Maurice

My reading of E.M. Forster's tale of homosexual love in Edwardian England from almost two years ago. It's been awhile since I have read a Forster novel and I still believe today that he is widely under appreciated.

The Maurice Muddle
Fear of the “other” drives a compulsive need for the public sphere to reaffirm its own values, superstitions, and customs. E. M. Forster’s social commentary novel, Maurice, debunks the patriarchal homophobia and gender constrictions of Edwardian society. The critical provisions from the schools of Queer and Feminist Theory elucidate the problematic social positions men have and continue to enforce upon themselves through discourses on the male homosocial continuum, bodily politics, and compulsatory heterosexuality. Forster contributes to the progression of the collective British identity in charging his domineeringly conservative country with the task of deconstructing the body from which homosexuals have been marginalized.

The two selections from Maurice both portray scenarios where the two main characters distract themselves from any possibility of initiating an erotic connection. Eve Sedgwick writes that the continuum between homosocial and homosexuality is made even more apparent as participants of the homosocial bond are “drawn back into the orbit of desire” (2466-7). Maurice Hall and Clive Durham never reach a “potentially erotic” familiarity (2467), because of societal pressures and “political regression” (Rich 1591). In the first selection, Maurice alludes to their past to reminisce fondly of what he believes could still be a prospectively more intimate relationship: " 'You only think you've changed,' he said, smiling. 'I used to think I had when Miss Olcott was here, but it all went when I returned to you' " (Forster 128). Clive persistently insists of a new “change” in his self, groaning, "[b]ut I've changed, I've changed" (128). The character Miss Olcott was an "obligatory heterosexuality built into" their kinship (Sedgwick 2468). To Maurice's dismay, Clive brings in another women, Maurice's sister, into the triangle (Forster 129). Ada is the objectified female and homophobic impulse that forges the bond between the two men as merely friends. Forster includes the first triangle as a depiction of how evident attractions are thwarted from an instilled fear of being "othered."

In order to maintain their position within the British hierarchy, heterosexual men embed a sensation of disgust into those possessing the "Oscar Wild-type" problem that had stained the Victorian society of the past century. The marginalized are excreted as filth; “others become shit” (Butler 2546). As Maurice is trogging through the grounds outside of Penge estate, the "the mist is thicker…[and] the mud stickier" (Forster 173). "Mud” becomes the filth Forster's Edwardian society associates with homosexuality. “Feelings of repulsion” placed into Maurice's consciousness are used by the oppressive force in Forster's society to facilitate its reign (Freud 817). Throughout the text, the Maurice and Clive situation is referred to as a "muddle" (128), further emphasizing its deemed sexual degradation. The "pollution" in which Maurice participates is dangerous (Butler 2544). Its manifestation is viewed by the conservative class as an attack on their position as primary holder of political and social power.

In Maurice's second interaction with Clive, he is reminded of "the muddle last year" (Forster 176) that, according to the more conservative of the two, was dealt with appropriately. Now both men feebly dismiss the muddy waters of homosexuality. Maurice brings up the topic of marriage to reaffirm their homosocial bond and their masculinity (174). The vocalized disgust Clive earlier displayed for his own sexual orientation disappears, and he convinces himself of Maurice's and his successful moral realignment. Clive is delighted and embraces his friend, "it's what I've always wished for you" (174). Happiness, though superficial, ensues with "heterosexuality…as a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional" power (Rich 1602). The muddle is openly set aside by both in order for them to maintain the "middle-class comfort" of their custom (Forster 127). Homophobia oppressively centralizes itself so that the two gentlemen can maintain political residence in the most dominant of Edwardian society's "distinctive node of organization" (Sedgwick 2475). When gender constructions and their implications are explored, homophobia is further understood.

