I think both authors were careful to write under the shadow of heteronormativity in order to make their books more palatable to the masses. These efforts show up in subtle and not so subtle ways. As we discussed last week, one way Hall tried to make her characters seem more “normal” was through the influence religion had on their lives. I also think she did this through the disgust Stephen sometimes felt for the character of Brockett with his effeminate gestures and behaviors and with the patrons at Alec’s, who seemed to show no remorse or second thought about their “states.” In Maurice, I think readers are able to connect easily to the title character as, apart from his sexuality, he seems to present yourself as your average boy/man. He’s decent academically and athletically, is admired by those around him, and has a respectable job. Apart from his sexuality, he may be any number of men the reader knows in his/her own life. I also think Clive’s “change” also serves to “normalize” the characters. If Clive is so suddenly able, as he claims, to begin have intimate relationships with women, readers may conclude that all homosexuals have this ability and therefore are not so different, after all. I do think these instances make the books more publishable, but I also think the authors were simply “writing the times.” After all, the label of “homosexual” did not even exist and the understanding of the population was lacking. However, intentional or not, I do think the bow to heteronormativity does undermine each work—possibly not as deeply in the time period during which they were written and first read, but certainly from today’s standpoint.
I see Brockett as a bit like Lear’s fool, brought in for comic relief (e.g., his campiness) but also at times the voice of truth. He sees what Stephen is and then serves as her “guide” into the gay life as it were. He sees Mary’s troubles and has a serious talk with Stephen about her.
I wonder if the “bow to heteronormativity” that might have won Hall some straight readers cost her some gay readers in the process. I imagine many of the latter would have resented being depicted as “Pat’s miserable army” (Hall 378) and possibly have felt Hall was selling them out, excluding them from her vision of what is acceptable for a gay person to be.
You mention Clive’s sudden ability to “have intimate relationships with women”. I’m curious: Do you find him to be disingenuous about his sexuality? Do you feel that he misleads Maurice?
A lot of readers see Clive as a coward — that was the prevailing reading when I first encountered the novel in the golden age of Gay Rights (the 1980s and 1990s) — when PRIDE was everything. I tend to think of Clive as trying to make sense of his world, one that is rapidly changing as England approaches WWI. Clive looks to books, history, art, culture to know how to live; he doesn’t live very “authentically” as Maurice and Scudder do. Clive looks backwards; Maurice and Scudder look forwards. But they’re all trying to figure out how to make it. A key component of early gay and lesbian literature is that life is miserable, will always be miserable, and the best we can hope for is pity. To some extent, neither Well of Loneliness nor Maurice escapes that situation. It’s hard to know for sure how the books were received by gay or lesbian readers — or invert readers — but the usual line of thinking has been that they were happy just to see themselves represented in print. As a teenager, I would have read anything to see myself, even something tragic — and I did. That’s when I first encountered Maurice — and I loved it and the characters, perhaps in part because their misery seemed to reflect my own at the time.
Stephen-
I agree that Brockett also served both roles you mentioned. As far as Clive goes, I’m not sure that he was intentionally disingenuous or misleading. I think that for the time he was involved romantically with Maurice, he truly did feel romantic love for him. He often seemed to me to be more deeply in love than even Maurice. I do question, though, how authentic those feelings were when they were able to be redirected so suddenly. It seems that maybe Clive genuinely thought he was in love with Maurice, but perhaps he was simply caught up in a moment in time. Enamored by the Greeks, it’s possible Clive allowed this passion to be transferred on to his relationship with Maurice and he became “swept away.” This may explain how he was, in his own consciousness, genuinely in love with Maurice, but when taking a deeper route to self-reflection, found that he was not. I think, though, that Clive’s relationship with his wife seems forced and not altogether as fulfilling as his relationship with Maurice seemed to be. The hasty kiss on the hand toward the end of the book seems to hold a great deal of weight for both characters. Perhaps Clive has even more need for self-reflection. I do agree with Dr. Banks, though–whether Clive was a coward or not, I think it’s important to see gay and lesbian characters represented on the page.
I really enjoyed your thoughts about Clive being able to “change” and “normalize”. I agree with you that this was probably written to make homosexuals seem to fit in more in this time period. I thought this was something that ran throughout the novel. There were some “look Maurice/Clive aren’t so different than everyone else!” moments.
