June 17: Maurice & The Ending

[kinetic_elaboration]

I had some more thoughts about Maurice earlier while walking that I would like to write down if possible. Specifically: the connections between the criticisms and/or frustration about the Alec section of the novel; the criticism of the book as being too much of a Thesis novel or having too much of an Agenda; and the criticism of the ending as being too indulgent or the novel as a whole too personal, and how these last two aspects are in apposition to Good Writing: as in, the novel is worse as a novel for being both a personal fantasy/pet project and for having a moral argument to it. Variants of all three criticisms recurred in a lot of the reviews I read and also in other reactions to the novel I’ve encountered.

I’m not going to fully counter these critiques because I think they’re partially true. I see where these reactions come from. More importantly, I think that breaking down the critiques reveals something interesting about the novel and about its author and context. But I’d also like to push back on the criticism some.

 

First, I think Forster himself knew that the Alec section was the weakest in the original draft, or at the very least the section that needed the most additional work. And I know this because he did work on it, as seen in the differences between the drafts, and because he wrote in his Terminal Note that he struggled with Alec as a character: how much to explain about him, how to make him more robust–and with the Maurice/Alec arc: how much to show and when and in what order, how to make their love story and especially their happy ending believable. 

Forster struggled in his other works to depict fully consummated love affairs, both in the sense of sexual relationships and in the sense of requited, established, romantic loves. I think that had a great deal to do with his own lack of experience while writing most of his novels, and later with his own personal sexual hangups in general. So it’s absolutely not shocking to me that he desperately wanted to show a Grand Romance between M and A but struggled to make it fully convincing or to devote enough on-page evidence for it. This is conjecture of course, but I read a certain inability to bridge the gap between what he saw so obviously because he wanted it so badly (the Perfect Happy Ending for his queer characters) and what other people would be able to discern with only his words on the page. So I think one could put that in the context of his other works and his biography and it would reveal something of his relationship to queerness, and to the history of (English, upper-class, etc.) queerness.

On the matter of timeline alone, he also set himself an impossible task: maybe Maurice and Alec really are destined soulmates but they’ve also known each other for, like, a week? No truly realist novel, and outside of this sub-plot the novel is basically realist, could ever fully convince an even mildly skeptical reader that the two have experienced everything they need together or of each other to create a reliable and lasting relationship. (It’s interesting that in his Terminal Note, Forster talks about needing to show them overcoming conflict(s) in order for their happy ending to be believable–that’s not false but it’s a bit simplistic.)

So: his task is difficult if not impossible, he is working in an area where his expertise is less, and he’s deeply affected by his own personal connection to his creation, in particular the desire he’s brought to it, the most core, central fantasies he’s playing with. Yes, that comes through. Yes, you’re reading it.

Yes, we’re straddling reality and fantasy here. The question isn’t ‘is this realist novel becoming fantastical?’ It’s ‘is it acceptable for this realist novel to become fantastical or to hint at the fantastical?’

I think a lot of the reviewers just assumed the answer to that is no. The very imposition of fantasy is a negative note, an area of objective weakness in the novel. I don’t think that’s fully true.

The recurring criticism, then, is ‘there is too much of personal fantasy and/or personal agenda, and this gets in the way of the story as a story,’ with the implication that a proper work of fiction is beholden to itself first, to telling its own best story, and that these other elements get in the way. Not totally unfair: a novel isn’t an essay and it’s not a diary entry. Allowing too much of those genres in creates a contrived story, which feels unnatural and stiff.

The criticism is really two parts: first, there is too much fantasy and/or agenda, and second, this weakens the work as a whole.

Yes, Maurice has a certain agenda (imo less than many of the reviewers think, or a different one than they think, but in the sense that this is a Pro-Gay novel, ‘agenda’ is correct). Yes, it is a fantasy. Yes, it is written from the ending out and Forster was explicit about this and strong in his defense of it. The novel has to end happily, he said in his Terminal Note. It has to, or there is no point in writing it. The happy ending made it unpublishable, but it could not be negotiated. That happy ending is also the core of both the Agenda–yes, it is acceptable or even good for gay people to exist and to love each other; and the Fantasy–yes, I want to create a world where love between two men exists and also lasts eternally and I want to revel in it.

Whether or not this is ‘too much’ I suppose is personal preference, but I do think it’s clear that the novel was conceived of ‘ending out’ as it were. If other aspects, like the timeline of the M/A romance, have to be twisted in service of the ending, so be it. I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that this is not the ‘best’ way to write a novel, though I suppose it’s arguable. 

But if so, does this weaken the work as a whole? 

