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Any strong emotion brings with it the illusion of permanence, and the novelists have seized upon this. They usually end their books with marriage, and we do not object because we lend them our dreams. Dreams are like mirrors in which we can see ourselves. They reflect back our hidden self, revealing the true face of our own nature...And when we wake, our dreams can be a doorway through which we can walk back into this inner world, can step into the landscape of the soul.-- -- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
I first saw Merchant and Ivory's film adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel Maurice thirteen years ago. I can't remember if the film was a success or not. Critically praised or panned. But I do recall going back to the theater to see it a second time, immediately after my initial viewing, because I had to experience the movie's final ten minutes again—just to make sure that my overamped imagination hadn't played a trick on me. And no, I'd embellished nothing. The closing tableaux was still in place, crowned by that swoon-inducing kiss between actors James Wilby and Rupert Graves. A screen kiss that literally sent an involuntary sound (half sigh, half exclamation) from my mouth the first time I watched it. There is something magical about the way Wilby simultaneously falls on top of and sweeps Graves upwards into his arms in front of that boathouse fireplace—an embrace both glamorous (in the old hetero Hollywood tradition) and rapacious. A powerful merging that only two men colliding into one another could generate. Who'd ever seen something like that before depicted within the tribunal of our culture's darkened, myth-telling, meeting space (the local movie theater)? And better yet, and even more visceral, is that fantastic close-up of Rupert Graves' dazed, love-besotted expression—after the kiss—with the corner of his odd-shaped mouth still shimmering and slick with saliva. Actually, I think that was the visage that caused me to let out that sound in the theater. I'd unknowingly been waiting twenty years to see a reverie like that depicted on the big screen. It was as if the image shot straight into my soul and confirmed a longing I'd labored with since I was a child. That kiss soothed the sore area of my doubt and apprehension, and was a thousand times more effective than any gay pride march or civil rights amendment. It fostered in me a strong, unshakable hope. Maurice wasn't published until 1971, shortly after Forster's death. The manuscript was found in his rooms at Cambridge in 1970. "Publishable," a note on the manuscript in his own hand said, "but worth it?" Merchant and Ivory made the film in 1987—a bold stroke, arriving as it did, right on the heels of their career-making A Room With A View. And it was very much worth it. The film version remains mostly true to Forster's narrative and goes something like this: Maurice Hall (James Wilby) is fatherless and lives with his mother and two sisters. While attending Cambridge he develops a secret, romantic, sexless, By what appears to be a retribution on Forster's part, Clive ends up in a farce of a marriage but is nowhere the nearer to squelching his queer longing. Maurice, on the other hand—lonely, horny and frustrated—seeks a homo "cure" in hypnosis, then begins an affair with Clive's gamekeeper, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves). So we have boy meets (but never really has) boy and boy loses boy and then boy meets boy's "boy" and boy, oh boy, does boy wind up with a keeper. A gamekeeper that is. More exciting than any porn vid you'll ever see are the film's earlier scenes when the estate's gamekeeper Alec is on the make for Maurice. Ivory depicts this wonderfully through a series of small introductions that honor Forster's intent to have Alec Scudder "loom upon the reader gradually." Scudder hovers on the side of the screen while the estate's gentlemen engage in their boring hunting rituals. He trolls the shrubbery at night or in broad daylight—while the foreground characters are engaged in their contained conversations—we see him outside, through the interior's windows, literally climbing up and down the wall. Eager for another glimpse of Maurice. In true D.H. Lawrence fashion, it is the lower classed servant or gardener or country man who remains in touch with his instinctual nature and moves with aplomb towards the object of his desire. This symbol also captured my consciousness the first time I watched Maurice. Weary, in ways I wasn't even aware of at the time, with the arduous nature of furtive gay cruising and romantic second-guessing, I longed for the spontaneity and freedom symbolized I continue to return to Maurice for several different reasons. Usually, I'm rewatching the film because I'm sharing the experience with a new boyfriend. Simple enough. But more importantly, I also revisit the film (as well as the book) because I consider it a new myth for our time. Especially for gay men. And like any myth, there are always new insights and sensations to be gleaned with each retelling or re-seeing of the story. When you consider Forster's novel from a historical perspective, and check its message for relevancy within contemporary times, you can't help but be impressed with Forster's courage and perspicacity as a gay writer and artistic prophet. Taken as a myth, Maurice speaks to different parts of the brain and heart simultaneously. On the outward level, Maurice's message addresses the problem of place for gay men who grapple with acceptance within a culture that—despite "sexual liberation" and feigned political support—remains static with unchecked beliefs about the innate wrongness of queerness. Not unlike the turn of the century period in which the narrative is set. True, people are more educated now, or as I see it, more inclined towards political correctness—but where it really matters, in the heart, there remains a murky ignorance and barnacle-like fear regarding homosexuality. Or as Forster more accurately noted in his closing notes for Maurice: "What the public really loathes in homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it." Why is this so? I think because we are bereft of any contemporary myth that might help us integrate homosexuality into the pantheon of recognizable human emotions. Materialistically speaking, if something is never seen how then could it ever exist? This is why myths are so important for children (and adults). The metaphorical realm helps us become acquainted with a world riddled with contradictory feelings, ambivalent sensations and powerful sexual impulses. I believe Forster planted within Maurice a secret key for the possibility of forging a deep love between two men. Again from the book's closing notes, Forster wrote: "...in my experience though loyalty cannot be counted on it can always be hoped for and be worked towards and may flourish in the most unlikely soil. Both the suburban youth and the countrified one are capable of loyalty." Of course Forster was addressing his queer peers who warned that the class differences between Maurice and Alec would be their undoing. One literary queen, Lytton Strachey, wrote to Forster in 1915 after reading the novel: "...a very wobbly affair; I should have prophecied a rupture after six months." But this cynical assessment is a product of its time, and I think Forster was writing Maurice out of time (where all myths reside), and if anything, for the future. Forster shows us that both men are willing to make sacrifices for love's longevity. Alec forgoes the prospect of his new future by deliberately missing his boat trip to the Argentine. Maurice declares his willingness to leave his past, his mother, his dead-end relationship with Clive and his prestigious job. Prospects and memories are renounced for the sake of the here and now. Which is really the only place we are able to experience love. And this is why we feel so otherworldly when we fall in love. For a short crack in time, we aren't living from the head, with its concern for the past and worry for the future. We are dead center in the moment, fully alive, fully connected. Essentially we are in the realm of the heart. If you view Maurice's narrative as you would a dream and take each character to represent a different experience, three distinct options emerge. Clive, who abandons his gay libido, is eventually swallowed up in conventionality, books, speeches, a somnambulistic marriage of convenience to preserve his false identity. A safe but dead end. The closet case in its worst distortion. Maurice opts to struggle with the "gay" or "straight" conundrum. He wavers a bit with literal somnambulism (by visiting a hypnotist offering a cure for queerness), but after passion blooms (not intellectual Platonic love like he experienced with Clive), his heart awakens and he begins to follow its lead.
