We had not realised that what the public really loathes in homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it. If it could be slipped into our midst unnoticed, or legalized overnight by a decree in small print, there would be few protests. Unfortunately it can only be legalized by Parliament, and Members of Parliament are obliged to think or to appear to think. Consequently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.
E.M. Forster, from Terminal Note to Maurice
So for the weekend that’s in it, I decided to read Maurice for the first time, and…wow. It was…just read it. I’d only read one Forster novel before, and I’d loved that, so I’d had high hopes for this (especially since I’d heard it had a happy ending–but I was a little wary of what a ‘happy ending’ might mean when applied to a novel about gay boys written a hundred years ago), and it did not disappoint, at all.
And to think–not only does Clive not continue to sentence Alec, but instead he can marry the two.
With regards thinking about homosexuality–I think Ireland has just proved how much that has changed in fifty years.
Etudes en F 