A Comparative Study of E.M. Forster’s Maurice

Acknowledgements

This book is a modest attempt on my part to highlight critical aspects of E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice in relation with his other novels.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Principal Sir Dr Satendra Kumar Joshi of Satyawati College (Evening) for his support. constant encouragement and:

My heart felt thanks to my Ph.d. supervisor Dr Manjari Agarwal and my mentor Dr R.K. Agarwal, Professor and Ex- Head, Department of English (Dr B.R. Ambedkar University, Agra) for their valuable guidance.

Last but not the least, I must mention that my father Shalil Roy, my mother Anima Roy and my brother Shomor Roy, who have encouraged me to write this book and have stood as the greatest source of inspiration in my honest and sincene endeavour the exercise.

RUBY ROY

Introduction

E.M. Forster developed and conceived the idea of his novel Maurice between 1913 and 1914. However it was not published during Forster’s lifetime when it appeared in 1917, a good deal of literary controversy ensued. The problematic aspect about this novel originated with E.M. Forster being confused about this particular piece of work. According to an Introduction by P.N. Furbank, the novel was revised in 1919, and 1932, in “once more, fairly drastically, in 1959-1960” Forster created another mystery by scrawling “publishable-but worth it” on the cover of the neatly prepared 1960 manuscript, and most reviewers have since tried to sort out this question by author.

The publication of this novel invited a lot of literary and non-literary criticism. First of all, one must not forget the fact of the novel’s suppression during the author’s lifetime. The novel is primarily concerned with illustrating Forster’s point of view about homosexuality being normal leading to happily ever after conclusion of gay relationshp. In 1914, this idea was unacceptable, except perhaps in very sophisticated circles. Philip Toynbee encapsulates the situation succinctly when he commented about the novel:

The Wilde case was still reverberating and English homosexuals were living in greater fear, shame and distress than they had done even in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The lightest sentence for the alternate sexual orientation was still ten years in prison. According to Forster’s biographers, he was very close to his Victorian ancestors, and his middle-class relatives. If one considers his regard for tradition and his attachment to his famly, censure of his refusal to print becomes impossible. The benefit he may have done to the world in speeding change of laws and attitudes would have been negligible in his eyes, if it involved dire consequences for the Forster and Thornton. By 1967, his mother and other relatives were dead; furthermore, the Wolfenden report revising sexual laws had been accepted, and he could, if he wished, have published the novel. According to Furbank Friends actually suggested it, but he firmly refused…Also, the book had become rather remote to him. He said he was less interested now in the theme of salvation, the rescuer from ‘otherwhere’; he thought it was a ‘fake.’

This explanation does not seem satisfactory, if he felt so remote he could have destroyed the manuscript, instead of putting so much effort in preparing it so carefully for publication. As a reader, one can speculate that the “eyes of the world”, the conventionality that Forster denounces in each of his works, also affected his own view of the world. The bourgeois values associated with “Sawston” in Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Longest Journey are just as much a part of Forster’s world- picture as the “Cambridge” ideals of eccentricity” and freedom that these novels present. One can surmise that Forster could never resolve feelings about his strong little radical novel. The rest of his fiction also complement or comment on this posthumous publication. Keeping in mind, Forster’s love for secrets and surprises, an interesting theory can be developed.

One senses, a sort of rebirth for Forster through the posthumous publication of a flawed, semi-autobiographicalnovel. The theme of immortality is present in his major works of fiction. In the Longest Journey, Rickie and his deformed daughter both die, but their name and memory live on in the form of Stephen Wonham’s child. In A Passage to India, Moore live on through her children, and in the memory of those she befriended in India. In Where Angels Fear to Tread, much of the plot involves Gino’s desire for a son, and the future of that child. In Howards End, the house preserve both the life of England, and the memory of Wilcox. In any case, if Forster considered his own life as a story, Maurice provides it with an excellent conclusion.