Poet Robert Bly notes that "The masculine side of young men may find itself deeply at home with the masculine, or it may not. Probably not. And with its overemphasis on sports and financial success, our culture gives very little help to the feminine side of men. Thus, the masculine in young men may know almost nothing about the feminine, particularly its depth and fierceness." This feels particularly true to me for gay men. Obviously we are connected to the feminine (with its longing for the masculine). But often, we have cut ourselves off from the full spectrum of the feminine, for fear of being attacked or ridiculed for our effeminacy. This creates a lopsided situation within the psyche. When the full force of the feminine (our connecting principal) is in exile, our relationships suffer, our intuitive faculties atrophy—but more importantly we are severed from our inner or spiritual life. We then focus more and more on our appearance, possessions, and position in the world. Forster himself grappled with the Alec archetype. Re-writing or adding chapters to help bring the character fully to life. He notes in the closing notes to Maurice, "[Alec] has to be developed from the masculine blur past which Maurice drives into Penge, through the croucher beside the piano and the rejector of a tip and the hunter of shrubberies and the stealer of apricots into the sharer who gives and takes love. He must loom out of nothing until he is everything." Forster is making reference to different scenarios in the novel where Alec is in close proximity to Maurice. Each of these scenes reveals a different facet of Alec's character. Proud and unyielding, he could also be swoony and romantic. He is connected to the earth and the woods, but he also attends to the estate's ponds and boathouse. He knows the forest, and moves through it effortlessly during the night. But he's also athletic and deft at sports. He experiments sexually with both men and women and is not trapped within a particular sexual identity. So he is liquid-like but firm in the conviction of his desire. Mercurial, if you will, and through his elasticity and combining of psychological opposites, he holds a special key. Alec moves towards the object of his desire freely, unfettered by order, tradition, religion or class. This, then, becomes a creative possibility for gay men. A freedom to love not only other men, but a chance to live outside the tight, prescribed, and limited identities or personas that gay culture offers each of us. Now that's true liberation. No wonder in many indeginous cultures the When Forster has Alec climb the ladder up to Maurice's bedroom on that wild and rainy night, he is depicting more than just a Romeo-and-Juliet-like coming together of cultural opposites. He was also merging a new gay archetype into the shell of an old one. A balance is struck with the introduction of the unifying feminine element (through Alec) between the two men. Fatherless Maurice is finally able to make a solid connection to his own masculinity. As he explains to Alec, after declaring his love, "You can do anything once you know what it is." Carl Jung described the masculine principal as knowing what one wants and the ability to move towards that goal without distraction. The feminine element not only connects us to other people, but it connects and heals the disparate parts of the self, allowing us a richer Forester, struggling with his own homosexuality, wrote not only one of the greatest novels of this century, but a contemporary myth that belongs to gay men. A myth that earmarks a new potential and way to live in the world. And for this we owe him much. I pay homage every time I sit down to watch the video or reread the book. And as a gay male celebrating a four year anniversary with his boyfriend this year—and who has watched Maurice with at least three different boyfriends since the film's release—I think I just might have discovered the secret to Forster's wellspring of hope. It's a refreshing homecoming.
Content and design © Nightcharm, Inc. Accompanying photos © Merchant and Ivory Productions. |
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platonic relationship with the aristocratic Clive Durham (Hugh Grant), a relationship that continues after Maurice is expelled and goes to live at Pinge, Clive's estate. Clive grapples with his queerness, takes a trip alone to Greece (mmm hmmm) and, once home, renounces his relationship with Maurice. 
in Scudder's fiery attraction to Maurice. I, too, wanted some handsome, earthy, cocksure admirer, to come climbing through my bedroom window on some sleepless night to answer my sexual muddle with take-charge declarations of "Sir, was you calling out for me? Sir, I know...I know....Lay down." 
While Clive and Maurice symbolize two sides of the gay male paradigm, Alec is a different gay archetype altogether. He represents what I feel is the great psychological potential for gay men—a creative duality that is free from static sexual identity. Alec carries the configuration of a sexual persona that is timeless but hard to define because it is nascent, still struggling to life (consciousness) within our modern day awareness. We are trained to experience life within the field of opposites. Masculine and feminine. Gay and straight. But Alec symbolizes a kind of uni-sexual or bisexual impulse, the promise of unified opposites. 
homosexual was honored as a sort of magician or shaman, traversing both gender worlds, and was often invested with the duties of
