Type of Romances: Romances with Royalty

Americans as royalty--popular trope.

On Votaries, I discuss royals who transform. 

 

Below is a repost of why romances should avoid "the royal who falls in love with an ordinary person" trope. 

 

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A great many romances tackle the royal personage in love. Several exceedingly popular books have tackled this trope--and succeeded in terms of reader interest.

I generally avoid them. To me, royal life is rather like pioneer life: I fail to see the appeal. Being a member of the royal family or the aristocracy stinks--as a large number of Americans have discovered. It's a Hollywood-level loss of privacy plus social and political expectations mixed into one.

And sure, Kate Middletons exist--the significant other who manages to combine exuberance and natural ability into one strong package. That woman has political and social intelligence coming out her ears.

The problem in fiction is that the non-royal protagonist is so often portrayed as an ordinary mortal--the person who doesn't have super-duper extroverted social and political moxie coming out the ears. There's an understandable fascination with the idea of just any-old-person suddenly entering the fantastical world of royalty. It's so glamorous and high-powered...

And dull...

Oh, wait, my bias is showing.

(Truly, as a lifestyle, I think being royal sounds utterly horrific: horror-movie terrifying and claustrophobic.) 

Some writers will have the ordinary mortal lover rise to the challenge--this is actually more believable than the writers who determine that the ordinary mortal lover shouldn't have to rise to an acceptable level of social and political obligations. Yeah, we've all seen how well the latter comes across in real life. No matter how many people want to back Edward or Harry or Fergie--the fact is, Kate Middleton makes a better impression with the populace.

Because in the end, the willingness of a royal family member to sacrifice all for love doesn't really pay off since the royal family member comes off as kind of a jerk or mired in wishful thinking. 

Like with the Hollywood romance, I generally leave the genre alone. 

Elsewhere I tackle why the JOB of being royal is generally best left alone as well.  

Allowing for Reality: K.J. Charles's Band Sinister

K.J. Charles does it again!

One of my favorite aspects of Charles's plots is her refusal to adopt easy answers. It is frankly common for many romances to fall back on the assumption that all the people who are trying to keep the lovers apart are bad while all the people who want to get them together are good.

Jane Austen and Shakespeare each point out the futility of these assumptions. As does K.J. Charles--though she wends a more difficult line (Austen and Shakespeare had unified cultural moralities to fall back on or at least, as unified as their individual class systems allowed for).

In sum, Charles tackles the moral quandary: What is the line between thumbing one's nose at the world, doing one's own thing, being an island--and being a responsible, social human being?

*Spoilers*

In Band Sinister, Philip may have good reason to go his own way, to shrug at society's strictures and moral coding. But then, Philip can afford it.

The clothes are wrong but the expressions are right.

As sweet, thoughtful, and level-headed Guy points out, many women and some men can't afford the same indifference (or studied indifference). They need social support. They need good reputations, so they can get decent employment or make decent marriages or receive allowances from relatives so they can, you know, eat.

In addition, he points out that Philip's disregard for social niceties has made things difficult for Guy's sister. In a tribute to Georgette Heyer (which I think Band Sinister may very well be), Amanda breaks her leg on Philip's property and cannot be moved from his house. It is practically impossible to entice a decent nurse to stay as her companion due to Philip's notoriety.

Guy's perspective isn't the final say, however. Charles plays fair! Philip has good reason to protect himself and his friends. In any case, Philip and his friends are philosophical bohemians, not alcoholic libertines. And frankly, who cares what the neighbors say? At some point, everybody has to decide a future course based on his or her own integrity, not the world's views.

It's a problem that applies to more than romance. I work at a job I am reasonably good at, yet I am surrounded by people, from college administrators to relatives, who act as if my job is so much wasted time and space [pre-2025, I was an adjunct; I am now a full-timer]. I would be a fool not to admit the impact and reality of that social pressure. I've done my share of crying into my pillow. Yet I still have to ask myself, "Do I give up something that matters to me, something that I'm good at because of social pressure?"

This is the narrow line that Charles is attempting to tread. Where does personal fulfillment end and social needs/compromise take over? And vice versa?

Guy's solution: "I dare say I can learn not to mind being talked about, if you don't mind trying to be talked about a bit less."

Brokeback Mountain Theme: Comfort for Singles

Loneliness (defined here as "alienation," not "the state of being alone") is a natural part of life.

