E.M. Forster ~ Maurice
From: Penguin
I noticed I have been having this ongoing discussion with Erastes over on Speak It’s Name without mentioning a word of it here on my blog. So first let me reference the posts I will be speaking about…
A Review of Victor J. Banis ~ Longhorns
A Discussion Of A Dear Author’s Query
A Review of Marion Zimmer Bradley ~ The Catch Trap
First let me just say I do not hate Maurice. E.M. Forster is a excellent writer and his prose is wonderful. BUT! When I see people referring to it like Maurice set the bar high let me be very honest here.
As a gay man who likes to read and relate to his books Maurice may be a wonderful example of Gay Literature. Maurice may be a wonderful example of classic Gay Literature written by a “closeted” gay man. Maurice may be THE EXAMPLE of how ludicrous the Lambda Literary Foundation’s new rules forbidding “closeted” gay men from being recognized by their award for Gay Literature. A whole genre mind you who’s very existence and recognition depends on the work of closeted gay men and women writers as well as the work of straight writers.
But A HIGH BAR?
OMG no! Just no! I like to relate to my literary characters with some type of “emotional logic”. Not in this white washed, perfect, pristine, ideal of the gay romantic hero. Not that. I like to relate to the imperfect, the messy parts, the things that show me they are adult gay men living in a society that hates them. Lust, anger, drinking problems, even issues with being stuck a gay man in a straight society and unable to come to terms with it.
Things I expect from someone who is an outcast. The sexual outlaw, the pervert, the liar. All those things gay men have had to deal with for centuries to survive and yet those same internal struggles that kept making them give the occasional drunken blow job in the back of a darkened bar room to some willing fellow drunk male. I think Maurice or at least “the creation of Maurice” is the perfect example of this dichotomy of “the messy” real versus “the antiseptic” fiction.
An Interpretation E. M. Forster’s Maurice
Edward Carpenter Wiki
Fyne Times: Edward Carpenter
From these links you can gather that E.M. Forster wrote Maurice based on his meeting the openly gay couple Edward Carpenter and George Merrill who got together in 1891. Now there is some key points that I think separates their story from the Maurice rendition despite the fact that Edward Carpenter and George Merrill lived openly as gay men and were buried together.
- Edward Carpenter a strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield
So Edward Carpenter accepting the fact he was a gay man who found hyper masculine men attractive lived near other gay men in a gay community. I think modern gay men can relate to that.
- His wife decided to leave. Carpenter fell in love again with a married man called George Adams, who lived at Millthorpe for a while with his wife.
So Edward Carpenter’s wife took off because he was gay and the next thing you know the guy is having flings with masculine married men that turned him on. I think modern gay men can relate to that.
- But during a train journey in 1891, a chance meeting formed a relationship that would last until his death. George Merrill was a working class man, a flirt, a loud-mouth who loved a drink and had strong morals. Edward was smitten and when Adams left Millthorpe, he was soon replaced by Merrill.
I highly suspect “a chance meeting” is not exactly what happened. More likely some hot “one night stand” wild monkey type “gay loving” on a train. This is not that far away from James Lear ~ The Back Passage.
- E.M. Forster’s personal notes tell what happened when he met the couple… “George Merrill also touched my backside—gently and just above the buttocks”.
Yeah, I bet “touched” was not the only thing George and Edward did to E.M. Forster’s backside.
So there you have it the last straw, the proof of the pudding. An open relationship. Historically accurate gay men even in couples do not have to be written all that different from modern gay men in their actions.
I am not saying showing an “open relationship” or a hero with a “drinking problem” or a hero that has issues accepting he is gay or a series of “one night stands” before they meet “the right guy” in a historical gay romance would fit into every story but what I am saying is understanding those emotional realities better might make the characters more believable. That fidelity was not one of the things ever expected of men even back then. That is IF they were to even have a relationship since most gay men probably did not even believe in having “long term” gay relationships since it increased exposure unless presented under the right circumstances.
Openly gay men were sexual outlaws, rebels, James Dean types. They lived life with the constant threat of being thrown in jail for who they were. There was no Kinsey Report. There was no “Leave It To Beaver” to emulate (Hell, the whole “couple priority” in the gay community really did not start till the 80s with the threat of AIDS) and even straight men were not really expected to practice fidelity despite the moral teachings of the day.
