I'm in love with your gamekeeper!
This is Part Three of my essay on Forster, Rowling, and the Transformative Power of Love. Part One is HERE. Part Two is HERE.
Second Argument
For a more complete argument about the lot of women in Forster's day, you must read the work of his friend* Virginia Woolf. Here's The Tragical History of Judith Shakespeare from A Room of One's Own for a sample. The point of that being that in the "Medieval" Patriarchy that Forster is fighting against, people who are not Pillars of Society, be they women, or gamekeepers, or even eunuchs, actually can't live up to their full potential because their culture does not allow them the opportunity. Extraordinary individuals can overcome great hardship to achieve success, but the vast majority of people will have their talents wasted by an uncaring system, and even the extraordinary ones will be profoundly damaged by the hardships they endure.
What about the women? Forster asks us. Lucy is an intelligent, passionate young woman, evidenced by her remarkable playing of the great passionate Romantic Beethoven**, but she tries to stifle herself to fit the bland, restrictive image of Womanhood in her society. Cecil likes her piano playing because it makes her a more suitable ornament for him. George loves Lucy's passion that she shows when she plays the piano. (In fact, does George ever hear Lucy play? It seems significant if he does not. He loves her and that includes her abilities, he does not love how well her "accomplishments" reflect on him.) Remember Cecil? Here's what George has to say about him:
"You cannot live with Vyse. He's only for an acquaintance. He is for society and cultivated talk. He should know no one intimately, least of all a woman. [...] He is the sort who are all right so long as they keep to things--books, pictures--but kill when they come to people. [...] I saw him first in the National Gallery***, when he winced because my father mispronounced the names of great painters. Then he brings us here, and we find it is to play some silly trick on a kind neighbour. That is the man all over--playing tricks on people, on the most sacred form of life that he can find. Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for you to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren't let a woman decide. He's the type who's kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly; and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own." (Chapter 16: Lying to George)
George admits that he is also telling Lucy what to do here, so he adds: "I'm the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. [...] I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms." Ah! That is equality! And it calls to mind the earlier words of wisdom of his father, who is the voice of Modernism and therefore Reason in this novel. From Chapter Twelve: Twelfth Chapter:
[Freddy invites George to bathe. The somewhat ambiguous Mr. Beebe reacts.] "'How d'ye do? Come and have a bathe,'" he chuckled. "That's the best conversational opening I've ever heard. But I'm afraid it will only act between men. Can you picture a lady who has been introduced to another lady by a third lady opening civilities with 'How do you do? Come and have a bathe'? And yet you will tell me that the sexes are equal."
"I tell you that they shall be," said Mr. Emerson. [...] "I tell you they shall be comrades, and George thinks the same."
"We are to raise ladies to our level?" the clergyman inquired.
"The Garden of Eden," pursued Mr. Emerson [...], "which you place in the past, is really yet to come. We shall enter it when we no longer despise our bodies. [...] Not until we are comrades shall we enter the garden."
Paragraph 28: In which I change the subject slightly. Maurice himself is supremely unconcerned with the plight of women. He is indifferent to his mother and Clive's female relatives and acquaintances, and cruel to his sister. But Forster still manages to bring his philosophy of equality into the story. He also shows a shift in focus between ARWAV and Maurice. In the former, he talks about the transformative power of romantic/erotic love, in the latter he more specifically talks about sex as connected to said love. There are two kinds of lost women in Forster's world. The first is the Frozen Bitter Old Maid, like Charlotte Bartlett, who has suppressed her desire for love in the outward display of twisted prudishness required by her woman-hating society. The second is the innocent who has had prudishness forced on her by her culture's careful maintanence of her ignorance. The most famous of these is Adela Quested in A Passage to India, who yet becomes a sympathetic character as she bravely confronts her society's evil expectations in the end, and reverses her opinions to better reflect reality--which earns her the censure of her society and the loss of her chance at conventional happiness. But another version of that woman is Anne Durham, Clive's wife in Maurice.
From Chapter 33: "When he arrived in her room after marriage, she did not know what he wanted. Despite an elaborate education, no one had told her about sex. Clive was as considerate as possible^, but he scared her terribly, and left feeling she hated him. She did not. She welcomed him on future nights. But it was always without a word. They united in a world that bore no reference to the daily, and this secrecy drew after it much else of their lives. So much could never be mentioned. He never saw her naked, nor she him. They ignored the reproductive and the digestive functions. [...] Though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative^^, and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed or vaunted. His ideal of marriage was temperate and graceful, like all his ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne. [...] 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."