I argue in 2 Books About Singlehood that loneliness is not a condition reserved for singles. Even people who have a special someone can feel it. Brokeback Mountain proves this point.

I am going to set aside the issue of adultery (which no, I don't think being gay justifies) since adultery is a condition of the movie, not the point. (Jack claims he is willing to start a new life; Ennis is unwilling to sacrifice what he perceives as obligations. The writers make no judgment either way.)

The point of the movie resides in the men's weeks apart, in Ennis's pained fury when they are called back from Brokeback a month early. It lays behind Jack's line towards the end: "Tell you what... the truth is... sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it." It culminates in the gentle kindliness of Jack's mother: possibly the only person in the film to "get" Ennis and to accept Ennis' role in Jack's life without reservation (she treats him like a mourning spouse). It resides to a large extent in the men's weeks together since the weeks together reinforce what they lack apart.

In Maurice, when Maurice says to Alec, "It's a chance in a thousand we met. You know it. Why don't you stay?" he is speaking (diffidently) from Forster's utter understanding of what someone like Maurice--and Jack--is asking: Alec staying isn't safe; in addition, he will either have to give up his family or sacrifice complete honesty about his relationships with the people around him, not an easy consequence for someone like Alec to accept. But Maurice asks anyway because the chance is precisely that: a chance.

In a much less uncertain and far happier vein, yaoi tackles the same issue: chance meetings, chance happiness as a non-guaranteed (and incomplete) answer to loneliness or alienation.  Its prevalence explains why the theme--in a movie like Brokeback Mountain--transcends the subject matter, speaking to a wide audience.

I personally believe that heterosexual paperback romances can be enormously insightful re: romance, relationships, men & women. Yet at the back of them--as at the back of most discussions in our culture--is the idea that everyone is entitled to such an arrangement. Even in cultures with a growing number of singles--in sum, the industrial world--the default of "every man will get a woman and every women will get a man" is so strong that trying to convince people that (1) relationships aren't made to order; (2) being single can be choice; (3) being single can be accepted rather than railed against = hitting the proverbial brick wall.

Single person meet society's brick wall.

Consequently, a single heterosexual woman (who loves romance) can begin to feel somewhat of an outsider despite belonging to a culture that ostensibly would support any of her romantic entanglements. Unlike a gay man (or lesbian woman), I have no stigma to battle . . . other than the pervasive stigma that I am an anomaly in my culture, a factor "gone wrong," because I haven't complied or haven't behaved as if I wish to comply with the expected outcome. (As Elizabeth discovers with her rejection of Mr. Collins, failing to comply once the object has been produced, no matter how superficial in essence, can cause great consternation by others.)

Movies like Brokeback Mountain, books like Maurice, and the entire subgenre of manga yaoi romance allow for the reality of loneliness/alienation, even if some of these works resolve it more smoothly than Brokeback. Loneliness, alienation, and confusion (which confusion doesn't preclude the existence of a significant other) underlies the literature in force, helped--in Japanese manga--by the concept of mono no aware, the idea that one must grab onto beautiful or heartbreaking or quiet moments as they come.

Such reminders can be painful but also solacing. It isn't weird to feel that loss. It isn't odd to keep going anyway. It isn't strange to negotiate with it--because sometimes the loss is worth the benefits.

It's human and real. 

Attitudes Towards Fan Fiction

Apparently, after Brokeback Mountain became a cultural phenomenon, the original writer of the short story Annie Proulx was inundated with fan fiction. She told an interviewer, "They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for 'fixing' the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it. Most of these 'fix-it' tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc."

On the one hand, I understand Proulx's reaction. A failure to respect the source material can lead to terrible misreadings--the result can be rather like Calvin & Hobbes' games where Calvin changes the rules every three seconds.

On other hand, I think she misses the affection behind much of this fan fiction.

Where does tribute break off and parody begin?

I argue in my thesis that people have creative instincts (even if they don't have the skills) that make them desire participation in the creative process. Maybe that entails seeing a movie 20 times or reading everything by a certain author or playing video games or creating illustrations or . . . writing fan fiction.

I believe that fan fiction falls into two categories: fan fiction created out of love/interest/creative desire. And fan fiction as a useful tool for a practicing writer.

In the first case, the writer can do whatever he or she wants--why not? Writing this type of fan fiction is not necessarily the same thing as journal writing (hence the increase in Proulx's mail) but it also isn't the same thing as satire or irony. "Tribute" truly is the word here. Someone's story sparks someone else's creative impulse.