Power is distributed on a base of gender. Patriarchal Institutions are able to withhold power from those they have labeled as weak or effeminate by utilization of "male tyranny" (Rich 1606). Adrienne Rich writes on gender assimilation: "sameness…is the most passive and debilitating of responses to political repression" (1591). Unfortunately, individuals who chose not to assimilate themselves into dominant culture or targeted more violently. The Patriarchy, similar to a homosocial bond, is a strengthened accumulation of the material and hierarchal "relations between men…that create independence and solidarity…that enables them to dominate women" (Sedgwick 2468). Maurice is structured to reveal domineering masculinity and its "horror[s]" (Forster 126). Forster's novel contains often aggressive and male-exclusive words that contribute to his ultimate exposé of Edwardian society. Clive "drag[s] in a woman" into their weak homosocial bond (129), the two confront each other with physical "hostility" (129), and the second scene follows a hunting game. Even the settings-the smoking room, the hunting grounds, dinner with the politicians-are strikingly masculine. There is literally no room for femininity or homosexuality, both have been squeezed out of the patriarchal society.

Contrastingly, Maurice is at times expressive and sentimental. Concerned for Clive's physicality after a brief row, he refers to Clive as "my darling" (129), forfeiting his masculinity. Of course neither Clive nor Maurice act from any literal essence of intrinsic masculinity; there is a bodily-regulated “illusion of interior and organizing gender core” (Butler 2549). The male continuum in Maurice is deepened by taking roots in Classicism, stretching back to times of Hellenic civilization.

The intimacy between Maurice and Clive is obvious. As Maurice insists they both consciously love each other, Clive hesitatingly replies, "I like you enormously--more than any man I've ever met" (Forster 128). To separate himself from the dangerous implications of homosexuality, Clive continues explaining his love. Evoking the classical concept of Platonic love, Clive remarks that between such close male friends "[i]t's character, not passion, that is the real bond" (128). From the first scene, it is revealed that Clive took a trip to Greece (129). What Clive meant in traveling to Greece is not relayed in the scene; however, the mere mention of Greece, the birthplace of Platonic love, invites the reader to fill the curious gap with his or her own projection he or she associates with homosexual and homosocial male continuum. Accentuating his homosexual tendencies, Clive, subscribes to a homosocial theory quite synonymous to that of Greek homosexuality; yet, Maurice was supposed to (conveniently) mature into heterosexual "manhood, the assignment of [earlier] roles was not permanent” (Sedgwick 2469). Crushing Maurice's hope, Clive calls the passions between men as solid a foundation as "sand" (Forster 129) and internally attempts to relinquish "the old Hellenic ships" of his youth (175). The defeated state in which society leaves Maurice is a stormy consciousness that Forster expands with graphic imagery.

Maurice's consciousness is projected into the weather and his periods of social discord are represented by contrasts between light and dark imagery. Women and Normativity together are dogmatically displayed as the light to homosexuality's darkness. Although there is an instance where Clive is shown wandering around the darkness, "enveloped" in the mist of the night (130), he is "promised a dawn" with the prospect of heterosexual marriage (130). Lacking the "privilege of a presumptive heterosexual" (Sedgwick 2474), Maurice is left in the muddle of the dark, "turn[ing] out the electric light" of hope during his solitude (Forster 130). Within his "nightmare" (173), he is temporarily forced to a “horror and self-punishment” with which others are unfamiliar (Freud 817). Maurice is an "animal" (Forster 126), dehumanized and "othered" by society for his sexual orientation and cruelly forced to an unsympathetic dreariness (173). Although societal pressures are overbearing to marginalized characters, the second scene does begin to pick up with a positive momentum. In the darkness and storm of Maurice Hall's night (176), he gives vocalization to the desires that for too long had been suppressed: "Come!" he shouts into the outward projection of his inner torments, as he finally begins to embrace his self and rid himself of the man whose social-consciousness prevented him from embracing what could have been (176). In giving Maurice an ending of encouragement, Forster conveys his own positive vision for the future of society.

Feeling and empathy are the answers for the hypocrisy and power incongruities in society. Although social reformation for the marginalized of Edwardian society would not occur for many years, E. M. Forster sets a foundation for its genesis. Not only does he reveal the incongruity of Britain's earlier cultural hierarchy in Maurice, but also, as an empathetic voice, he extends his embracing arms to the suppressed, invisible citizens, and those devastated by their inhibited prospect of love. His observations and charge of feeling to Britain's self-righteous, judgmental, and unfeeling citizen help to initiate a progressive process of deconstructing social obstructions and unifying a conscious, British body of sympathy.