Clive's denial of love is one he's chosen quite consciously for himself. But Anne remains a permanent victim. Even as she is happy with her status as the possession of a Pillar of Society, she never knows the fullest extent of erotic love. She, being a woman, knows no other possibilty for existence. Maurice, on the other hand, having experienced life being assumed to be a Pillar of Society, knows that he's missing out. In Chapter 37, Clive having only kissed him once over the whole course of their years-long association, thinks the following: "It was such a trivial prudish kiss, and alas! so typical. The less you had the more it was supposed to be--that was Clive's teaching. Not only was the half greater than the whole--at Cambridge Maurice would just accept this--but now he was offered the quarter and told it was greater than the half. Did the fellow suppose he was made of paper?"^^^
But then Maurice meets Alec. It's telling that when Maurice tells Clive "I'm in love with your gamekeeper!", Clive's revulsion stems first from Alec's low class, and only second from his gender. Maurice refuses to talk on Clive's terms--showing that he has chosen Modern Humanism at last and left behind his obtuse, selfish, and Muddled past--refering to Alec by name, and cutting Clive off when Clive tries to offer advice on subjugating Maurice's sexual urges. Clive described sex as a deed, best kept secret. Here's what the newly enlightened Maurice says:
"I have shared with Alec," he said after deep thought.
"Shared what?"
"All that I have. Which includes my body."
Clive sprang up with a whimper of disgust. He wanted to smite the monster, and flee, but he was civilized, and wanted it feebly. After all, they were Cambridge men...pillars of society both; he must not show violence. [...] But his thin, sour disapproval, his dogmatism, the stupidity of his heart, revolted Maurice, who could only have respected hatred."
Thin, sour disapproval. Sounds like Miss Bartlett, does it not? And yet...what about Charlotte? Clive is a Pillar of Society, and therefore hides behind his privilege to deny his un-society-approved feelings. Maurice calls him on that: "You care for me a little bit, I do think [...] but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on." Charlotte, on the other hand, is a woman. Here's what George discovers about "Frozen Charlotte":
"I'll put a marvel to you [Lucy]. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this--of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. [...] The sight of us haunted her [...] it burnt. [...] She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad." (Chapter 20: the End of the Middle Ages)
Part Four will be the conclusion. : ) Love and hope! Susie
*At least Facebook Friend.
**Forster often uses music to great effect in his novels, particularly Romantics or pseudo-Romantics, be it Lucy's Beethoven, or Maurice's Tchaikovsky, or the pivotal scene in Howards End when the Schlegels attend the concert where Helen steals Leonard Bast's umbrella.
***Museums are often pivotal locations in Forster's books.
^Sure he was. : P
^^For him it probably was!
^^^Well, since he's a character in a novel... ; )
Part Four
Second Argument
For a more complete argument about the lot of women in Forster's day, you must read the work of his friend* Virginia Woolf. Here's The Tragical History of Judith Shakespeare from A Room of One's Own for a sample. The point of that being that in the "Medieval" Patriarchy that Forster is fighting against, people who are not Pillars of Society, be they women, or gamekeepers, or even eunuchs, actually can't live up to their full potential because their culture does not allow them the opportunity. Extraordinary individuals can overcome great hardship to achieve success, but the vast majority of people will have their talents wasted by an uncaring system, and even the extraordinary ones will be profoundly damaged by the hardships they endure.
What about the women? Forster asks us. Lucy is an intelligent, passionate young woman, evidenced by her remarkable playing of the great passionate Romantic Beethoven**, but she tries to stifle herself to fit the bland, restrictive image of Womanhood in her society. Cecil likes her piano playing because it makes her a more suitable ornament for him. George loves Lucy's passion that she shows when she plays the piano. (In fact, does George ever hear Lucy play? It seems significant if he does not. He loves her and that includes her abilities, he does not love how well her "accomplishments" reflect on him.) Remember Cecil? Here's what George has to say about him:
"You cannot live with Vyse. He's only for an acquaintance. He is for society and cultivated talk. He should know no one intimately, least of all a woman. [...] He is the sort who are all right so long as they keep to things--books, pictures--but kill when they come to people. [...] I saw him first in the National Gallery***, when he winced because my father mispronounced the names of great painters. Then he brings us here, and we find it is to play some silly trick on a kind neighbour. That is the man all over--playing tricks on people, on the most sacred form of life that he can find. Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for you to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren't let a woman decide. He's the type who's kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly; and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own." (Chapter 16: Lying to George)
George admits that he is also telling Lucy what to do here, so he adds: "I'm the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. [...] I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms." Ah! That is equality! And it calls to mind the earlier words of wisdom of his father, who is the voice of Modernism and therefore Reason in this novel. From Chapter Twelve: Twelfth Chapter:
[Freddy invites George to bathe. The somewhat ambiguous Mr. Beebe reacts.] "'How d'ye do? Come and have a bathe,'" he chuckled. "That's the best conversational opening I've ever heard. But I'm afraid it will only act between men. Can you picture a lady who has been introduced to another lady by a third lady opening civilities with 'How do you do? Come and have a bathe'? And yet you will tell me that the sexes are equal."