The only problematic issue is when the tribute-bearing writer demands affection and attention. It is one thing to say, "I wanted to thank you for what you wrote. It inspired me." It is something else to insist, "And you must like this!"

There are thousands (millions) of Tolkien tributes packed to the margins with dwarfs, elves, orcs, maps, and weaponry. That doesn't mean they are all good (or all bad). I don't want to read them all. But I understand the impulse by the reader to DO/write something.

As a useful tool for a practicing writer, I think that fan fiction can be an incredibly fun challenge if the writer creates an addition or extension that (1) keeps the original characterizations; (2) keeps the original setting and time; (3) keeps the original tone.

Similar to painters practicing by copying the "greats," learning dialog by creating dialog like in the original is a disciplining technique. Likewise, trying to capture the tone of, say, Austen or the exposition of, say, Faulkner (good luck!) or the dialog of, say, The Thin Man, each attempt can be illuminating, even when it fails.

E.M. Forster and His Relationships: A Counter to Wendy Moffat's Biography

I discuss Forster biographies/analyses on Votaries. Specifically, I critique Moffat's well-written biography The Unrecorded History. The problem is not the writing. The problem is that Moffat slides all available evidence into a single pattern. The result is a Forster who is neither as complex nor as interesting as the Forster revealed through P.N. Furbank's biography.

Among the many relationships that Moffat details, she presents two--with Mohammed and with Bob Buckingham--as absolutes. She more often than not "tells" the relationship story without "showing" quotes from either journals or letters. She is the equivalent of the good girlfriend who defends her best friend's relationships, even when he isn't so sure of them himself.

With Mohammed, she cannot withhold a slightly critical voice--but that is entirely due to Forster himself. Forster worried about the gap between him and his "lover" in terms of race, class, and philosophy (although there was a considerable age gap, I don't perceive age as an issue any more than did the men themselves). Forster worried that he was taking advantage and being taken advantage of. He also worried that he and Mohammed did not perceive "relationship" in the same light.

Moffat ignores these doubts, downplaying them whenever they rise to the fore. After Mohammed's death, Forster wrote out their history together. He was typically self-analytical and unswervingly truthful. In one of the most shearingly honest pieces ever written by a human being (other than C.S. Lewis), Forster writes to the dead Mohammed:

I wish I could distinguish more clearly between us, but it was always difficult, and now you are not here to correct me when I think of you not as you are but [as] I should like to think you . . . I am professionally a writer and want to pay you this last honour, although there is much that you will not understand, and some things that you will not agree with . . .

Moffat omits this letter. Whenever Forster questions his relationship with Mohammed, she argues that he is a man tortured by doubts, not a man reflecting honestly on a rather odd affair. While reading Moffat's account of Forster-Mohammed's relationship, I could never shake the uneasy impression that Forster made the entire thing up. Yet while reading Forster's letter (in Furbank's biography), Forster's very doubts led me to conclude, "Yes, this happened. It was real." It is Forster's astringent, self-aware voice that convinced me. In Moffat's hands, Forster turns into someone far more clueless about himself than every person connected with Forster understood him to be.

Moffat extends this same interpretation of Forster to his relationship with Bob Buckingham.

Forster was consistently cagey about Bob Buckingham, who would have had far more to lose than Mohammed if Forster had played out a romance in public (or through letters). Moffat works hard to maintain that the relationship was a great romance because . . . I'm not sure why. I have a feeling that the reason is connected to Moffat's desire to see Forster more as an angsty Heathcliff than an objective Darcy. Or to her need to sell Forster as a man thwarted by society's rules when, in fact, he was the beneficiary of his social class--and knew it. (Forster wasn't the type of man to turn life's imperfections into his raison d'etre and tended to avoid, or to sternly remonstrate with, people who did.) 

Bob Buckingham was a cop who was bisexual or open to any experience that would improve his lot in life or a warm-hearted, physical guy who never thought of himself as Forster's gay partner despite the equivalent of locker-room high jinks. He did marry after meeting Forster and by all accounts had a robust physical relationship with his wife. Although one of Forster's friends attempted to sabotage the Forster-Buckingham relationship by informing the wife, May, that Forster was undermining her marriage (by taking Bob about with him so much), the attempt went nowhere, mostly because May's attitude was that Bob hanging out with another man was better than Bob hanging out with another woman.