It’s far more easier for me to relate to Edward Carpenter and George Merrill than it is for me to relate to the pristine virginal Maurice who spends most of the book in platonic angst and sexual oppression that I found to be tiring and I could not in a million years relate to. Maybe the highly closeted E.M. Forster accepted that idea of how a gay man could live or more likely he meant it to be a commentary on how he saw British social mores.
I am fine with all that, but do not ask me to consider it a “high bar” for Gay Historical Romance I think current writers have a better chance at a realistic and far more relatable story.
See what I mean about messy reality? What do you think?
Tags: eBook Commentary, Gay Romance, Historical
erastes wrote,
Part of the problem is of course, is that publishers don’t want the outcast, and the pervert. I’m having enough trouble getting anyone to look at “Married man with 2 kids in English 1960′s falls in love with 17 year old next door-rocks fall yada yada” – The gay lit publishers might possibly accept the unsanitary and the unpleasant reality, but the small indie publishers don’t want to know (in the main, there are one or two such as Lethe and Cheyenne where the HEA isn’t the dominating factor)
It’s such a young genre (as a genre) that we’ve got to feel our way, push the boundaries, kiss a lot of frogs and explore themes. Maurice was a particular set of insular young men – from a particular set of insular people and class. If the story had been told from Alecs point of view, and he’d not met Maurice with all his high fallutin’ ideals, it would have been a different story. Alec is much more honest and visceral and sexual about things. – It’s another country, as they say.
I look forward to what happens in the genre, it’s all very exciting. did i really say that about a bar? I hates the internets. Words never go away.
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Tina wrote,
As a fan of gay historical fiction, I do find it constantly treds the line of ‘must be realistic’ to ‘why can’t it be purely escapist’. I find to often that as creators, we’re its biggest critics. Do fans enjoy the completely fantastical ‘crap’ where men go about the medieval countryside screwing the days away with each other like Conan and his barbarians – OR must we be true to the men who lived in those days and present as realistic of a love story as we can, restricted by the morals of the times?
:/
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Tina wrote,
Meant to add a disclaimer that my comment was topic-specific, but pertained to the genre overall. The editing mode took so much time to load, I ran out of time to edit. :)
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I do not think it has to be all or nothing. My point is that there seems to be more leeway for portraying what gay men have always done than we see being written even in these classic examples. To me even if the character shows some background and experience and even acknowledged these things or at least socialized with people who did these things you might have a character that seemed more well rounded than the typical two dimensional “loner gay guy fights the world” historical romantic hero
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Lee Rowan wrote,
My take on the frequent citing of “Maurice” is that it’s one of the few books that fits the “happy ever after/happy ending” that is expected in the Romance genre, and since it was written by a gay man, citing it avoids the whole Who Is Allowed To Write This brouhaha. You say people refer to it as though it set the bar; I don’t recall ever having claimed that. I think Maurice stands out largely due to its singularity. I’ve read “Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, and my impression is that there isn’t really much out there that isn’t written in careful code.
If you can name some other books that you consider a better candidate for setting the bar, I’d be happy to read them. Offhand, I can’t think of any.
Re the whole ‘criminal’ situation… you speak of “out gay men” being technical criminals, and yes, they were, just as a friend of mine was technically criminal for buying pot for her mom during chemotherapy. But most of the historical stories I have seen are not about ‘out’ gay men in the 20th century, or any other. They’re about closeted gay men (I’m using both ‘closeted’ and ‘gay’ for brevity, I realize use of the terms are relatively recent) who consider their orientation no one else’s business and establish clandestine relationships that are long-term in part because they are comfortable with the arrangement (hey, it’s a romance, they’re ‘happy ever after’) and don’t make much effort to find other partners. There’s a parallel in Candace Gingrich’s autobiography, when she speaks of staying with her first partner long after they should have split because it was so much easier to stay together than look elsewhere. Even Carpenter and Merrill were probably not living as an ‘out’ couple in the fullest sense of the word. Out to their intimates, certainly, but to the world at large? With homosexuality still a criminal offense? That just doesn’t seem likely.
I would question your assumption that the ‘couple phenomenon’ dates only to the 1980′s. While most young gay men were probably like young men everywhere–sowing wild(e) oats, variety the spice of life, notches on the bedpost or backroom rail–I’m also sure that, like a good friend of mine, there were also shy, introverted gay men who were happy to find and settle down with a single partner. Charlie Cochrane posted some time back about a couple of academics at Cambridge who lived together and were buried together. Who knows if they were totally monogamous? If every het couple who experienced infidelity were instantly divorced, I doubt there’d be many golden anniversary parties. There’s also, in my own personal knowledge, Fred and Howard of German Village in Columbus, Ohio. They’d been together over half a century when one passed – which means they had settled down together in the 1930′s.
