1

}

Meet Maurice

By Eugenia Thornton

During the 1960s the late E. M. Forster arranged for the posthumous publication of a novel he had written between 1913 and 1914 but hesitated to publish then or ever during his lifetime because of its theme sexuality

homo-

This extraordinary book is being published this week by W. W. Norton. It's title is Maurice. The price is $6.95. It goes without saying that this is a notable literary event, for in all his long 90 years Forster never wrote a bad line of prose nor dealt with a subject that was unimportant or insignificant, however lightly he may have seemed to handle it at a surface level.

There is nothing superficial about Maurice. It is brilliant, specific in its handling of the two different love affairs experienced by the hero, Maurice Hall. It is also a deeply sad book even though, unlike most novels dealing with the subject, it has a reasonably happy ending.

FOR A LONG time Maurice does not realize his inner problem and is disgusted by the very thought of homosexuality, which he has heard something about but which he understands not at all. When his true condition of content is brought home to him during his college years he is horrified, fascinated, then happy beyond words in a relationship which is in the truest sense platonic.

To Maurice this is the summit of purest friendship. There is no physical aspect connected with it. He feels sure that within the limits of this love he can live forever, be his best self and live a life of worth and responsibility.

When his joy ends with shattering unexpectedness. when he discovers that his friend has grown away from him and come to love a woman and want to marry her, the tragedy is immense. His old self-disgust returns, coupled with the bitterness of rejection. Added to it is the terrible loneliness of feeling that he is unique, that he is

a monster, that the doors of decency are closed to him

[

1

1

S

crite.

{

unless he lives as a hypo-

Forster's inevitable powers of spiritual and intellectual penetration reach their peak here. So does the miserable situation of all the Maurices in an era when even doctors refused to discuss the matter with pleading men who had come face to face with selves they recognized but could not understand. Maurice Hall's agonizing attempts to come to terms with himself and his world are painful to read about, heartbreaking to think of.

WHEN a completely different kind of lover enters his life there is a deep change. He is happy, but he knows that for this happiness to continue means the sacrifice of much else that he values. It means stepping down from the class to which he has always be longed and the profession he adorns into an anonymous world where he will be a stranger to everything except the profundity of his emotional relief and contentment. He makes his choice.

E. M. Forster

It seems to me that we can be happy that this part of the book dates. The life of the homosexual is still far from socially acceptable to many, the law is still limited, but the old terrorist tabu remains only in the most primitively inclined minds.

Forster wrote an epilogue to Maurice in the 1960s in which he noted the changes

that had come about since the book was written. It is acute. He speaks of "the change from ignorance and terror to familiarity and contempt. What the public really loathes about homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it."

You will have to think about it if you read the deeply civilized Maurice.