In his typically scrupulous manner, Furbank suggests that there may have been no ongoing physical relationship at all. Furbank is not being prissy or inhibited or homophobic. He is honest and non-judgmental about Forster's homosexuality as well as Forster's various relationships throughout his biography's 585 pages. He presents the option because he is a honest historian who cannot ignore the accumulated evidence, the lack of evidence, and Forster's personality.

And the evidence is that no one knows exactly what the relationship was between Forster and Bob Buckingham. Forster was highly self-analytical but also capable, as he admits, at creating scenarios that he wished to be true. He presented himself and Bob as partners to his Bohemian friends but so elliptically that one is left with the impression that Forster wanted his friends to believe that Bob and he were lovers, not that they actually were. (Or, rather, he wanted his friends to believe whatever they wanted to believe without Forster having to say anything at all, which seems most likely.)

Forster had the wonderful capacity to immerse

himself in experiences without judgment--

yet he was a shrewd judge of people and

events: not the kind of man to be conned.

When presented with outside evidence--Forster's wry self-analysis, for instance--that contradicts her pattern, Moffat fudges. When Forster had his first stroke and confessed his feelings to Bob Buckingham, Bob was shocked and denied (1) that he knew Forster was gay; (2) that he and Forster were lovers. Unlike Furbank (who deals with this event upfront), Moffat moves Bob's declaration to a side note at a later period of time, implying that Bob did not make such denials until AFTER Forster's death. But in fact, Bob made this denial several years earlier; six years later, he and his wife would care for Forster during his final days. Yet Moffat accuses both husband and wife of covering up the truth--so much so that they come across as low-life grifters out for Forster's money and prestige.

Those who knew and met the Buckinghams  including Furbank, found the possibility of their deliberately lying to protect themselves highly unlikely. From all accounts, including Forster's willingness to befriend the Buckinghams, they were honest, intelligent, unsophisticated people. Bob especially took things at face value. His wife May was more discerning though more likely to worry about Forster's increasing forgetfulness than his sexual orientation. 

Based on Forster's own droll assessment of himself and his various relationships, intimate and not, I rather think that he and Bob Buckingham did exchange some physical intimacies, the type that a highly physical good-old-boy like Buckingham would never define to himself as "gay" since he did not seem to think that he was. (A reality ignored in Moffat's biography is that people are far more varied in their responses to sex and sexual identity than a label. She also ignores that social expectations/attitudes towards male "bonding" have changed in the last fifty to sixty years; even the language has changed from "friendship" to "homosocial" to "bromance.")

Forster sitting next to May Buckingham

When Forster met Bob Buckingham, he was older, wiser, tired, happy with his circle of friends, happy to have a "consort" of sorts to take around with him when he visited his Bohemian friends (who strike me as far more naive than Buckingham's wife) and may have decided, "Hey, I'm a middle-class Englishman with no desire to be a rebel and a lessening sex drive. This works for me!"

And it did. The Buckinghams invited Forster into their home, and most of Forster's friends accepted the Buckinghams as "good sorts". The Buckinghams cared for Forster through various illnesses and broken bones. May Buckingham specifically was an extremely good friend to Forster. He was godfather to the Buckinghams' son; when the young man died, May and Forster consoled each other. One gets the impression that Forster preferred this middle-middle-class family to his Bohemian and upper-middle-class friends. At heart, the guy really liked the middle-class life, even as he critiqued it.

Forster fell in love; Masood didn't; they remained friends. By

his own assessment, this was one of Forster's most important

relationships--every relationship mattered to him.

There are ways to reconcile or at least explain the perspectives of all those involved. I attempted one reconciliation above. Moffat never tries to do this or allow for it--hers is a-one-size-fits-all pattern. If Forster stated something that fits the pattern, she accepts and reports it; if he later qualified or contradicted previous statements (as humans are wont to do), she ignores or downplays his equivocation. Her treatment extends past Forster to his friends: If what you're saying agrees with Forster having notable, dramatic so-called real romances, you must be speaking the truth. If you doubt or question those romances, you must be afraid of speaking out.

The problem is not that Moffat is selling Forster as a gay man. He was. And it informed his life and literature, as Furbank makes clear. The problem is that she doesn't accept that relationships are more complex than one-winner-takes-all. As mentioned above, after a few chapters with Moffat's book, I felt like I was reading a high school confessional: My best friend luved this guy in high school, and she was soooo into him, so it MUST have been, like, the biggest romance of the century.

