Maurice, The Invention of Love, and Gaudy Night

Feb 24, 2008 14:12

I also had jaebi_lit's recommendation list and decided to read E.M. Forster's Maurice and Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love.

Maurice )

author:tom stoppard, author:e.m. forster, themes:school story, book club:book discussion, author:dorothy sayers

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bravecows February 25 2008, 01:12:28 UTC
Maurice went to Cambridge, I thought? (I realise this basically makes no difference, but y'know. *g*)

So is Clive simply going back into the closet? Or was his flirtation with "the Greek vice" merely an adolescent phase, the result of over-romanticizing classical times? How do you suddenly wake up one day and realize that your sexual identity has changed?

I thought it was because Clive was denying his homosexuality in an attempt to fit in? Er, to put it perhaps too simply. I got that impression especially from the part where Maurice meets Clive later, when Clive is married, and it's all very difficult and awkward and sad. Gosh, I haven't read Maurice in ages. Must reread.

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tarigwaemir February 25 2008, 06:17:05 UTC
Oops, you're right, it's Cambridge! >_<;; I'll edit my post.

Ah, so it was just denial then? I thought that Forster didn't make it very clear if Clive went into denial or experienced an actual change--the meeting later between Clive and Maurice seems more difficult and awkward for Maurice than for Clive who does seem to be (suddenly) enthusiastic about women even if it's just repression or inversion of his real feelings. I suppose I would have understood it better if he continued to feel attracted to Maurice but squelched his desires, but he seems to feel an actual physical revulsion towards Maurice. Then again, I'm not particularly knowledgeable...perhaps people really do create neuroses like that?

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tarigwaemir February 26 2008, 07:17:28 UTC
Link away! Perhaps we'll get even more members that way.

Ah, revulsion as fear makes a lot of sense. I didn't think of it that way before, and now Clive seems a lot more comprehensible to me.

And you're right, Forster does sound as if he got fed up with Clive. As reference for any readers passing by the comment threads, Forster writes: Henceforward Clive deteriorates, and so perhaps does my treatment of him. He has annoyed me. I may nag at him over much, stress his aridity and political pretensions and the thinning of his hair, nothing he or his wife or his mother does is ever right. This works well enough for Maurice, for it accelerates his descent into Hell and toughens him there for the final reckless climb. But it may be unfair on Clive who feels the last flick of my whip in the final chapter, when he discovers that his old Cambridge friend has relapsed inside Penge itself, and with a gameskeeper.

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tarigwaemir February 25 2008, 06:21:44 UTC
I didn't know that about Propertius until I read the play, but I can definitely appreciate the academic obsession with minutiae. ^_^

Re: Maurice, oh good, so I wasn't the only person to think there was a difference in style. I agree, the book left me feeling dissatisfied because I didn't feel that Maurice himself had achieved any satisfaction or resolution by the end; he only managed to defy and disconcert Clive.

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tarigwaemir February 25 2008, 06:32:19 UTC
Oh, interesting! So there really are a plurality of perspectives on the subject then. I really have to admit that I don't know much about it, but I remember my friend getting very upset at me when I suggested that her sexual identity wasn't biologically hardwired. I hadn't meant it in an offensive sense--I was just ignorant about it, I suppose--but I still remember how strongly she reacted to it, and she told me that most people in the BGLT community felt like her. (Of course, the most reasonable answer is that it's a product of both heredity and environment, but the respective influences of each still seem debatable.)

I guess what was hard for me to comprehend is how complete Clive's denial seems to be: Clive literally seems to go from not being attracted to women at all to finding only women attractive. I suppose I don't really understand what forms denial can take either, but I would have expected him to "slip up" in his repression. Or would that have been too unsubtle?

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Re: LJ won't let me put in more than 4200 characters. Bleh. tarigwaemir February 26 2008, 07:27:38 UTC
You have clearly read this book with a much closer analytical lens than me. (Peter Pan metaphors! XD) I do agree with your point that sexuality was much more repressed at the time, but Maurice is still contemporaneous with Freud, and while the Victorians never talked about sex, I think they did their fair share of furtively engaging in it in not-so-acceptable ways. Clive is unusually repressed, I think, in the way he sublimates his fear of sex. -_- I wonder how he would have ended up fifty years down the line.

Yes, that's what I thought: Forster kept the ending vague because it would be premature to give them an actual happy ending when homosexuality was still clearly illegal in England. But I still think there were issues between Alec and Maurice that were unresolved, which Forster may also have done intentionally.

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himbeerbaum February 26 2008, 23:49:44 UTC
overall, i liked your review of "maurice"!

i just cannot resist adding my points of view to some issues you raised:

i personally didn't find the ending unresolved. it leaves you with two men who, against all odds, decide to share their lives with each other. if they succeed is left to the reader's imagination and everyone should have the right to decide for himself, though forster did want to point out the possibility of two men living together ( ... )

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tarigwaemir February 28 2008, 08:17:43 UTC
It's not so much that I wanted to see the characters die or have a happy ending. I felt that Maurice and Alec's relationship was just beginning and had a lot of issues; it would have been interesting to see it developed further, but I can also see why Forster chose not to. ^_^ And you're right, there's a lot to be said for leaving things to the reader's imagination.

I liked that Maurice was finally able to stand up to Clive and break free of his influence at last; I just expected more of the novel to come afterward. I also think that Maurice still has a while to go when it comes to self-realization, which is why the ending felt a little abrupt to me. But you're right, it's a good place to end the novel, thematically speaking. I don't know if Maurice and Alec are necessarily more honest with each other, but I do agree with you that they're more capable of it since they're not lying to themselves about their physical desires.

i would interprete clive's `homosexuality´ as an idea of him, sprung from his fascination with the ( ... )

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