One of my favorite passages in "Maurice"
I've read the book three times now, and the many hundreds of lyrical passages never fail to move and humble me. Here is one of my favorites, taken from the end of chapter 33. This is written from Clive's perspective, of course.
"…Secrecy suited him, at least he adopted it without regret. He had never itched to call a spade a spade, and though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative, and best veiled at night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted. His ideal of marriage was temperate and graceful, like all his ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne, who had refinement herself, and admired it in others. They loved each other tenderly. Beautiful conventions received them - while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart and his arms full of air."
Why do I like this one? It breaks my heart, for one. Clive has decided to travel the road of approval, the path of least resistance, and there is no turning back. He has convinced himself that he never wanted Maurice in the way Maurice wants him. He has taken a suitable wife, whom he admires and idolizes, a wife who will live forever on a pedestal. I feel a great deal of sorrow for him. A repressed life is really no life at all.
The passage says he adopted secrecy without regret. But did he really not regret that? At the end of the book, Clive spends his later years confused as to his final parting with Maurice and then can't remember him as anyone other than that beautiful young man he knew at Cambridge.
As for Maurice, he is wandering just outside of Clive's sphere, his heart aching and his mind in turmoil, knowing he can't have the kind of love that nature has designed him to desire. All will end well for Maurice, that we know, but at this point in the book I can feel Maurice's desperation.
The imagery evoked in this short selection is astonishing in its clarity. I can envision Clive and Anne during their secret, almost shame-filled couplings, the dark bedroom, the mute acquiescence and the lack of fulfillment for either of them. I can see Clive, sitting in his study and furiously rationalizing his fateful decisions. And most of all, I can see Maurice wandering doggedly through life, his anguish a more destructive force than any illness or insult, desperate for someone to hold and for someone to hold onto him.
Ah, Mr. Forster. I die inside just a little every time I open your book.
"…Secrecy suited him, at least he adopted it without regret. He had never itched to call a spade a spade, and though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative, and best veiled at night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted. His ideal of marriage was temperate and graceful, like all his ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne, who had refinement herself, and admired it in others. They loved each other tenderly. Beautiful conventions received them - while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart and his arms full of air."
Why do I like this one? It breaks my heart, for one. Clive has decided to travel the road of approval, the path of least resistance, and there is no turning back. He has convinced himself that he never wanted Maurice in the way Maurice wants him. He has taken a suitable wife, whom he admires and idolizes, a wife who will live forever on a pedestal. I feel a great deal of sorrow for him. A repressed life is really no life at all.
The passage says he adopted secrecy without regret. But did he really not regret that? At the end of the book, Clive spends his later years confused as to his final parting with Maurice and then can't remember him as anyone other than that beautiful young man he knew at Cambridge.
As for Maurice, he is wandering just outside of Clive's sphere, his heart aching and his mind in turmoil, knowing he can't have the kind of love that nature has designed him to desire. All will end well for Maurice, that we know, but at this point in the book I can feel Maurice's desperation.
The imagery evoked in this short selection is astonishing in its clarity. I can envision Clive and Anne during their secret, almost shame-filled couplings, the dark bedroom, the mute acquiescence and the lack of fulfillment for either of them. I can see Clive, sitting in his study and furiously rationalizing his fateful decisions. And most of all, I can see Maurice wandering doggedly through life, his anguish a more destructive force than any illness or insult, desperate for someone to hold and for someone to hold onto him.
Ah, Mr. Forster. I die inside just a little every time I open your book.