People live on continuums, not absolutes. In the long-run, Moffat misses out on the objective, idealistic, sensitive, friendly, self-knowing, and wry E. M. Forster that others understood him to be--in and out of his intimate relationships.

2 Books about Singlehood: Eckel and Coles

It's Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single by Sara Eckel and Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity by Gregory Coles both address singleness.

Eckel's book is mostly aimed at heterosexual women hoping to get married. Coles' book is aimed partly at straights who want to understand Christian gays and partly at gays who wish to remain within the fold of conservative Christianity. I am not going to address the political or religious significance of either book. I'm going to focus instead on three insightful points that both writers make about singleness.

1. Being single does not equate to a flaw that if tweaked would entirely fix that person's life: "If you would just/only/simply..."

Granted, Coles's reason for singleness is a tad more fundamental than "if you would just lose 5 pounds." He addresses his gayness quite frankly as something he didn't want (again, I'm not going to discuss whether this is a "right" opinion or not; Coles is more than capable of taking on questioners himself). When he hit adolescence, he realized, rather to his astonishment and consternation, that he was gay. He makes clear that he did not grow up in a troubled household; he has an excellent relationship with his parents. And considering he was living overseas at the time, he was not influenced by supposedly degenerate American culture.

He struggled with being gay for years, conscientiously and religiously. Implying or stating outright that he didn't try hard enough, pray long enough, love God thoroughly enough is the kind of thing that would send a less self-analytical, far less objective man out of his church.

Coles also repudiates the coy "same-sex attraction" verbiage, relying instead on the more communicative vernacular "gay." As Mythbusters discovered, trying to alter one's biological self through self-hypnosis or wishful thinking is problematic in the extreme. It also, as Coles points out, distracts a person from dealing directly with issues and finding a way to create a life for oneself.

Eckel likewise repudiates the "If you would just/only/simply . . ." perspective. Her funny and commensical chapters each begin with a piece of advice symptomatic of this mindset: "You have low self-esteem;" "You are too intimidating;" "You're too picky;" "You should have married that guy;" "You suck." The implication: If you would only stop having low-self-esteem, being too intimidating, being too picky, refusing the offers of 'good guys'--if you would improve yourself . . . THEN you would find Mr. Right and get married.

Eckel points out the flaws in each piece of advice using current research into human decision-making, how the brain works, and how people communicate. She bolsters her analysis with  true-life stories of women who were similarly advised to change their ways and didn't. And ended up happily married anyway.

I appreciate the dismissal of the "if only" idea, which I consider one of the stupidest psychological reactions ever invented by the human brain under stress. The truth is--even with massive amounts of cash, one cannot undo certain realities. More importantly, the idea that life's outcomes come down to a single issue or trait is like dumber science-fiction: there are far too many variables to justify such an argument.

Based on commonsense, Eckel and Coles have every reason to point out that married people are not in fact perfect before they get married yet . . .


2. Marriage is not an "unfair" event that single people should jealously despise.

Both Eckel and Coles see man-woman marriage as a positive. Coles has adopted celibacy for the sake of his personal theology. He admits wryly that there are people in the same pew with him who would willingly find him a boyfriend--alongside people who would send him to "ex-gay" boot camp. And he reflects quite wisely on the difference between a gay friend who remains faithful to a spouse and a heterosexual friend who plays around: who is being truly Christian?

His overall point, however, is that his chosen position is not anti-heterosexual marriage--and does not entail getting angry about other types of marriage (Coles takes quite seriously the reaching-out-to-all-people part of the New Testament). Eckel is the same. The answer is not to get bitter. Or for that matter, to remove oneself to a tribe of only one's type.

I appreciate this since I have always enjoyed being in churches/social milieus that are a microcosm of humanity's stages: babies, children, young married people, young single people, older married people, older single people, elderly people--married, divorced,  widowed, and never married.

At various points of my life, I have been shuffled off into "singles" churches/organizations, which I hated. There was a falseness about the experience, a feeling of being forcibly separated from reality (in order to be "fixed").

3. Singleness is a part of life, not a wading pool hiatus. 

It is not unusual for many married people and some single people to treat being single as "treading water until my real life starts."

Here's Reality 101: There are 24-hours in the day for everyone. And everyone chooses to fill those 24-hours in one's own way. And the time gets filled--not matter who that someone is or what that someone does.

