May 29: Three Book Titles

[kinetic_elaboration]

I’ve been rolling some thoughts around in my mind and since I finished Maurice today I thought I’d try to jot them down.

Started out thinking about reading L'Amant at UP12 and the professor talking about the title. How even though the work is autobiographical, primarily about Duras herself, it’s named after someone else, and it starts with a description of her meeting another man who comments on her physical appearance. So right away the book points you away from her and toward her relationships with others, especially men, and especially in this sexually tinged way: not just any man but the lover; not just any conversation but about her looks. Of course the lover is not named, but neither is any character in this version of the story. They’re all referred to by their relationship to her. The lover has to be the lover of someone. She’s there in the title but she’s invisible, implied.

 

And then from there about Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which is doing the same thing basically except that “whose lover?” is answered in the title itself. The novel is named after Mellors, which is actually rather wild: he is the “lover” of the title; he’s the noun. But he’s only presented in his relationship to Connie and she is named. So you hear the book title and you’re more focused on “Lady Chatterly” first, and then second about the titillating concept of the word ‘lover,’ evoking sex, and only then, a distant third, so who is the lover anyway? He feels like the hidden aspect, even though he’s literally the declared subject. And then another twist: that she is referred to by the title she gained by her marriage. Not Connie, as she’s actually generally named in the text, but Lady Chatterly, as in a person of high status and the counterpart of Lord Chatterly. So she’s also kept at a bit of a distance, a symbol more than a person.

And finally Maurice. The title outside of comparison with the other two is so simple, straightforward: the novel is about a guy, his name is Maurice, the title of the book is Maurice. I guess one could say something about how he’s first introduced by last name because in the context of his school, and about how he and Clive know each other by last name until they become intimate and then always address each other, and are referenced in the text, by first name. But generally, pretty straightforward. But given the general parallels between this book’s plot and LCL, that this one names its subject straightforwardly and directly and intimately interests me.

One could say it’s simply accurate: he’s the only character who appears in every chapter; the point of view is almost always with him; he’s absolutely the protagonist. And yet, to present his name so simply and intimately at the start of the book, and then have that book be about him coming out, him coming into himself, discovering his identity and becoming brave in it, and fully choosing by the end to live honestly as himself regardless of what else he has to give up to do so, makes the title sweet. What he has at the end of the day that’s more important than anything else is his true self. His name. Not his title, not his relation to other people, not other people in their relation to him. There’s a boldness to it, the first name by itself.

Reading, at the end, the reference to the Maurice and Clive of the final chapter as two possible futures of the Clive of Cambridge was also interesting because, in some way, one could image naming the novel after Clive. If Clive represents, at least partially, an unformed person who could become staid and well-lodged in society, but largely lost to himself; or brave and true to himself in a scary but almost revolutionary way, and by the end of the book we’ve seen how both of those paths might turn out, there’s something to be said about alluding to him in the title. Or one could make an argument for Alec, possibly: he’s the endgame, he’s the lover who changes everything. One could be pointed toward him at the start, even though he doesn’t appear until the book’s second half, as a way of telegraphing his importance and the central necessity of the book’s happy ending.

I wouldn’t rename the book and I don’t think it could be better named. I just think these other possible names would direct the reading in a different direction, underlining the way in which the actual title changes my thoughts on the book.