There were some moments too though that were very poignant in an opposite way. I was really struck by a line that Lasker Jones says to Maurice when he’s there for an appointment. Jones says to Maurice, “‘No one can be pulled against his will, Ms. Hall’” (197). Jones is responding to a question Maurice asks him about being pulled from his sleep, but I think this statement creates such moment of clarity for Maurice that distinguishes him as true to himself.
Good questions, Stephen! I’m going to approach them a bit in reverse. I do think that, as Jen points out, that these are works are, to a degree, undermined by reinforcing heteronormative notions of sexuality, but they do present alternative lifestyles in the public sphere and do so realistically, at least in my view. Maurice, Clive, and Scudder are not caricatures of “that kind,” the unspeakable Oscar Wilde types. Forster renders them as ordinary human beings in their respective classes struggling to find happiness. Perhaps this doesn’t necessarily reflect the need to make same-sex desire more acceptable, but I think the book does attempt to be honest about what makes these characters exceptional and what doesn’t — even though Maurice and Clive have significant economic, social, and educational advantages that elevate them for a general public, their more mundane moments better serve to humanize them, to make them relatable. That said, I’m not sure if that relatability works to make these relationships acceptable, but it does give the public an entry point for seeing that those who experience same-sex desire are not so different; perhaps making these relationships more “palatable”? The issue of a work’s “publishability” complicates things a bit, for there several variables that we could take into account (e.g. the publisher, length of the work, reputation/credibility of author, cost, and so on), but, yes, ultimately the larger question is “can we sell this to the general public without backlash and also make money?” The risk, in other words, is an economic one, yet the object is to sell a product. As for other attempts that push for acceptance of same-sex attraction, I think we’ve seen an interesting shift towards that, especially in advertising on television; homosexuality has been increasing commodified over time in popular media to such an… Read more »
I like your point about the commodification of gay culture. Do you consider the exploitation of camp to be part of that process? In both of the novels, we get a foreshadowing of that exploitation with Risley in Maurice and Brockett in The Well of Loneliness. These are prototypes of a stock character that would later be exploited more fully in order to cash in on the public’s fascination with over-the-top effeminate gay men (for example, Monroe Ficus in Too Close for Comfort and the Rupert Everett character in My Best Friend’s Wedding).
The moment that stood out to me the most as, potentially, something intended to ease heterosexual readers, occurred early in the text, with Clive. I forget the chapter number, but at one point, the book steps away from Maurice’s story to briefly tell us more about Clive and how his background and personal struggles with sexuality differ from Maurice’s. One of the main things mentioned here (and I will be paraphrasing) is that Clive had decided that it was okay to have the thoughts and feelings he was having, so long as he never acted on them. Lust and desire may be outside of his control, but his actions aren’t. And I seem to remember this being echoed again, in his relationship with Maurice. I apologize. I have been so buried in Giovanni preparing for my turn as discussion leader, that I’ve forgotten some of Maurice. But wasn’t their relationship, at least at one point, completely sexless? I believe this could have been an attempt to make such a tale more acceptable to the general community. Though, I wouldn’t be comfortable seeing it that way, entirely…because it also rang very true. Last week we discussed religion in the Well of Loneliness, and I said I would have more to say this week. This is it. I was raised very religious. But my religion did not interact with my sexuality like it did for Stephen in the Well of Loneliness. Instead, it was something of a battle to the death. I’d known I was gay since I was 8, and I’d believed in God my entire life. Both of these things were indisputable truths, and in my teens I learned what my religion thought of my sexuality, and suddenly, one of the two things I KNEW were true had to die… Read more »
I also struggled to get through Maurice but I agree with your observation about control and the separation of desire and action. I think that is a clear example of an appeal (if you could call it that?) to heteronormativity because, especially with religious morals in mind, heterosexual relationships are supposed to be the norm and are supposed to be more natural and sanctioned by God (under the strict circumstances of being after marriage and for procreation only, and sometimes the additional restrictions of only certain positions and only coitus). So I think any male homosexual relationship would have been seen as going against God and being rather odd and unnatural if they were having sex, no matter how religious and morally upright they were in public or how “tame” they were in private. With that in mind, a sexless relationship would probably have been perceived as the best way for a gay couple to avoid backlash and try to maintain a bit of heteronormativity, whether in a story or real life.
