The epilogue

[angie_sylvie]

For those who have read E.M. Forster's abandoned epilogue to Maurice...do you think he made the right decision to cut it?
Forster himself said it gave "universal dissatisfaction."

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.
(Oh, and many, many thanks to devo79 for the opportunity to finally read it after many years of desperate curiosity!)

I had always

Comments

[norton_gale]

I don't care for the epilogue either.. I don't think Maurice would have enjoyed that way of life, and I would rather have had Maurice's POV too, to be consistent with the rest of the book. I like the more open ending of the published book.

[creativepseudo]

I prefer the ending! I thought the epilogue felt a little tacked on. Plus, Forster in the authors' note at the end describes how the point (partially) of Maurice was to write gay characters who, at the end of the book instead of facing jail time or suicide, have the 'happily ever after' that fiction allows. I felt as if the open ending provided that.

[angie_sylvie]

Yes, it's nice that every reader can imagine their own, slightly (or wildly) different future for Maurice and Alec.

[harmyjo]

The epilogue feels unnecessary to me. Maurice completes his whole emotional journey from self-loathing to acceptance of his own sexuality within the published novel. The story is complete without the epilogue which comes off as a bit of an "Oh by the way..." sort of addition.

And yes, the sudden change of POV to that of a minor character jars a little.

(I do like knowing that Maurice and Alec found happiness together but I took that from Forster's terminal note anyway.)

[angie_sylvie]

You should write the story!

(It would be awfully sad, admittedly, to read of them breaking up but it would be interesting and a completely different take on their future from most.)

[arcadiaego]

I like the ending (without the epilogue) for the reasons I seem to recall E.M. Forster himself gave about how you can make a happy ending if you just stop telling the story. More information makes it harder for me to believe that there could actually be a happy ending for Alec and Maurice because it becomes harder to not think about the practical difficulties that would entail.

[angie_sylvie]

Yes, that's so true, one can quickly get bogged down in all the details (as I've discovered when trying to write fan-fiction myself)