I realize that two examples does not disprove anything. I could find others, but I’m not trying to disprove what you’re saying–you’re the voice of experience. I do suggest that there is more than one valid story to be told. Recent polls have shown that a considerable majority of glbt youngsters want and expect to find a long-term life partner. I suspect that those couples in earlier times who did find long-term commitment congenial were able to conceal their relationships–particularly if one or both were also in conventional marriages. But then, I think that the impulse to form lasting emotional bonds is part of the human blueprint–an inclination, not a mandate, something that I think is stronger in some people than others. When social barriers forbid it, people will react in different, equally valid ways.
Clearly, most of us are not writing the books you want to read, though I think Erastes and Alex Bee have come close–they’ve taken enough flak for not obeying the “Rules” of Romance. I know that I am not likely to write the books you’re looking for. I try to touch on the difficulties in maintaining a lasting relationship when same-sex relations are punishable by death (for instance, when my naval lovers are separated with a possibility of never seeing each other again, David urges Will to love someone else–which he can’t, because Will is as monogamous as a swan). I’m trying to conclude the series in a realistic way, and I know that is going to upset some readers, but that can’t be helped. I do want them to have a happy ever after.
I think I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t want to write ‘messy’ fiction, because I believe that some people look at what the world says they are, and respond by saying, no, I may be different, but I am not evil. It isn’t antiseptic, but it is … detached may be the word I’m looking for. In any event, that’s my own truth, and that’s what I put into my characters. I’m not altogether convinced that my being female created that point of view, either–but I’ve known too many het gals who were willing to go the anonymous sex route in search of … whatever they wanted; I’m sure there was no one-size-fits-all prize.
Teddy, I’m not saying this with any snarky or sarcastic intent, but why don’t you WRITE the book you want to read? That’s what got me started writing. “I can do better than Spock’s Brain.” A lot of us started writing m/m to get books that we wanted to read, and I for one would love to see what your messy reality would look like. I’d be curious to know what era you’d write. You sure wouldn’t need to do any research to write late 20th century.
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Lee,
I would question your assumption that the ‘couple phenomenon’ dates only to the 1980’s.
Well, that comes from my experience coming out right before AIDS hit and experiencing what did happen. It’s not just my view but one coming from being at the heart of San Francisco during those dark days. It’s also one you can study yourself in documentaries like Gay Sex In The Seventies. You can also see some of the nastier discussions going on in The Boys In The Band concerning how the gay community treats couples. It’s a subject that is really only now being studied in earnest but it is an important one. You might notice I do have a good stash of research I use to back up my assertions.
I have already pointed towards two examples of “out” gay people in this post alone. One was George and Edward who were extraordinary for their time period and very rare in how openly gay they lived. But then again another extraordinary gentlemen named Quentin Crisp living closer to our time but under similar circumstances and reflecting some similar ideologies as E.M. Forster concerning his lot in life but willing to share his experiences growing up in such a situation.
So all I am saying is the typical lonely suspects used as example like Oscar Wilde have company and I am sure we could find more but do we really need to. It is pointing out that the whole conversation of realism needs to include a sexual and emotional logic to it that is missing not just what type of pants they wore.
My point was also that James Lear though highly over board on the erotica level in an almost joking way may not be too far off from the truth in some regards about men on trains at least obviously in George and Edwards case of how they met. So see there is an example of a current good book that may not be as hard to believe as is made out to be. Maybe turn down the erotic escapades a bit and you might be on your way to a good romance there.
Would that be the kicker if this new historical erotica turned out be closer to how people chose to live their life in a series of anonymous sexual encounters due to their circumstances. Anyway, sure men like to pair up and I have most of my life with this last one going on ten years but even I am not so simplistic that I pin all my hopes on getting together with the next guy I go to bed with. You kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince. We all have our slutty moments or our drunken flings and most people are young and do that stuff often while they are learning the ropes. Why are so many historical gay characters so virginal and inexperienced? I would expect much younger examples even though I know that publishers would never go for that but still if we are talking accuracy the virginal thing at 18 is a stretch now and unthinkable back then.