The same thing could be said about following heteronormative “roles” when it comes to appearance and mannerisms. I feel like Clive’s role as a scholar and Maurice as more of a gentleman is supposed to somewhat fit the one “top” and one “bottom” or one “femme” and one “butch” image of a “proper relationship”, to be more acceptable for heteronormative society. Even though in reality, there doesn’t have to be one of each, and roles and mannerisms don’t always match the outward appearance. Take this lesbian couple for example, in which the “butch” girl carried their child and received tons of backlash, even today: http://bodypositivewomen.tumblr.com/post/155952564181/shesalmosttoogaytofunction-buzzfeedlgbt-this
You bring up the issue of age, which was something that struck me about Stephen and Maurice. Both began to feel stirrings toward others of their sex at a young (and what I would have considered fairly typical) age. But their discovery that there were others who were “that way inclined” (Forster 51) was, it seems to me, quite late: Maurice was at university when he fully discovered this and Stephen was about that age as well. (Prior to that, there was no gay “template” for them to identify with. But there was a very clear heterosexual template they were expected to follow: Each was to emulate their father.) Does this seem late to you? Or would that have been typical of the era?
Maybe I’m the only one, but I didn’t buy the “love” stories in Maurice. The central character’s infatuations with members of the same sex felt just that—infatuations and lust. I felt that Maurice remained a rather immature character. Perhaps his trying to repress his sexuality put more emphasis on his lust. Now, I do think that still plays into the heteronormative nature of the writing. At Cambridge, the boys are only around other boys as they are learning their identity. Naturally, they will want to explore their emotions and sexuality, and the only way they can do that while not at home is by experimenting with the same sex. However, the idea of the coming-of-age story by way of a first love (such as Maurice and Clive) is seen in traditional love stories, and, therefore, is relatable to the heterosexual audience.
Additionally, another theme of sacrificing for love is also relatable in a heteronormative society. Alec Scudder abandons his trip to Argentine to stay in England to be with Maurice. Maurice, we are led to believe, also gives up his job and social status in order to disappear and remain with Alec (to run away together).
These romantic ideals transcend the type of love and can appeal to many audiences. I don’t think this is a concession or “selling out.” These are universal themes and ideals. Love is the norm, and should be the focus, not the pair who is in love (or lust). While these themes certainly help to make the book publishable and palatable in a heteronormative society, it doesn’t mean these ideals are not true. These themes and story lines (coming-of-age, first love, sacrificing for love) are universal not matter the culture and love interests. Love is love.
You are not the only one. I didn’t buy them either.
In keeping with the “Maybe I’m the only one” theme, I may be the only one who does not read Clive as being a homosexual. I think he’s a heterosexual who had a (i.e., one) homosexual relationship and that was in his younger years. With Clive, there’s no pattern of same-sex desire that I can see. Of course, this brings us back to whether sexuality labels refer to acts/behavior or an identity.
I found the early relationship between Clive and Maurice to be a prime example of the attempt to make the relationship between two men more palatable to the heterosexual reading the novel. Specifically, when Maurice visits Clive’s family in part two of the novel. The relationship is presented innocently. The men adore each other on a level past physical attraction or lust (more Clive here than Maurice), and the portrayal gives a deepness to their mutual attraction that would counter the assumptions of those who may view homosexuality as perverse or lustful. When Clive talks about the emotional connection he has to Maurice, and the effect of their relationship on him, the conversation could occur between any two people in a new relationship. “‘I should have gone through life half awake if you’d had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here – ‘ He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. ‘Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that any way'” (91). This conversation is followed by Maurice requesting Clive kiss him. The novel does not say how Clive “shook his head” (93), but I read it as a no. “Clive shook his head, and smiling they parted, having established perfection in their lives” (93). This example, like the day they spent together before Maurice was kicked out o school, shows a relationship that is not solely based on physical attraction or lust, and I think that is a purposeful decision by the author to show the normativity of their relationship, to almost make it pure and solely an emotional connection at first. It eases the reader into a male homosexual relationship.