Married people can sit around and snooze on the couch. So can single people. Or go to the movies. Or go shopping. Or work. Or take care of kids. Or visit friends. Or balance a checkbook. Or volunteer for the Red Cross. Or cook. Or clean. Or mow the grass. Or study. Or write. Or exercise. Or go on dates. Or visit people in the hospital. Or feed the cats. Or delete spam. Or do laundry. Or invent time travel.

From the view of linear time, there is nothing on this list that will not take time, fill time, or exclude the ability to do other things with that time. Time management experts may tell you that the big priorities come first. Children will tell you that the time between holidays is SOOOO SLOOOOW. While older people, like me, will tell you how quicklytimeflies. But the hours get used up no matter who you are.

Eckel and Coles allow that sure, yeah, singleness affords a person freedoms that married people don't have (remember, married people: you asked for it). Where both writers do justice to this issue is when they comment on loneliness not as some kind of disease that makes singleness a wasteland of pointlessness but as a condition of the experience. It doesn't invalidate the experience and can even, to an extent, enrich it. As Nietzsche stated, "The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."

What Eckel and Coles do not point out--because they are too nice--is that loneliness is not inherent to singleness. Its cause is seemingly obvious with singleness but it is not a condition owned by single people. Married people can get lonely. Married people with children can get lonely. Married people who have recently moved from their old neighborhoods and have to make new friends can get lonely. Married people can get lonely despite the person next to them in bed.

The loneliness may not be the same, which I think would be an interesting discussion/analysis if people could get past the idea that all experiences have to be graded on some kind of "I'm better or worse off than you" scale. We seem to think that unless there's a thumbs-up or smiley-face, we don't really exist.

But we do.

Alec and Maurice in Maurice: A Study of a Couple

This summer, I read and watched a fair amount of Forster (Maurice, A Passage to India, and A Room with a View as well as Aspects of a Novel and Forster's guide to Alexandria). I also read a fair amount about Forster, including Furbank's seminal biography as well as a smattering of literary analysis.

Furbank's seminal biography is well-worth the read. The literary analysis reminded me of the problem with literary analysis.

Maurice has a happy ending--in his terminal notes to the manuscript, Forster remarks with typical drollness, "[I]t has made the book more difficult to publish . . . if it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well, for there is no pornography or seduction of minors. But the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime."

Not only is Forster's note a dig against the current laws (circa 1960) in England, it is a dig at Ivory Tower intellectualism (and yes, Forster would have been aware of that), which supposes that a classic cannot be a classic unless everyone at the end is depressed, separated, or dead.

And if you don't believe me, take a look at any high school "classics" list.

Forster's friends who read Maurice in unpublished form almost all liked the happy ending but were uneasy about it. There's a reason for this unease, which I address below. What I had forgotten about literary analysts is how utterly sycophantic and lemming-like they are. This is the acceptable way to think. Thank goodness I didn't mess up and write something different! We must all remember to denigrate Maurice in our analysis and act condescending about the ending.

Maurice does have the slightly sketchy feel of something not written for publication precisely because publication forces one to see a work differently (a point that Furbank, alone among Forster critics, seems to have perceived).

I do not, however, find it necessary to disparage the book. Forster does some fine things with Maurice--from the characterization of Clive to some of the more infinitely subtle/insightful moments, such as the opening chapter, Clive's breakdown and Maurice's reaction, the piano scene, the cricket match, and the museum sequence between Maurice and Alec, which last I consider utterly brilliant.

I also don't consider the ending false.

I am an American woman in her 40's. I am aware of class systems re: money and education but not as an intrinsic force of nature. I intellectually understand the British class system (Richardson to Austen to Forster); I've never lived it. Forster's friends did. As one film analyst--Earl Ingersoll--rightly points out, American audiences may not realize how unusually Maurice behaves towards Alec before they become lovers. My favorite example is when Maurice challenges Alec (referred to by his last name, Scudder, throughout this portion of the novel) for apparently holding out for a larger tip. His tone is harassing and familiar. It is not the tone of a person ticking off a servant; it is the tone of an equal badgering a potential friend or lover. (He later calls Alec out for threatening blackmail also from the position of an equal--he challenges Alec's notion "I'm as good as you" on moral grounds, not class ones.)

Forster's friends immediately picked up on the class issue--their strongest objection was that the gap in class would get in the way of the relationship.

