Somewhere In Malta...

Brooch

c. 1900

Plique-à-jour enamel, conch pearl, diamond, platinum and eighteen karat gold

by Marcus and Co., American

Meanwhile, Maurice is the one who describes what he is searching for as a friend, with all the earthiness of the word's Germanic roots, "someone you can share your whole life with." And sometimes---he acknowledges (unlike Clive)---he wants to have sex with that Friend. Maurice's conception of his own romantic and sexual attraction (a friend who you have sex with) is much more aligned with an asexual or aromantic's conception of romance or lifelong partnership that has deconstructed amatonormativity. Rather than pedestalizing romance as some intangible, supreme ideal that transcends the physical or mundane, Maurice is simply looking for a friend, in all the simplicity of the word, and given that he obviously has other friends that he is NOT romantically/sexually attracted to, it is clear that he implicitly (if not explicitly) recognizes that sex and romance are not inherently co-contingent upon each other and sex is separated from (though can be compatible with) both romance and friendship in his mind. This is not to say that Maurice is aromantic: he clearly feels romantic and sexual attraction to both Clive and Alec, but notably, he conceptualizes his attraction and desired relationship as platonic, not Platonic. His partner is his Friend first AND he is his Lover. On the other hand, Clive chases a romanticized Platonic ideal that allows him to sublimate/repress his romantic and sexual attraction into an ideal that is more tolerable to society AND slowly destroys his friendship with Maurice in the process.

Nifty little language game here.

I can read back to 1500 with basically no difficulty

at 1400 I have to read slowly and carefully, but I can understand all of it save a couple words

at 1300 I can still comprehend most of it if I read slowly, but a much larger percentage of the words are unfamiliar to me, even with context

I can't do 1200 or anything past it. It is, as the author says, a wall. It feels like a closely related foreign language. I had Spanish lessons at a very early age so I actually do okay at romance languages and skated through 1300 on thstt, but am totally lost here because I know zero German, and as German roots become more prevalent I lose all footing.

James Wilby as Sir Peter Bailey in TV series The Marlow Murder Club season2, 2025.

James Wilby as Sir Peter Bailey in TV series The Marlow Murder Club season2, 2025.

E. M. Forster began writing Maurice in 1913 after visiting gay socialist pioneer Edward Carpenter and his working class love George Merrill on their farm. They inspired the relationship between Maurice and Alec, and Forster’s own rough trade fantasies of being “loved and even hurt” by a “strong young man of the lower classes.”

sometimes it takes a while for things to work out. but we can always have hope that, no matter how good or bad or strange this last year has been, we can look to the future with hope.