I think both authors were careful to write under the shadow of heteronormativity in order to make their books more palatable to the masses. These efforts show up in subtle and not so subtle ways. As we discussed last week, one way Hall tried to make her characters seem more “normal” was through the influence religion had on their lives. I also think she did this through the disgust Stephen sometimes felt for the character of Brockett with his effeminate gestures and behaviors and with the patrons at Alec’s, who seemed to show no remorse or second thought about their “states.” In Maurice, I think readers are able to connect easily to the title character as, apart from his sexuality, he seems to present yourself as your average boy/man. He’s decent academically and athletically, is admired by those around him, and has a respectable job. Apart from his sexuality, he may be any number of men the reader knows in his/her own life. I also think Clive’s “change” also serves to “normalize” the characters. If Clive is so suddenly able, as he claims, to begin have intimate relationships with women, readers may conclude that all homosexuals have this ability and therefore are not so different, after all. I do think these instances make the books more publishable, but I also think the authors were simply “writing the times.” After all, the label of “homosexual” did not even exist and the understanding of the population was lacking. However, intentional or not, I do think the bow to heteronormativity does undermine each work—possibly not as deeply in the time period during which they were written and first read, but certainly from today’s standpoint.
A note about my last statement: that applies to the possibility of Maurice being published when it was written…
Hi Jen,
You raise several interesting points.
I see Brockett as a bit like Lear’s fool, brought in for comic relief (e.g., his campiness) but also at times the voice of truth. He sees what Stephen is and then serves as her “guide” into the gay life as it were. He sees Mary’s troubles and has a serious talk with Stephen about her.
I wonder if the “bow to heteronormativity” that might have won Hall some straight readers cost her some gay readers in the process. I imagine many of the latter would have resented being depicted as “Pat’s miserable army” (Hall 378) and possibly have felt Hall was selling them out, excluding them from her vision of what is acceptable for a gay person to be.
You mention Clive’s sudden ability to “have intimate relationships with women”. I’m curious: Do you find him to be disingenuous about his sexuality? Do you feel that he misleads Maurice?
A lot of readers see Clive as a coward — that was the prevailing reading when I first encountered the novel in the golden age of Gay Rights (the 1980s and 1990s) — when PRIDE was everything. I tend to think of Clive as trying to make sense of his world, one that is rapidly changing as England approaches WWI. Clive looks to books, history, art, culture to know how to live; he doesn’t live very “authentically” as Maurice and Scudder do. Clive looks backwards; Maurice and Scudder look forwards. But they’re all trying to figure out how to make it. A key component of early gay and lesbian literature is that life is miserable, will always be miserable, and the best we can hope for is pity. To some extent, neither Well of Loneliness nor Maurice escapes that situation. It’s hard to know for sure how the books were received by gay or lesbian readers — or invert readers — but the usual line of thinking has been that they were happy just to see themselves represented in print. As a teenager, I would have read anything to see myself, even something tragic — and I did. That’s when I first encountered Maurice — and I loved it and the characters, perhaps in part because their misery seemed to reflect my own at the time.
Stephen-
I agree that Brockett also served both roles you mentioned. As far as Clive goes, I’m not sure that he was intentionally disingenuous or misleading. I think that for the time he was involved romantically with Maurice, he truly did feel romantic love for him. He often seemed to me to be more deeply in love than even Maurice. I do question, though, how authentic those feelings were when they were able to be redirected so suddenly. It seems that maybe Clive genuinely thought he was in love with Maurice, but perhaps he was simply caught up in a moment in time. Enamored by the Greeks, it’s possible Clive allowed this passion to be transferred on to his relationship with Maurice and he became “swept away.” This may explain how he was, in his own consciousness, genuinely in love with Maurice, but when taking a deeper route to self-reflection, found that he was not. I think, though, that Clive’s relationship with his wife seems forced and not altogether as fulfilling as his relationship with Maurice seemed to be. The hasty kiss on the hand toward the end of the book seems to hold a great deal of weight for both characters. Perhaps Clive has even more need for self-reflection. I do agree with Dr. Banks, though–whether Clive was a coward or not, I think it’s important to see gay and lesbian characters represented on the page.
Hi Jen-
I really enjoyed your thoughts about Clive being able to “change” and “normalize”. I agree with you that this was probably written to make homosexuals seem to fit in more in this time period. I thought this was something that ran throughout the novel. There were some “look Maurice/Clive aren’t so different than everyone else!” moments.
