gianthogweed

Res Amatoria

Cranky Romance & Grumpy Erotica

Maurice

Maurice - E.M. Forster Personally, I think that M-M Romance is purely escapist fiction with minimum requirements that go beyond the simple happy ending, so I don't feel to include Maurice in this genre therefore in my rating system - it would be unbearable.And also as classic novel, stylistically speaking, it is not one of my favorites, because the jumble of plot, characters' thoughts and author's intrusions, make it hard to digest.The situation is different if I try to analyze it from a historical, cultural, biographical (of the character Maurice, but also of Forster) point of view and undoubtedly it acquires a different value. I will not do a dissertation on homosexuality in the time of Edwardian England, much less on Socratic love as opposed to carnal love, since I wouldn't do a worthy job. I just want to defend the end of the book because it has been criticized by many as unrealistic. For me it's the only part of the book aesthetically beautiful and it's a perfect overturn of the beginning. Initially, in fact, we have a preceptor that tries to teach a fourteen year old Maurice the absolute value of marriage which, as an implicit result, leads to social realization; at the end, however, Maurice chooses concrete love for a man, realizing his personal happiness at the expense of the social one. Of course it is unrealistic, but certainly it was not the realism that led Forster to write this book, his was a wish, or a hope, for acknowledgment that after almost one hundred years in some countries (such as mine) has not yet come true.P.S. With regard to the criticism of Foster for not having published Maurice when he was still alive I would only say: We really need everything but martyrs.