Clive in Maurice: A Character Study

Clive Durham of Maurice is one of Forster's most complex characters.

He was based on one of Forster's friends and though less moody, is not dissimilar in his adoption of emotional poses as opposed to physical action. The actual friendship/love affair died out eventually since Forster got fed up with the friend's "you must join me in my pit of despair" insistence coupled with the refusal to move beyond a kind of indifferent homoerotic passion. It wasn't easy to max out Forster's tolerance, and he could live on lack of sex. He couldn't live on lack of affection.

Clive is not as emotionally unpredictable--Maurice focuses more on the secondary reason than the first. Ultimately, Forster uses Clive as the ultimate critique of Ivory Tower blathering coupled with English upper class propriety.

I mention on Votaries the tendency for intellectualism to fall prey to the "mind is everything" trope. The much touted intellectualized American versions of Asian "philosophies," for instance, are often shorn of the wild, physical, and palpable (not quite like the actual systems). Life is all about having the correct mental framework and the correct emotional state as opposed to actually seeing gods or touching bodies. 

Clive and the Oscar Wilde-like Risley, who Forster maintains

was actually based on another friend: "Risley, as Lytton

gleefully detected, was based on Lytton."

Despite being somewhere between an atheist and agnostic, Forster was not a fan of stripping religion or reality of its pragmatic and touchable. Hence, the wryness in his self-analysis. He saw the danger of becoming a Durham and said, in his infinitely polite way, "No, thanks!"

Clive is more unconventional than Maurice--on the surface. At college, he is the one who breaks with Christianity, inspiring Maurice to do the same. He is the one who seemingly rebels against authority. He is also the one who declares himself first. But it is all words. It is Maurice, not Clive, who initiates the first kiss. It is Maurice, not Clive, who accepts being sent down and takes a job in the city. It is Maurice, not Clive, who shrugs off the "indignity" of taking care of a sick man. It is Maurice, not Clive, who shows an utter willingness to walk away from his life.

Book cover inspired by the movie.

Maurice as the doer, not the speaker, is made more interesting by his  inherent lack of introspection. His homosexuality (a term not commonly used in Forster's time) forces him to become introspective; because he isn't a "practicing" intellectual and doesn't have labels to fall back on, his introspection is unique to himself.

The result of that introspection is the novel. But this is no Catcher in the Rye where an angsty voice demands sympathy. Clive would write Catcher (under a different name), not Maurice.

If Maurice was Oscar Wilde, he would have moved to France with Lord Alfred Douglas before the trials--then watched Clive leave him for the same reasons Lord Alfred Douglas abandoned Oscar Wilde.  But Maurice would have accomplished the move, not talked or waffled or postured about it. 

Clive's unwillingness to act, to give up his name, family, estate, and position in society as a budding politician is comprehensible, even defensible: people make choices for reasons other than love. Where Forster truly excels is when he depicts Clive's equal unwillingness to totally give up Maurice. Clive doesn't wish to have an affair with Maurice. Not at all. This is a guy who lives entirely in his mind. But he wants to keep Maurice within his circle, even his thrall.

So he invites Maurice to Pendersleigh after his marriage. He greets him as a hearty-good-fellow. He tries to get his wife to set Maurice up with a "nice girl." He visits Maurice's room and insists on playing out a game where he kisses Maurice's hand, then proclaims that that side of their life is over and done with. (All this material is in the book as well as Ivory Merchant's faithful 1987 adaptation.)

He doesn't want to remember what he and Maurice had (much like how Lord Alfred Douglas pretended later in life, to the disbelief of everyone, that he and Oscar Wilde had merely been good friends). He wants Maurice to pretend as well. And initially, he gets what he wants since Maurice is still getting over his heartbreak and is willing to go along with whatever Clive suggests.

But Clive's control has a shelf-life. It lasts only as far as Maurice remains (1) emotionally distraught; (2) subjectively rather than objectively introspective. Once Maurice regains his "self" and knows it, Clive's influence takes a nosedive. And because Clive refuses to be direct, he can't do anything about it.

The cricket match is a perfect model of this issue.

Maurice and Alec slept together the night before. During the cricket match, they demonstrate physical ease, picking up on each other's cues, hitting and running at the proper moments (according to the little I've read about cricket, this synchronicity is a real thing with good cricket players).

Clive returns from canvassing for the by-election. He doesn't know what happened between Alec and Maurice. He doesn't even suspect it. But at some level, he senses that he is no longer the center of Maurice's emotional universe. For one, Maurice is far more relaxed than before. Hugh Grant endows Clive with a kind of short-tempered "well, of course I'm going to play!" attitudinizing. He takes Alec's place (Alec, though captain at Maurice's insistence, has no choice since Clive is the head of the estate), makes a wrong call, and "strikes out" both himself and Maurice (my apologies for using American parlance; I don't totally understand cricket).

Up to the end of the novel and film, Clive is still trying to corral Maurice with words, words, words, as Hamlet would say: settle Maurice in his place; force him through sheer intellectualizing to be his friend in one particular way. Clive is the quintessential example of why intellectuals believe that informing people how wrong they are in their thinking will result in such people voting differently. (Not!)

And Maurice simply walks away: "Maurice had disappeared . . . leaving no trace of his presence
except a little pile of the petals of the evening primrose . . . 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 book, like the movie, ends with Clive, and though the end of the movie is owned by Maurice and Alec, there is good reason for Clive to resolve it. The character arc--or lack thereof--is all his.

Analysis of Maurice & Alec will follow . . .