There were some moments too though that were very poignant in an opposite way. I was really struck by a line that Lasker Jones says to Maurice when he’s there for an appointment. Jones says to Maurice, “‘No one can be pulled against his will, Ms. Hall’” (197). Jones is responding to a question Maurice asks him about being pulled from his sleep, but I think this statement creates such moment of clarity for Maurice that distinguishes him as true to himself.
Good questions, Stephen! I’m going to approach them a bit in reverse. I do think that, as Jen points out, that these are works are, to a degree, undermined by reinforcing heteronormative notions of sexuality, but they do present alternative lifestyles in the public sphere and do so realistically, at least in my view. Maurice, Clive, and Scudder are not caricatures of “that kind,” the unspeakable Oscar Wilde types. Forster renders them as ordinary human beings in their respective classes struggling to find happiness. Perhaps this doesn’t necessarily reflect the need to make same-sex desire more acceptable, but I think the book does attempt to be honest about what makes these characters exceptional and what doesn’t — even though Maurice and Clive have significant economic, social, and educational advantages that elevate them for a general public, their more mundane moments better serve to humanize them, to make them relatable. That said, I’m not sure if that relatability works to make these relationships acceptable, but it does give the public an entry point for seeing that those who experience same-sex desire are not so different; perhaps making these relationships more “palatable”? The issue of a work’s “publishability” complicates things a bit, for there several variables that we could take into account (e.g. the publisher, length of the work, reputation/credibility of author, cost, and so on), but, yes, ultimately the larger question is “can we sell this to the general public without backlash and also make money?” The risk, in other words, is an economic one, yet the object is to sell a product. As for other attempts that push for acceptance of same-sex attraction, I think we’ve seen an interesting shift towards that, especially in advertising on television; homosexuality has been increasing commodified over time in popular media to such an… Read more »
Hi Brandon,
I like your point about the commodification of gay culture. Do you consider the exploitation of camp to be part of that process? In both of the novels, we get a foreshadowing of that exploitation with Risley in Maurice and Brockett in The Well of Loneliness. These are prototypes of a stock character that would later be exploited more fully in order to cash in on the public’s fascination with over-the-top effeminate gay men (for example, Monroe Ficus in Too Close for Comfort and the Rupert Everett character in My Best Friend’s Wedding).
The moment that stood out to me the most as, potentially, something intended to ease heterosexual readers, occurred early in the text, with Clive. I forget the chapter number, but at one point, the book steps away from Maurice’s story to briefly tell us more about Clive and how his background and personal struggles with sexuality differ from Maurice’s. One of the main things mentioned here (and I will be paraphrasing) is that Clive had decided that it was okay to have the thoughts and feelings he was having, so long as he never acted on them. Lust and desire may be outside of his control, but his actions aren’t. And I seem to remember this being echoed again, in his relationship with Maurice. I apologize. I have been so buried in Giovanni preparing for my turn as discussion leader, that I’ve forgotten some of Maurice. But wasn’t their relationship, at least at one point, completely sexless? I believe this could have been an attempt to make such a tale more acceptable to the general community. Though, I wouldn’t be comfortable seeing it that way, entirely…because it also rang very true. Last week we discussed religion in the Well of Loneliness, and I said I would have more to say this week. This is it. I was raised very religious. But my religion did not interact with my sexuality like it did for Stephen in the Well of Loneliness. Instead, it was something of a battle to the death. I’d known I was gay since I was 8, and I’d believed in God my entire life. Both of these things were indisputable truths, and in my teens I learned what my religion thought of my sexuality, and suddenly, one of the two things I KNEW were true had to die… Read more »
Jayde,
I also struggled to get through Maurice but I agree with your observation about control and the separation of desire and action. I think that is a clear example of an appeal (if you could call it that?) to heteronormativity because, especially with religious morals in mind, heterosexual relationships are supposed to be the norm and are supposed to be more natural and sanctioned by God (under the strict circumstances of being after marriage and for procreation only, and sometimes the additional restrictions of only certain positions and only coitus). So I think any male homosexual relationship would have been seen as going against God and being rather odd and unnatural if they were having sex, no matter how religious and morally upright they were in public or how “tame” they were in private. With that in mind, a sexless relationship would probably have been perceived as the best way for a gay couple to avoid backlash and try to maintain a bit of heteronormativity, whether in a story or real life.