Forster's friends had a point. Unfortunately, contemporary literary critics have taken hold of this objection as a sign of an "unrealistic ending" and argued that Alec and Maurice don't fit personality-wise, which is highly inaccurate. Forster understood human nature better than that:

Alec and Maurice are more like each other than they are like everyone else.

Maurice willingly assisting an ill Clive.

Maurice is a doer, a guy who thinks actions ultimately matter more than words. It is Maurice who wants to push the relationship with Clive to the next level. He accepts the platonic solution because he is (1) romantic; (2) somewhat naive; (3) the kind of guy, like Forster, who prefers to invest in a relationship long-term.

But Maurice, like Alec, is more than willing to run through the rain, take care of someone when he is ill, go see someone off on the boat rather than simply wishing that person well...and so on. That Maurice guesses where Alec is waiting at the end of the book is beautifully romantic and no error in characterization

Maurice and Alec exchanging grins across the aisle.

The scene in the museum illustrates the rapport between the characters excellently. They are both taken with enjoying the lamassu, not interpreting it. They both remark on HOW the thing was made rather than dismissing that side of art as plebeian and low-class. They both get a kick out of the fifth leg.

The entire end of the book was fleshed out by Forster after initial feedback. I suspect the most useful feedback was from Lytton Strachey, who thought Maurice and Alec were acting on "curiosity and lust and would only last six weeks." Prior to revision, Strachey had a point, even if an unpopular one among intellectuals (ironically enough): one contemporary critic castigates those viewers/readers who argue that Mellors and Lady Chatterley from Lady Chatterley's Lover need to have a reason to be together/get along beyond sex. Well . . . since they're going to start a freakin' farm together at the end of the book, my answer would be "yes, they do need a reason."

If Maurice and Alec are going to start a life together, then yes, they need more than sex--though that helps. And Forster more than prepares us for that possibility, especially since Forster himself desired compatibility of temperament, not merely a roll in the sack.

Alec demonstrates that no-holds-barred approach that

resembles Maurice's approach to life--yet he uses a

"gentleman's" tool (a letter) to try to reach Maurice.

Both men are willing to adapt to the other's methods.

He did refrain from including the original "us two living alone in the woods together" epilogue, which he was right to do. Forster was oddly enough too educated and too upper middle-class to perceive an obvious solution to Alec and Maurice. He was right to leave them alone at the end (the book turns to Clive's p.o.v).

My version of where Alec and Maurice end up is this:

World War I (1914) starts soon after Alec and Maurice meet. Alec joins up (it's fairly unimaginable that he wouldn't--the pressure in England to "help" the war effort was tremendous, far greater than the mild, persistent social pressure of Forster's novels: Forster himself helped out during WWI with the Red Cross). I think life is more interesting than death, so Alec survives.

Maurice--who has demonstrated an almost blithe tolerance of disease and illness, teaches boxing, and is quite physically strong (all Forster's characterizations)--volunteers as a medical assistant. In the field, after some fighting, Alec comes down with the flu pandemic and is transferred to a base hospital in Portsmouth. Maurice is either already there or gets himself transferred there. Alec survives (there were survivors of the flu pandemic!), and Maurice eventually moves him away from the hospital to his lodgings.

Alec's attitude towards his job is rather

caustic--and not only due to

his employers' snobbery.

By the time the war ends, the populace is shell-shocked enough that Maurice getting an apartment for himself and Alec (his lodger) in London is not remarked on. As Forster himself knew, an English man could remain an "eccentric" bachelor without causing too much of a stir--so long as he was discrete (I'm not saying this was fair; I'm saying it was better than jail or chemical castration).

Maurice could easily go back to being a stockbroker; his character is less fastidious than Forster, who would have liked more "noble" and "earthy" employment for his characters (the D.H. Lawrence influence).

Alec could become a mechanic or a newspaper writer/photographer (the guy who gets called out to report on fires and murder scenes). One of Forster's most insightful points in Maurice is that Alec's class could be as ambitious, class conscious, and strictly moral (even moreso) as anyone in the upper-classes, a perspective backed up by historians. Alec acts as an undergameskeeper in Maurice because it is a job, not because he loves the soil. I think he would attend the Working Men's College (where Forster actually lectured) after the war and get enough education to do something non-agrarian.

If they HAVE to become woodsmen, they could always go to America and move out West to work as  ranch hands (although even that, if Brokeback Mountain is any indication, required a measure of discretion).