We are discussing what makes a historical character more than two dimensional and in one way is having a relatable past to inform the reader of their present.
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Emilie wrote,
I think some messiness in relationships is realistic, but a lot of that wouldn’t work for a romance. It’s likely enough in real life to have married men go out for one-night stands and affairs, but I don’t think much of the audience would find that romantic. It stops being a romance for me if one of the protagonists hits the other (not BDSM, but in a fight). Domestic abuse is a real problem, though. So is alcoholism. I like some realistic touches, even a little grittiness sometimes in a story, but there are some issues like infidelity and domestic abuse which take a story out of romance territory. I do think open relationships would be more realistic, but that’s still something a lot of the audience would have trouble with.
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Thanks Emilie,
I think the big thing is that writers consider if even something as well written like Maurice can be seen as so idealized especially when faced with the messy facts about who it was written about that maybe they want to rethink the whole image and mess it up just a bit more. I am all about more balanced portrayals.
Link | January 14th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Lee Rowan wrote,
Ah. I didn’t think the discussion was about making characters more realistic–I thought it was about Maurice not being a high watermark of gay romantic fiction. And, since you said “Well, this isn’t it,” I naturally wondered what book you would put in its place.
I was not that crazy about Maurice, all in all. I thought the resolution of his problem was tied up more neatly and easily than it would have been in real life–I’d have liked to see enough of the relationship to convince me that those two men were going to stay together, because to me it seemed that he latched on to the first guy he could have guilt-free sex with. What about the long haul… what happens when the sex slows down? What would they talk about? Who’d do the housework? I felt sorry for Maurice, but I didn’t really like him much, and I don’t think the reader had enough of an opportunity to get to know Alec, either. That resolution, though, was just about what I’d expect for someone who’d been raised in such a hermetic environment and had little chance to date anyone else, so I didn’t find it hard to believe. And given the era he was living in, I couldn’t fault Forster for giving his characters a happy ending. I think it’s significant for what it was, for when it was. If there’s something better out there, I’d like to know.
As far as romances go, a lot of the fictional over-18 virgins are, I’m sure, older than they probably should be because of US porn laws. On the other hand, how many men, even today, are figuring out that they’re gay after they’re already in the wife-and-kids situation? They might not be new to sex, but they suddenly meet a guy who hits the right buttons and realize that it’s never been right because they’ve been looking at the wrong gender of partner. Yeah, the average man would just have sex with the guy and rationalize it away… there are a lot of men on the down low.
But those men wouldn’t fly as romance heroes. Romance readers want heroes with flaws, but casual infidelity isn’t a minor flaw–it’s practically unforgiveable. I’ll grant you, that’s unrealistic, but romance is not always realistic. It’s a balancing act. And, to quote my beta-buddy, who’s been with his partner for almost a quarter of a decade, “I think romance requires monogamy. All of my friends who courted the “open relationship” idea have let that one go entirely.”
Whether or not we need to find more ‘typical lonely suspects’ like Oscar Wilde, I’m sure there were many of them, and I think they work well for romance because loneliness vanquished is a staple of the genre. I don’t think all this is necessarily a matter of making a historical character two dimensional vs. more well-rounded; I think it’s more an issue of what will work in terms of what most readers look for and want in a particular style of story.
It sounds like you prefer stories and characters that go beyond those limits, and you want to see characters who act out their frustration rather than suffering in isolation. As Emilie says, I don’t know that what you’re talking about is going to work for most romance readers. A romance hero can be a rake, but not an out-and-out ho–not after he’s fallen for Mr Right.
I also think that the gay liberation/AIDS crash of the late 20th century was something unique that will be keeping grad students busy for decades to come, because I don’t think any previous plague has ever hit a single community so hard, just at the point where it was beginning to flourish. I can’t think of anything historical that even comes close–in earlier eras, syphillis was an equal-opportunity destroyer. But when you get into that phenomenon, and that era, you’re pretty well out of historical fiction and into contemporary, which is yet another genre.
Link | January 15th, 2010 at 12:18 am
erastes wrote,
Am loving the conversation, it’s so good to chat politely about the genre.
Teddy, I don’t know if you’ve read Standish, but there’s several romance “no-nos” in that – Rafe is a sexual predator, and whilst his story echoes the het romance ideal of the rake reformed by love, it’s not really the case. He’s unable to keep it in his pants just because Ambrose is unable to have sex after being raped and goes and has a torrid affair which naturally comes out.
