Abstract
The friendship between Forster and D. H. Lawrence contains an element of comedy. Following his near-disastrous visit to the Sussex cottage where the Lawrences were staying in 1915, a visit in which he was subjected to his full share of Lawrentian eloquence, both male and female, Forster was described by his host to Bertrand Russell in terms that have, in the light of our subsequent knowledge, a certain cruel irony.
Forster … is bound hand and foot bodily. Why? Because he does not believe that any beauty or any divine utterance is any good any more…. But why can’t he act? Why can’t he take a woman and fight clear to his own basic, primal being? Because he knows that self-realization is not his ultimate desire. His ultimate desire is for the renewed action which has been called the social passion — the love for humanity — the desire to work for humanity.1
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Notes
S. Hynes, Edwardian Occasions: Essays on English Writing in the Early Twentieth Century (1972), p. 115.
H. J. Oliver, The Art of E. M. Forster (Melbourne, 1960 ), p. 31.
John Saye Martin, E. M. Forster: The Endless Journey (1976) p. 164.
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© 1979 Glen Cavaliero
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Cavaliero, G. (1979). Maurice and the Later Stories. In: A Reading of E. M. Forster. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03777-3_9
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