conjunction with Jagose’s interview made me question rather he even considered himself homosexual or gay. Since Clive has never participated in the act of what this interviewer calls “gay sex”, did Clive even consider himself homosexual? Is Clive homosexual? Does Clive’s choice to remain chaste save him from hell? Or have the emotional feelings he has towards Maurice canceled out his choice to be chaste?
I can’t really discuss religion/theology here — that’s for another class — but I think your question is spot on: Clive and Maurice view their sexuality/attraction quite differently, and part of what Forster seems to be doing is to present these different ways of experience attraction so that readers can see the complexities of “gay” lives. It’s really hard to get into the mindset of pre-1960s gay and lesbian people, and to understand how diverse that group was in thought since after 1969’s Stonewall Riots, LGBT people adopted a Civil Rights model of activism: unity, identity, civility — by unifying as an identity group we can attain civil rights; if we’re not a clearly defined “group” then we can’t make that argument. Before then, there were many men like the one Jagose interviewed and like Clive, who had feeling and intense male-male emotional relationships, but never “crossed that line.” There’s a telling moment at the end of the novel which seem stop suggest that Forster was pro-Maurice and a bit anti-Clive in this thinking: Clive is staring out the window and there’s a line there (pardon, I don’t have my book on me) where Forster writes about the “secret which he must forever keep from Anne.” The novel presents our first really pro-gay ending in many ways: the person who is being “honest” about his sexuality seems to be our hero, while the person who must forever keep “secrets” is being dishonest. Even though Clive and Anne seem happy together — as happy as many couples at the time — Forster seems to suggest that there’s something a bit wrong with their relationship, where the class-busting relationship that Maurice forms with Scudder seems more “true,” perhaps because it embraces a lot of the Existential values that simmer beneath the surface… Read more »
Nearing the end of the novel, I began to feel somewhat sad for Clive. Like you’ve stated, he did seem to have a happy, functioning relationship with Anne but at the same time it seemed as if he was missing something. In my mind I somewhat compared Clive’s situation to food. It’s like being on a diet and seeing great results, results you’ve always strived for while at the same time you long for that piece of chocolate cake, knowing that it would give you results opposite of the ones that you want. I think this analogy describes Clive’s issue with his sexuality in its most simplistic form. He wants something that he feels will diminish everything that he has worked for. He has put on this face and dug this hole for so long that he feels as if there is now no way out. Clive is well aware of the fact that being with Maurice or any other man will be much tougher than doing what everyone else expects and he truly believes it will impact his life after death. Therefore, he succumbs to the social norm by marrying a woman and living the supposed happily ever after. However, in my opinion, no matter what Clive does or who he marries, the longing for male companionship makes him homosexual rather he partakes in the actual act of sex or not.
I think another issue that compounds the relationship between Clive and Maurice in the novel is the environment in which they formed the relationship. They were boys/young men learning about their own identities at an all boys class at Cambridge. At a time when youth are discovering themselves and their sexuality, it is only natural to test those limits on the peers in your proximity.
Having said that, I do believe Clive is gay, but chooses societal expectations to retain his social status. Clive, then, has chosen to sin in a different way–he is lying to himself and those around him and using other people (Anne) to advance his social status.
I will be honest to say that, in my attempts to get a head start on Giovanni, I have not finished Maurice, which makes Stephanie and Tiffany’s questions a bit more difficult to answer, as they both heavily focus on Scudder. And it may also make some of my statements in this response incorrect, if the book ever revealed any further information on the subject.
Clive’s return from his travels bothered me. His sudden change in belief and attitude, that he was no longer attracted to men, and now only to women, was the low point of what I’ve read of the book. I have no issues with Clive and Maurice’s relationship falling apart, and I very much enjoyed the lead-up to its ending, but this section seemed to me almost like…a ‘cure.’ It wasn’t that he decided it would be easier to live as a heteronormative person, find a wife, and be accepted by, and acceptable to, society. It wasn’t that he simply grew to hate Maurice. No. He had suddenly become straight (before such words were used to describe it). I know that sexuality can be fluid and ever changing, and treating it as such in a piece of writing today would be commendable. But the way it was portrayed here, instead, made Clive’s sexuality seem like that clichéd phrase so many movies and TV shows would have us believe all initially unaccepting parents say about their homosexual children:
“It’s only a phase.”