I’m not willing to so concede, or at least, not willing to concede that it weakens it more than it provides countervailing strengths or positives. Maybe for straight people the weaknesses outweigh the rest. But why SHOULDN’T a gay man writing in 1913 write a novel with a gay agenda? I do not approve of this hiding behind objective criticism of storytelling to avoid talking about what it means, or might mean, to queer people that this novel exists. The fantasy is itself a strong statement of unrepentance and, even, pride. That queer people are entitled to happiness and happy endings; that queer relationships are the equal of straight ones; that queer people are entitled even to that most traditional of fairy tale endings, ‘and they lived happily ever after [and we didn’t overthink it].’ He’s writing in opposition to societal disgust and to anti-sodomy laws and to rules that said ‘you can write gayness as sin but nothing else.’ What’s the opposite of punishing a gay person with prison or death? Giving him the Love of his Life, maybe even more so if that love is a little unbelievable, a little fantastical. 

If it’s an agenda, in other words, it’s a bold one. And there’s an audience it will speak to who will get it and even need it. 

This isn’t to say that all queer people have to be convinced by Alec/Maurice or that the novel in its absolute Best Form couldn’t have had both its happy ending and a stronger final arc. It’s only to say that I think a real critique, not a dismissive one, should take the novel in its full context and that to call it ‘just’ an agenda or ‘just’ a personal fantasy are simplistic positions.

I’m still in a defensive posture though, and conceding another point I don’t know that I want to concede and that is about the ending specifically. Some critiques of Maurice and Alec have to do with their arc (what Forster himself worked on and may or may not have wrought to his satisfaction) and some have to do with their ending specifically, and I’ve been treating those two strands as if they were the same. They are intimately related: the arc is strong enough, one might say, to get Maurice and Alec together at the end but not strong enough to support Happily Ever After Forever and Ever, and thus the real problem is not the arc but the ending.

I want to think about the ending specifically and what exactly needs to be supported, and to bring in the question of the ‘fantasy’ element as well.

Forster made it quite clear that he intended Maurice and Alec to be together forever, so I’m not going to seriously argue that this isn’t the case. The Terminal Note makes this explicit, and it’s implied in the book as well: by the description/symbolic weight of the greenwood into which they escape; by Alec’s final words to Maurice in the boathouse. 

But–I was thinking earlier and conceiving this happily-ever-after aspect of the ending as a sort of additional layer on top of the literal ending, which, while it cannot be removed exactly, can be picked out decently enough and viewed on its own.

What literally happens at the end of the novel?

Maurice claims that he would like to leave his established life as he knows it and be with Alec. Alec argues the impracticality of this and insists on leaving for new opportunity in Argentina. Maurice goes to see Alec off on his journey but Alec is not there. Maurice looks for him in the boathouse, and finds him there instead. Alec has changed his mind specifically because he wants to be with Maurice–in other words, they have now both agreed to abandon their lives, bound by their respective classes, and be with each other. Maurice had previously discussed what this might look like practically, but only in the hypothetical. They make no plans. The height of the action is that they have physically found each other, after multiple missed connections and misunderstandings: they are Together now.

Maurice then leaves the boathouse and goes to talk to Clive, where he re-asserts his identity as a gay man and confesses his relationship with Alec. Notably: this conversation is partially seen from Clive’s point of view and solely from his POV at its conclusion; it takes place in the dark, such that Clive can barely see Maurice; Maurice picks flower petals while talking, which he later holds in his hand and then scatters upon leaving; Maurice is straightforward in his honesty about his relationship (including that it is sexual) but explicitly refuses to tell Clive anything of his future plans; Clive refuses to fully hear him, to the extent that he does not even notice when Maurice leaves; the novel fades out on the image of the flowers left behind, and on hints of Clive’s future life and the memories of Maurice that will haunt him, and makes clear that Clive and Maurice will never see each other again; it settles finally on Clive, in the present, primarily moved by his practical concerns. 

Maurice and Alec are absolutely positioned as lovers who will stand the test of time. If they were a man and a woman, they’d be getting married. We are supposed to understand this.

But beneath the fairy tale sheen of their ending, the Romantic ending, what is happening on the most literal level is they are choosing each other now. This high-stakes choice, which involves leaving society entirely, will likely change their lives forever even if they break up in a year. But all practicalities of choosing each other now are left unsaid, and that unknown could encompass their relationship ending. I know, Forster would hate me saying so! They MUST live forever in the greenwood. But he also refused to show them there–he tried and it did not work. The result is an unknown into which anything could go, if we are settled fully in the realist part of the novel and refuse to leave it, no matter how much we’re tempted out.

Maurice the novel takes place in a very specific space, physical and social: English suburbia/Cambridge/London/Penge. An England defined by its society, by its class structure, in opposition to a ‘natural’ or original England. At its end, Maurice and Alec leave that England and the novel cannot follow them. They fade away, they step back into the blackness of a summer night. Maurice speaks out of a darkness that Clive–the human embodiment of that Class-Bound England–cannot fully penetrate. He leaves behind scattered flower petals like bits of flame. He slips out of reach of Clive’s senses so subtly that Clive does not even notice it happening and yet so completely that he’ll never be seen again–maybe this is the only way he can do it, without Clive and all he symbolizes drawing him back in.

The point thus is not where they go but THAT they go and that they go together. Nothing past this point matters for the purpose of the story this particular novel is telling. Whether they are in love forever or break up or stay in England or go abroad or die in any number of ways or become Symbols who live on always, none of that really matters. The novel can stand without any reference to its future at all–so why judge it so harshly for that unknown future, which is merely implied?