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 . . .

Lords of the Underworld: What They Read

Reading list is below.

Introduction: Several years ago, I read through nearly all of Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series, which, at the time, took me up to The Darkest Surrender (Strider's book).

The series is based on the following premise: Greek immortal warriors are forced to carry the sins/demons unleashed when Pandora opened the Box. Each warrior has his own sin/demon and his own book (the latest book, The Darkest Promise, focuses on the only female warrior, Cameo).

The books are pure erotic escapism produced by a writer with decent style--the text is readable, not clunky. The books are usually well-plotted (some shaggy dog moments) with decent pay-offs: though rarely profound, the conclusions are often psychologically satisfying. I am particularly fond of the pay-off for Strider, who carries the demon of Defeat. He hates being challenged. How can a guy like this find a successful relationship (with someone other than a doormat)?

Are Showalter's readers truly so

reluctant to read about a Dr. Reid-

or is that the publisher's assumption?

He can! He does! The point of each book is that the hero gets paired with his special someone. The sex is raunchy and explicit but generally speaking, the books' resolutions are rather conservative (though the frat-boy household gets a tad unbelievable after awhile, even for a fantasy series).

I have read beyond The Darkest Surrender but I became progressively disgruntled even as early as Paris's book. The heroes are increasingly samey, performing the same testosterone-driven behavior: I must hit something! Some of the surprising and touching nuances of the earlier books are lost as every single male in the series became a mean, lean fighting machine. *Sigh.* When even computer-whiz Torin was stripped of his computer-whiz abilities and forced to conform to the same Herculean archetype, I gave up. (I may gave Cameo's book a try.)

And I pondered, What could help keep these characters distinct, so they don't all blend into big grunting guy who eats rocks and tosses his weight around?

My idea: Figuring out what they read!

Here is a partial list of what the Lords of the Underworld might read--in some cases, the reading choice satisfies/pacifies/manages the character's demon; in some cases, it reflects personality:

Maddox (Violence): Sports Illustrated; he reads Encyclopedia Brown to his kids. He's a down-to-earth guy.

Lucien (Death): Philosophy books, including works by Dante and Virgil and tomes by people like Seneca. For fun! He does this for fun! (His anarchist mate, Anya, reads Camille Paglia and Cosmopolitan.)

Amun (originally Wrath): He enjoys being read to by his mate, Sienna, who reads him classics like Treasure Island.

Sabin (Doubt): I hate to say it but . . . self-help books. Not only is his demon/sin Doubt, but he is something of a literal-minded-step-by-step thinker.

Kane (originally Disaster): Manga by people like Miyazaki; he also really loves Miyazaki's movies.

Amun (Secrets): People's diaries--not his friend's diaries! Diaries from history by people like Benjamin Franklin. This not only satisfies his demon/sin but gives him some objectivity about so-called secrets.

William (not a Lord of the Underworld but an important character): Edgar Allan Poe and, naturally, H.P. Lovecraft

Reyes (Pain): He deliberately reads non-stimulating, tedious stuff, such as all those assigned books from high school: not Shakespeare but The Pearl, everything by Thomas Hardy, The Separate Peace, Ethan Frome: oh, the Pain!

Gideon (Lies): Really out-there ironic stuff. My first thought was Monty-Python, so . . . the reading equivalent of Monty-Python.

Torin (Disease): Tech magazines, such as Wired--also cyberpunk, such as Blade Runner (and yes, he does have an opinion about the film's voice over).

Cameo (Misery): She tries to stop herself, but she always ends up reading stuff by Sylvia Plath.

Strider (Defeat): Calvin & Hobbes (in the yaoi version of Strider's life, he is introduced to Calvin & Hobbes by Paris who also gives him a related t-shirt which he wears constantly--because Strider IS Calvin)

Paris (Promiscuity): The most extensive reader of the group, Paris reads everything from romance novels to world histories. Paris is the most familiar with human customs/behavior and could fit the most easily into human life. I speculate that once he tired of the frat house and the war with the Hunters was resolved, he would become a professor of History, specialty Revolutionary War, at an upstate New York college. Or a Professor of Popular Culture at a NYC college.

It always vaguely surprises me how unwilling creators of romance can be about giving their male characters the same love of literature and/or history that they have--to Showalter's credit, Paris's enjoyment of romance novels, and his ability to discuss them, is in the original texts, which is what gave me this idea.