Clive’s sudden shift bothered me, too; however, I never believe he truly changed. First, he’s the one who propositioned Maurice while at Cambridge. While their relationship could be written off as a school boy tryst, as a way for Maurice and Clive to explore their sexuality and emotions in an environment where they were only surrounded by the same-sex, this argument does not quite hold as you evaluate Clive’s relationship with women, particularly Anne. In actuality, Clive’s relationship with Anne is more platonic, in the same way he describes what his adult relationships with Maurice should be. Clive and Anne have sex, but never take off their clothes and they have sex as expectation. There is no physical intimacy. Rather, they come off as friends who do respect each other and get along. The offensive thing about Clive’s change is his ability to use Anne to secure his spot in society. He didn’t want his comforts taken away from him if others found out about his love for Maurice (Forster 127)
Forster, E.M. Maurice. Norton, 1971.
This is a fair interpretation. I feel it is very reasonable to assume that Clive was wrong in his appraisal of himself and his own feelings. A part of me felt the same way, but without any explicit statement of such from Clive himself in the book, it’s only conjecture. And so I still feel that what the book is telling me is that “You can change!” And yeah. This is my own biases and baggage coming into play. But I’m okay with that 😛
A frustrating part of the novel for sure, but not uncommon or even odd at the time. Given the long history of homosocial/same-sex school relationships, particularly at English public schools (boarding school for the wealthy), these relationships were common as mud, but they didn’t continue into adulthood. I think we see Forster falling back on those a bit, where Clive played around and experimented in his youth but thinks of it as ONLY a youthful folly … Maurice, though, begs the question, what happens when these feeling are not just childish experimentation? I’ve never quite understood the suddenness of it all, either, though, chalking it up to the struggle for a writer to tell this sort of story …
And this is probably a problem for me because I know very little of English public / boarding schools in the early 20th century, so I can’t relate. Wish I could though. My high school years were no where near that much fun.
Nor, indeed, were mine, sadly … 🙁 I find these sort of homosocial spaces in history fascinating for what they allowed without allowing it and then squashed as youthful folly … I sometimes wish I had more youthful folly …
A big issue I had with this book is that I really could not connect with the namesake character of Maurice. He is immature, relies on his physicality, and is not particularly intellectual. While his ability to consider things in deeper thought develops more by the end of the novel, he really is not a likeable character. He is lustful, and, as he ages, is increasingly disrespectful toward his mother and sisters. His disdain for women is understandable given his sexual preference; however, for him to be directly rude and disrespectful toward his family, including his mother, who raised him after his father’s death, is not a redeeming feature for his character. He is disinterested in most things in life aside from sex, yet does little to nothing to effect societal change and acceptance for the one thing he holds most valuable and pleasurable in life (being able to have a same-sex lover). While Clive’s behavior is not to be applauded, I feel the readers get more inside Clive’s head and can grasp more of an understanding of his reasons for his life decisions.
I hadn’t really ever thought of Maurice that way, but I can see your point. There’s a sort of adolescence that Maurice never matures out of — that sort of petulant rudeness to his mother and sister are good examples — that I’ve always read as adolescent, as stunted — since he’s never able to form an adult relationship that’s meaningful, he’s stuck in a space of anger and frustration, which compromises all of his adult relationships. It seems to me that Forster present a figure in Maurice who demonstrates what happens when our whole humanity is compromised or devalued — we cannot be fully human, fully ethical and aware. I certain see Maurice as resentful for the happiness that he sees in other who have or have had (like his mother) sustaining relationships. I don’t read Maurice as only being interested in sex, but it’s such an important part of intimacy, I can also empathize with how hard it must be to face a life of loneliness …
I agree that Maurice is far more lustful and immature in the novel, and that the way that Clive handles his situation is not necessarily noble, but I found the beginnings of their relationship to be based on far more than just physicality. The two spend “perfect days” together that lack any sexual encounters at all. I think Clive’s behavior is completely expected for the time period, and that his decision makes complete sense to the reader. I think Forester also does a decent job showing the difference in the relationships between Clive and Maurice and Clive and Anne. There is an obvious deep connection between the men that lacks with Clive and Anne. Perhaps that missing connection is a part of the reason there is not a physical connection there and the sex is simply out of duty (aside from the fact that Clive is gay, of course).