Maurice/Symposium

In the second half of Forster’s, Maurice, Maurice has an epiphany. He decides that a life without love is not worth living and therefore decides to give up his cushy lifestyle as a stock broker to live in seclusion with his love, Scudder. I think this is a noble decision, to give up everything in your comfortable lifestyle in order to live out the rest of your days in the company of your love. It is a huge shame that Maurice was forced to make such a choice but in that day in age, the turn of the century for a man to love another man in a romantic way was preposterous.
In Plato’s Symposium a group of superiors all join one another to recline, eat food, drink wine and give speeches. The men discuss the god of love, Eros and they are all hesitant to give a eulogy of him because he is so great a god that whatever is said may not live up to his greatness. It is so crazy to be that hundreds and hundreds of years ago homosexuality in a sense was a symbol of power, class and control. Men of power in ancient Greece could have sexual experiences with whomever they pleased as long as they were not a part of the same social class. The ancient Greeks would have sex with young boys, men and women even if they were married. It is unbelievable to me that this kind of behavior not only was widely accepted but seen as powerful.
At least Maurice was not going around having sex with whoever he pleased. He had moral and values and only wanted to love and be loved like everyone else in society, yet the love he longed for was considered immoral and illegal at that.