He’s re-reformed at the end, but it’s more from desperation and guilt than love (as much as my readers will hate me saying it) and the ONE big reason why I haven’t caved in to readers’ requests for doing a sequel to Rafe and Ambrose’s story is that I don’t really believe in the HEA. From my extensive experience a leopard doesn’t change his spots, and I know that Rafe will hurt Ambrose again and again and again and 1. the boy’s been through enough and 2. do it too many times and he just becomes a doormat rather than a character. Better to leave them in their suspended ending rather than reveal the realities of life.
A long winded way of agreeing with Lee about Alec and Maurice. Don’t know if they went to America (as the “sequel” which is more A.U. than anything) suggests, but I would imagine that the shine went off the rose pretty quickly there – in levels of class and experience and many other things, I can’t see them lasting that long.
I was recently castigated on my review of Alex Beecroft’s new novella by stating that I was pleased to see the way the relationship in that book develop–it started, as would please you, Teddy, with literally little more than a glance and moved to a sexual encounter then a sexual relationship with nothing much behind it. It’s not until the end that the protag wonders if there’s any future and how it might be achieved. It managed to walk that middle line between the HEA and the hook-up.
On the other end of the spectrum, I’m just reviewing Madcap Masquerade by Persephone Roth which is a forced marriage. (woman is told to marry the duke – woman’s brother dresses up as his sister and marries the duke instead) It sounds ludicrous, but actually it works on a lot of levels because it isn’t forcing the man into the feminine role and plays riffs on the theme of how different the sexes are treated when one either knows what the gender is and when one doesn’t.
I think that there are many m/m readers who are willing to push the boundaries of romance when it comes to gay historicals, and they realise that there’s leeway to follow the rules and to break them.
Link | January 15th, 2010 at 3:15 am
TeddyPig wrote,
I couldn’t fault Forster for giving his characters a happy ending. I think it’s significant for what it was, for when it was. If there’s something better out there, I’d like to know.
I am not complaining about HEAs in fact I have addressed that several times already. I was complaining about the other 3/4s of the book where he presents a rather sorry excuse for a over idealized “angst for the sake of angst” gay romantic hero.
you want to see characters who act out their frustration rather than suffering in isolation.
No, I just want to see characters that are leading understandable gay lives like as I show up above Edward Carpenter living in a gay community near Sheffield. That does not sound very isolated or sad or hard to believe to me. In fact it sounds like even in the 1800s gay people did all sorts of perfectly normal things like moving near each other and socializing etc like they do even now. Safety in numbers.
My point is that there are tons of two dimensional “standard issue” historical straight romance heroines out there like “the virgin widow” that make no sense and leave you scratching your head wondering where they got that idea from in the first place and why writers keep using them. My point is that despite actual historical proof to the exact opposite and the fact they are men we are talking about I see this same thing happening in historical gay romance while people spend such a huge effort on “historical accuracy” and yet miss the mark on what type of male character would inhabit these places.
Do we need even more of these idealized characters in Gay Historical Romance or can we try for a bit better on the realism?
A romance hero can be a rake, but not an out-and-out ho–not after he’s fallen for Mr Right.
Obviously you have to be in context with the story and just because I mentioned “open relationships” does not mean I think they need to be in gay historical romances I was pointing out how even that is NOT a modern concept or some sexual anomaly we invented in the 70s along with homosexuality, gay communities and the like. Gay men have been doing this stuff obviously for centuries now. I would also like to point out that being that we are talking about men we should have more rakes and less virginal innocents. In fact why can’t both characters have an equal understanding of sex instead of this need to replicate the old straight romance rake and the virgin couple?
Link | January 15th, 2010 at 4:24 am
Gay Romance: It’s About Romance I Thought | The Naughty Bits wrote,
[...] though. If you want to read the epitome of the effeminate Gay Romantic Hero then might I suggest E.M. Forester ~ Maurice which is the guide book for well mannered Gay Angst in my [...]
Link | January 15th, 2011 at 10:05 am
James Lear: The Back Passage | The Naughty Bits wrote,
[...] much the exact opposite extreme of my review of E.M. Forster ~ Maurice. They are all in the same genre but where Forster zigs Lear zags and it makes for a great [...]
Link | April 24th, 2012 at 5:11 pm