A Developed Heart

...Mince was written m 1913, three years after the publication of How aid??s End and 11 years before his final great novel, A Passage to India Homosexuality was then an unacceptable theme to the censors...

...In an afterword, Forster tells us that the idea for Maurice stemmed from his acquaintance with Edward Carpenter, "a rebel appropriate to his age sentimental and a little sacramental, for he had begun life as a clergyman He was a socialist who ignored industrialism and a simple-her with an dependent income and a Whitmannic poet whose nobility exceeded his strength and, finally, he was a believer m the Love of Comrades " It was this last aspect that attracted Forster Although "comrade" embodies a broad range of possible forms of companionship (Margaret Schlegel in How aid??s End speaks of comradeship in marriage), Maurice is an attempt to justify a form society does not sanction, and is thus dedicated "To a Happier Year ". Maurice Hall is certainly no pseudonym for Morgan Forster, nor for Edward Carpenter If anything, the principal characters are overly allegorical Maurice, the typical middle-class businessman, his first lover, Clive Durham, the Cambridge-educated squire, and his second, Alec Scudder, a gamekeeper on the Durham estates who represents the lower classes Clive, the intellectual, first makes his friend recognize his own inclinations, keeps the affair platform, but later jilts him to marry Maurice's heart is less undeveloped than Clive's, and he eventually works out a true comradeship with the earthy Alec The novel ends with Maurice telling his old friend that he and Alec have given up everything for each other and intend to disappear from civilization...

...but at all events they will not have been educated at public schools ". Thirty years later, in a terminal note to Maurice, Forster was less optimistic, observing that the British attitude toward homosexuality had changed from "ignorance and terror to familiarity and contempt" Ruefully, he said that he "had supposed knowledge would bring understanding " Still, this disillusionment does not mar the book's essential premise that Love, of whatever kind, transforms and redeems, and that society, which is concerned with public rag-there than with private objectives, will at best ignore, and at worst persecute...

...To the end of his life Clive was not sure of the exact moment of departure, and with the approach of old age he grew uncertain whether the moment had yet occurred The Blue Room would glimmer, ferns undulate Out of some external Cambridge his fiend began beckoning to him, clothed in the sun, and shaking out the scents and sounds of the May term ". Maw ice is an unabashedly romantic novel, who would attempt such an ending today7 The relationship between Maurice and Alec seems unlikely, even to the characters themselves From the start, Maurice believes he has wronged his class, and fears blackmail His uneasiness causes Alec to feel patronized and betrayed Lytton Strachey, we learn from the afterword, told Forster that "the relationship of the two rested upon curiosity and lust and would only last six weeks " For-stein counters that "in my experience though loyalty cannot be counted on it can always be hoped for and be worked towards and may flounce in the most unlikely soil ". In "Notes on the English Character' (1920) he wrote, "I hope and believe myself that m the next twenty years we shall see a great change and that the national character will alter into something that is less unique but more lovable The supremacy of the middle class is probably ending What new element the waking classes will introduce one cannot save...

...and would have been particularly so m the case of Maw ice because of its happy ending??good Forster did not try to publish it Even after Parliament legalized homosexual practices between consenting adults, publication was delayed until the author's death to avoid public intrusion into his life This decision was characteristic, Forster's prime motivation, in life as in art, was always personal Maurice and his lover drop out of society to insure their own privacy, they have no desire to flout conventions for the sake of a cause...

...Maw ice is slighter than Forster's other novels, partly because, even transformed, the hero is not very appealing, and partly because the characters seem insufficiently fleshed out Yet Forster's special charm and style are present, and one is glad to hear any echo of his voice, however faint...

...A Developed Heart Maurice By E M Forster Not ton 256 pp $6 95 Reviewed by Phoebe Petting ell The late E M Forster attributed the singular reserve of the English character to the public-school teaching that feeling is "bad form " In time, the boys "go forth into a world that is not entirely composed of public-school men or even of Anglo-Saxons, but of men who are as various as the sands of the sea, into a world of whose richness and subtlety they have no conception They go with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and undeveloped hearts an undeveloped heart, not a cold one " The protagonist of this posthumous novel, Maurice Hall, is the epitome of the pubic-school man in all outward respects decent, un-likable snob, firmly established in both business and society Beneath the surface he is tormented by the knowledge that he is "an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort," yet it is his homosexuality that breaks through the imprisoning facade and redeems him...