Bokrecension: Maurice av E. M. Forster

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Title: Maurice
Author: Edward Morgan Forster
Year written: 1913-1914
Year published: 1971

Short overview
Maurice Hall was a young and wealthy student at the Camebridge University when he met another student called Clive Durham. Clive and Maurice immediately became friends, but when Clive confessed his love for Maurice, Maurice walked away in shock and embarassment. The beginning of the 20th century in England did not allow relationships between men, and therefore it takes quite a while before Clive and Maurice admitted to each other that they were in love.
But the future held complications, and when Clive started to deny the relationship with Maurice, Maurice began to feel hopeless and heartbroken and reserved an appointment with a hypnosist in London. The hypnose do not work and Maurice visited his friend Clive and his wife on the countryside. If he thought that was going to cure him from his homosexuality, he was wrong.
One night when Maurice opened up his window to get some fresh air, a young servant called Alec Scudder observed that the window was left open and climbed in. And that was the beginning of the long and complicated way to find true love.

Characters
In “Maurice”, the characters are described with a humour and a depth that is unusual in books written such a long time ago. The author, Forster, refer to himself as the main character, Maurice. Forster describes his own time as a student through the eyes of a young and rich snob. The main characters in this book are Maurice Hall himself, Clive Durham and his wife Anne, and of course Alec Scudder, the object of Maurice’ true passion. There’s also a short chapter in the beginning that tells us about when Maurice as a child took a walk with his school tutor and the teacher told him about men and women.
I can’t really relate to any of the characters but I do find them all very interesting and over all this was a very stimulating and well-written book to read. I love the way Forster writes about the persons like they were his own good friends.

Special phrase that I enjoyed
Once, in a meeting with a psychiatrist, Maurice cries and shouts:
“I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort!”
I think that’s very funny, and I can only imagine how taboo it must’ve been at the time, talking about the homosexual writer Oscar Wilde who was sent to prison because of it. Obviously it was “unspeakable”. Poor Maurice!

What can you learn from it
Maurice was written when love between same-sexed persons was punishable. Edward Morgan Forster knew this and understood that it was important to keep the book secret. And even though he surely went through a lot of personal troubles back then, and spent so much time writing on the novel, he finally finished it. Only a few friends whom he trusted, were allowed to read it, and they liked it. I’ve read that Forster left a note inside the book – “Publishable, but worth it?”. It wasn’t until after Forster’s death, 1971, that the book was finally published. And I think that shows how stupid and prejudiced our society once was.
Such a waste of time not giving people the chance to read this amazing book.

Personal opinion
I think this is a really beautiful book. It shows a pure and honest love between two men who have to deny it in front of others. I’m glad the ending was happy, not many books about the subject end happily. “Maurice” is funny, open-minded and really shows how far the society has developed the last ninety years. I would gladly recommend it to others, but one should know that the language is quite old-fashioned and sometimes hard to understan...