"I tell you that they shall be," said Mr. Emerson. [...] "I tell you they shall be comrades, and George thinks the same."
"We are to raise ladies to our level?" the clergyman inquired.
"The Garden of Eden," pursued Mr. Emerson [...], "which you place in the past, is really yet to come. We shall enter it when we no longer despise our bodies. [...] Not until we are comrades shall we enter the garden."
Paragraph 28: In which I change the subject slightly. Maurice himself is supremely unconcerned with the plight of women. He is indifferent to his mother and Clive's female relatives and acquaintances, and cruel to his sister. But Forster still manages to bring his philosophy of equality into the story. He also shows a shift in focus between ARWAV and Maurice. In the former, he talks about the transformative power of romantic/erotic love, in the latter he more specifically talks about sex as connected to said love. There are two kinds of lost women in Forster's world. The first is the Frozen Bitter Old Maid, like Charlotte Bartlett, who has suppressed her desire for love in the outward display of twisted prudishness required by her woman-hating society. The second is the innocent who has had prudishness forced on her by her culture's careful maintanence of her ignorance. The most famous of these is Adela Quested in A Passage to India, who yet becomes a sympathetic character as she bravely confronts her society's evil expectations in the end, and reverses her opinions to better reflect reality--which earns her the censure of her society and the loss of her chance at conventional happiness. But another version of that woman is Anne Durham, Clive's wife in Maurice.
From Chapter 33: "When he arrived in her room after marriage, she did not know what he wanted. Despite an elaborate education, no one had told her about sex. Clive was as considerate as possible^, but he scared her terribly, and left feeling she hated him. She did not. She welcomed him on future nights. But it was always without a word. They united in a world that bore no reference to the daily, and this secrecy drew after it much else of their lives. So much could never be mentioned. He never saw her naked, nor she him. They ignored the reproductive and the digestive functions. [...] Though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative^^, and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed or vaunted. His ideal of marriage was temperate and graceful, like all his ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne. [...] 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."
Clive's denial of love is one he's chosen quite consciously for himself. But Anne remains a permanent victim. Even as she is happy with her status as the possession of a Pillar of Society, she never knows the fullest extent of erotic love. She, being a woman, knows no other possibilty for existence. Maurice, on the other hand, having experienced life being assumed to be a Pillar of Society, knows that he's missing out. In Chapter 37, Clive having only kissed him once over the whole course of their years-long association, thinks the following: "It was such a trivial prudish kiss, and alas! so typical. The less you had the more it was supposed to be--that was Clive's teaching. Not only was the half greater than the whole--at Cambridge Maurice would just accept this--but now he was offered the quarter and told it was greater than the half. Did the fellow suppose he was made of paper?"^^^
But then Maurice meets Alec. It's telling that when Maurice tells Clive "I'm in love with your gamekeeper!", Clive's revulsion stems first from Alec's low class, and only second from his gender. Maurice refuses to talk on Clive's terms--showing that he has chosen Modern Humanism at last and left behind his obtuse, selfish, and Muddled past--refering to Alec by name, and cutting Clive off when Clive tries to offer advice on subjugating Maurice's sexual urges. Clive described sex as a deed, best kept secret. Here's what the newly enlightened Maurice says:
"I have shared with Alec," he said after deep thought.
"Shared what?"
"All that I have. Which includes my body."
Clive sprang up with a whimper of disgust. He wanted to smite the monster, and flee, but he was civilized, and wanted it feebly. After all, they were Cambridge men...pillars of society both; he must not show violence. [...] But his thin, sour disapproval, his dogmatism, the stupidity of his heart, revolted Maurice, who could only have respected hatred."
Thin, sour disapproval. Sounds like Miss Bartlett, does it not? And yet...what about Charlotte? Clive is a Pillar of Society, and therefore hides behind his privilege to deny his un-society-approved feelings. Maurice calls him on that: "You care for me a little bit, I do think [...] but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on." Charlotte, on the other hand, is a woman. Here's what George discovers about "Frozen Charlotte":
"I'll put a marvel to you [Lucy]. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this--of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. [...] The sight of us haunted her [...] it burnt. [...] She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad." (Chapter 20: the End of the Middle Ages)
Part Four will be the conclusion. : ) Love and hope! Susie
*At least Facebook Friend.
**Forster often uses music to great effect in his novels, particularly Romantics or pseudo-Romantics, be it Lucy's Beethoven, or Maurice's Tchaikovsky, or the pivotal scene in Howards End when the Schlegels attend the concert where Helen steals Leonard Bast's umbrella.
***Museums are often pivotal locations in Forster's books.
^Sure he was. : P
^^For him it probably was!
^^^Well, since he's a character in a novel... ; )
Part Four