The same thing could be said about following heteronormative “roles” when it comes to appearance and mannerisms. I feel like Clive’s role as a scholar and Maurice as more of a gentleman is supposed to somewhat fit the one “top” and one “bottom” or one “femme” and one “butch” image of a “proper relationship”, to be more acceptable for heteronormative society. Even though in reality, there doesn’t have to be one of each, and roles and mannerisms don’t always match the outward appearance. Take this lesbian couple for example, in which the “butch” girl carried their child and received tons of backlash, even today: http://bodypositivewomen.tumblr.com/post/155952564181/shesalmosttoogaytofunction-buzzfeedlgbt-this
Hi Jayde,
You bring up the issue of age, which was something that struck me about Stephen and Maurice. Both began to feel stirrings toward others of their sex at a young (and what I would have considered fairly typical) age. But their discovery that there were others who were “that way inclined” (Forster 51) was, it seems to me, quite late: Maurice was at university when he fully discovered this and Stephen was about that age as well. (Prior to that, there was no gay “template” for them to identify with. But there was a very clear heterosexual template they were expected to follow: Each was to emulate their father.) Does this seem late to you? Or would that have been typical of the era?
Maybe I’m the only one, but I didn’t buy the “love” stories in Maurice. The central character’s infatuations with members of the same sex felt just that—infatuations and lust. I felt that Maurice remained a rather immature character. Perhaps his trying to repress his sexuality put more emphasis on his lust. Now, I do think that still plays into the heteronormative nature of the writing. At Cambridge, the boys are only around other boys as they are learning their identity. Naturally, they will want to explore their emotions and sexuality, and the only way they can do that while not at home is by experimenting with the same sex. However, the idea of the coming-of-age story by way of a first love (such as Maurice and Clive) is seen in traditional love stories, and, therefore, is relatable to the heterosexual audience.
Additionally, another theme of sacrificing for love is also relatable in a heteronormative society. Alec Scudder abandons his trip to Argentine to stay in England to be with Maurice. Maurice, we are led to believe, also gives up his job and social status in order to disappear and remain with Alec (to run away together).
These romantic ideals transcend the type of love and can appeal to many audiences. I don’t think this is a concession or “selling out.” These are universal themes and ideals. Love is the norm, and should be the focus, not the pair who is in love (or lust). While these themes certainly help to make the book publishable and palatable in a heteronormative society, it doesn’t mean these ideals are not true. These themes and story lines (coming-of-age, first love, sacrificing for love) are universal not matter the culture and love interests. Love is love.
Hi Victoria,
You are not the only one. I didn’t buy them either.
In keeping with the “Maybe I’m the only one” theme, I may be the only one who does not read Clive as being a homosexual. I think he’s a heterosexual who had a (i.e., one) homosexual relationship and that was in his younger years. With Clive, there’s no pattern of same-sex desire that I can see. Of course, this brings us back to whether sexuality labels refer to acts/behavior or an identity.
I found the early relationship between Clive and Maurice to be a prime example of the attempt to make the relationship between two men more palatable to the heterosexual reading the novel. Specifically, when Maurice visits Clive’s family in part two of the novel. The relationship is presented innocently. The men adore each other on a level past physical attraction or lust (more Clive here than Maurice), and the portrayal gives a deepness to their mutual attraction that would counter the assumptions of those who may view homosexuality as perverse or lustful. When Clive talks about the emotional connection he has to Maurice, and the effect of their relationship on him, the conversation could occur between any two people in a new relationship. “‘I should have gone through life half awake if you’d had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here – ‘ He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. ‘Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that any way'” (91). This conversation is followed by Maurice requesting Clive kiss him. The novel does not say how Clive “shook his head” (93), but I read it as a no. “Clive shook his head, and smiling they parted, having established perfection in their lives” (93). This example, like the day they spent together before Maurice was kicked out o school, shows a relationship that is not solely based on physical attraction or lust, and I think that is a purposeful decision by the author to show the normativity of their relationship, to almost make it pure and solely an emotional connection at first. It eases the reader into a male homosexual relationship.