What is the fantasy element?

None of this is to deny that there is an implied future for Maurice and Alec and it is happy. This implication is mostly accomplished through the concept of the greenwood. Maurice posits the greenwood in his hypnotism session, as an almost mythical place where the oppressive, man-made laws of England do not reach, where only the laws of nature reach, and by those laws two men can live together and be in love. It is a place of pure freedom, and it’s a place forbidden to anyone bound to those man-made laws and artificial societal strictures.

The greenwood is more symbolic than literal and yet it is also where he and Alec presumably go off to–Forster says as much in his Terminal Note but again, it’s implied in the text itself, because if Maurice is to choose freedom and honesty and love, where else could he go? If the greenwood is the opposite of his suburban class-bound life, and if he is turning his back on that life and abandoning it, then the greenwood is where he must be going instead.

If the novel had no agenda, but the same structure, how would it end or what would have to happen? What is its ‘natural conclusion’?

The only plausible conclusion for the arc of the novel is that Maurice falls in love again and ends the novel choosing that love. To say otherwise is either to misunderstand everything of the story’s arc or maintain too strong a credulity against the very concept of happy endings–or even happiness, the concept of an ‘ending’ itself being completely artificial–for queer people.

The trajectory of Maurice’s character is from self-closeted child/teen, through a coming out tied to a specific romance, into a wilderness of self-loathing and confusion in the aftermath of that romance, and finally to a new love. This love reveals the starkness of a specific choice to him for the first time: he can remain in the life he’s made for himself as a suburban stockbroker, a life he already knows has made him utterly miserable; or he can explore this new love. He can’t have both. Picking the second will mean societal exile (details tbd). 

To pick anything but the love and the accompanying exile would make at least the second half of the story useless, perhaps the whole thing. Why not have him end his life when Clive breaks up with him, in that case? Why not end with him choosing to live and be miserable, at the mid-point of the book? If Alec is introduced, he and Maurice must choose each other, or there is no point to introducing him, and if he is not introduced, the novel must end at its low point–which certainly is an ending, but it’s not an ending without an agenda.

The most ‘realistic’ ending that maintains the trajectory upon which Maurice was set at the opening of the plot is one in which he and Alec continue to have a relationship but do not leave society immediately. That relationship would probably look like Maurice and Clive’s (but with more sex) and maybe, perhaps even likely, they’d be torn apart by something or other at some point: class differences, maybe, or any number of things, and then Maurice would just be single again. Maybe he’d at least know that there are probably other queer people out there and he shouldn’t give up on love. But otherwise he’d basically be where he is in the post-Clive scenes. And what is the point, artistically, of that? The ‘agenda’ has been largely taken out, but any sort of rationale for writing the novel in the first place goes with it. The plot… sputters out. Alec is introduced, not for no purpose, but for a weaker purpose. 

From a purely artistic view, this novel is not better. Much of the boldness has been wrung from it. The maligned agenda is really just a Statement, it is what the novel is saying, and what is the point of a novel that says nothing? What this one says has to do with queerness, class, love, and sex, and the ending needs to be definitive to make any points on these topics at all.

Why is there this hint–and textually it is mostly a hint–of the fairy tale ending, of Maurice and Alec ‘living in the greenwood still’?

But why not leave the conclusion entirely ambiguous? Maurice chooses Alec and they decide to leave London/suburbia/Penge but do not specify where they’re going. This is basically the ending already; just gently take off and set aside the hints of the greenwood, perhaps lower the intensity on the meant-to-be hints and up the uncertainty and risk: I don’t know if I’ll love you forever or you me, but I’ll try to start a life with you now and it’s enough. There’s a bit of this in the book too: Maurice, about Alec, saying  “He was willing to give up his life plans for me without any assurance I’d do the same, and in the past I would not have. I don’t know if that’s platonic but it’s what he did.”

Well I have to say, it is because of the Agenda and I am defending it. One of my favorite parts of the novel is how insistent it is that being gay is good. Not neutral, not okay, not acceptable, but good. Maurice is a better person for being gay. And he is a freer person, entitled in some natural way to that paradise-like Original Eden of the greenwood. The idea that he would be happier if he was straight is nowhere in the novel: ‘curing’ himself does not promise happiness, Clive is not happier, and the people living their normal suburban/London/countryside lives are not presented as happy but as stifled, weak, boring, ridiculous, dull, and even ‘trapped.’ When Maurice leaves the hypnotist’s, sees royalty pass and is disgusted at them, and then looks at the trees and the sky, he understands that it’s the trees and the sky that are his.

To erase this aspect in favor of simple normalcy or integration would make the novel weaker, and to embrace it means bringing in a bit of the symbolic, the allegorical, the fantastical, the fairy tale, and, yes, the fantasy.

(I feel like I’ve probably scrunched together so many reviews/responses that I’ve created an argument that no one actually made–but it helped me come up with some thoughts, so, thanks, straw man!)