When interviewed on his 80th birthday in 1959, Forster said: "I am quite sure I am not a great novelist because I've only got down onto paper three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be."
While Forster insists that Maurice Hall is a character completely unlike himself or who he supposes himself to be ("someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob"), I can't help but disagree. There are obvious, surface-level similarities between Maurice and Forster: their homosexuality, their all-female households, their Cambridge school days, and their attitudes toward Christianity. But going deeper, the experience of homosexuality in Edwardian England—the unbearable loneliness, the shame, the hopelessness of a life bereft of love—is portrayed with a rawness that derives from intimacy and deep understanding.
Written between the years of 1913-1914, Forster suppressed publication of Maurice until after his death and dedicated it to a "happier year." That year has certainly arrived, and it's remarkable to think about the cultural transformation that's occurred since Forster's time, when homosexuality was a crime and hypnotism its supposed cure.
When interviewed on his 80th birthday in 1959, Forster said: "I am quite sure I am not a great novelist because I've only got down onto paper three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be."
While Forster insists that Maurice Hall is a character completely unlike himself or who he supposes himself to be ("someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob"), I can't help but disagree. There are obvious, surface-level similarities between Maurice and Forster: their homosexuality, their all-female households, their Cambridge school days, and their attitudes toward Christianity. But going deeper, the experience of homosexuality in Edwardian England—the unbearable loneliness, the shame, the hopelessness of a life bereft of love—is portrayed with a rawness that derives from intimacy and deep understanding.
Written between the years of 1913-1914, Forster suppressed publication of Maurice until after his death and dedicated it to a "happier year." That year has certainly arrived, and it's remarkable to think about the cultural transformation that's occurred since Forster's time, when homosexuality was a crime and hypnotism its supposed cure.
When interviewed on his 80th birthday in 1959, Forster said: "I am quite sure I am not a great novelist because I've only got down onto paper three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be."
While Forster insists that Maurice Hall is a character completely unlike himself or who he supposes himself to be ("someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob"), I can't help but disagree. There are obvious, surface-level similarities between Maurice and Forster: their homosexuality, their all-female households, their Cambridge school days, and their attitudes toward Christianity. But going deeper, the experience of homosexuality in Edwardian England—the unbearable loneliness, the shame, the hopelessness of a life bereft of love—is portrayed with a rawness that derives from intimacy and deep understanding.
Written between the years of 1913-1914, Forster suppressed publication of Maurice until after his death and dedicated it to a "happier year." That year has certainly arrived, and it's remarkable to think about the cultural transformation that's occurred since Forster's time, when homosexuality was a crime and hypnotism its supposed cure.
When interviewed on his 80th birthday in 1959, Forster said: "I am quite sure I am not a great novelist because I've only got down onto paper three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be."
While Forster insists that Maurice Hall is a character completely unlike himself or who he supposes himself to be ("someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob"), I can't help but disagree. There are obvious, surface-level similarities between Maurice and Forster: their homosexuality, their all-female households, their Cambridge school days, and their attitudes toward Christianity. But going deeper, the experience of homosexuality in Edwardian England—the unbearable loneliness, the shame, the hopelessness of a life bereft of love—is portrayed with a rawness that derives from intimacy and deep understanding.
Written between the years of 1913-1914, Forster suppressed publication of Maurice until after his death and dedicated it to a "happier year." That year has certainly arrived, and it's remarkable to think about the cultural transformation that's occurred since Forster's time, when homosexuality was a crime and hypnotism its supposed cure.
When interviewed on his 80th birthday in 1959, Forster said: "I am quite sure I am not a great novelist because I've only got down onto paper three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be."
While Forster insists that Maurice Hall is a character completely unlike himself or who he supposes himself to be ("someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob"), I can't help but disagree. There are obvious, surface-level similarities between Maurice and Forster: their homosexuality, their all-female households, their Cambridge school days, and their attitudes toward Christianity. But going deeper, the experience of homosexuality in Edwardian England—the unbearable loneliness, the shame, the hopelessness of a life bereft of love—is portrayed with a rawness that derives from intimacy and deep understanding.
Written between the years of 1913-1914, Forster suppressed publication of Maurice until after his death and dedicated it to a "happier year." That year has certainly arrived, and it's remarkable to think about the cultural transformation that's occurred since Forster's time, when homosexuality was a crime and hypnotism its supposed cure.
