Sexual Awakening

I’d like to end this short cycle on love with a work about the “love that dare not speak its name”; the love between two men. Maurice was written by E. M. Forster back in the Edwardian England of respectability and bigotry. Not that any other period in the last few centuries were any more progressive or open minded. As Forster put it, “England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

Maurice , written in 1913/14, was published posthumously in 1971, due to its too stark revelation of “human nature”. It is a Bildungsroman; a coming of age novel that follows the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist, Maurice. He does indeed grow and he develops from the naïve boy who believed himself to be sick because of his love for another man, to the enlightened adult who understood and accepted the reality of his beautiful human nature. 

The story starts when Maurice Hall, studying at Cambridge, falls in love with his friend and fellow student Clive Durham. Their relationship is a romantic one, but they are both not daring enough to make it a sexual one. Maurice is eager to nurture his love for Clive, but the latter is too socially embroiled and dreads admitting to homosexuality. He eventually breaks Maurice’s heart by deciding to make the socially acceptable choice, marry a woman.

Maurice is not only hurt, but he now believes that he is a broken man who needs fixing. He wants to be “cured” of his abnormality. He goes to London to consult a hypnotist. He lets Clive believe that he is actually going to do the right thing, find a wife and marry. His meeting with the hypnotist is a sad attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. However it is a revealing moment for Maurice:

"And what’s to happen to me?” said Maurice, with a sudden drop in his voice. He spoke in despair, but Mr Lasker Jones had an answer to every question. “I’m afraid I can only advise you to live in some country that has adopted the Code Napoleon,” he said.

“I don’t understand.” 

“France or Italy, for instance. There homosexuality is no longer criminal.” 

“You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?” 

“Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.”

“Will the law ever be that in England?”

“I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

Maurice understood. He was an Englishman himself, and only his troubles had kept him awake. He smiled sadly. “It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

“That is so, Mr Hall; or, as psychiatry prefers to put it, there has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person. And you must remember that your type was once put to death in England.”

Maurice learns to accept his true nature and when he meets Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper at the Durham estate, he becomes both romantically and sexually involved with him. With Alec he feels the entirety of love, in its powerful emotional and physical completeness. He eventually decides to start a new life with his lover. 

“Madness is not for everyone, but Maurice's proved the thunderbolt that dispels the clouds."

Maurice does not forget Clive and wishes he could make him see the limits of his socially geared choice. How can one choose to spend an entire life without an emotional and sexual bond. He reminds Clive of their own emotions:

I was yours once till death if you’d cared to keep me, but I’m someone else’s now–I can’t hang about whining for ever–and he’s mine in a way that shocks you, but why don’t you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?

Maurice leaves Clive to his stagnant life of aridity and goes off towards a new dawn with Alec. This is a very happy ending that not only condones homosexuality, but legitimatises it, in a period of total hostility. Foster wrote:

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec still roam in the greenwood.

The happy conclusion of the relationship between Maurice and Alec contrasts bitterly with the dark clouds looming over Clive's emotional end. He seems to be tucking back into a shell of conformity and aridity.

He did not realise that this was the end, without twilight or compromise, that he should never cross Maurice's track again, nor speak to those who had seen him. He waited for a little in the alley, then returned to the house, to correct his proofs and to devise some method of concealing the truth from Anne.

the violet hour

 I introduced you to Eliot’s The Fire Sermon a few days ago. You may recall “the violet hour” and the theme of sex in its dire aridity. Violet is a colour that is often linked to sexuality. Today I am going to share with you a poem of interior monologue I wrote some time ago on a parallel theme of sexuality, desire and love. Not an easy piece to understand , but I hope you’ll enjoy trying.

the violet hour

The bed is sheathed in body struggling with penumbra jarring love strings I cannot bare to share so I retract like anemone when touched by body afraid of intimacy not god-given but mine borne from whim of wanton I am not sure which part of me and when my mobile stirs to murmur rescue I jump at the call for freedom from burden to share with whomever whatever thwarting  the moment I dread which returns like darkness to light once words run dry leaving dearth of weapons to wield with wilting thrust counterfeit lust struggling for submission with devout consummation hardly to be wished so I think of him and search beyond this perfect pageant of hoarding human fuss to find in the oblivion of this night his surreptitious glance torn from the  midst of mediocre mass and when I feel his eyes delve I shudder with ripples from pebble thrown into the stillness of urge to sculpt this monolith of words with chisel of breath embroiled within life's revealing masterpiece interred in slab lifting marble dust just dust that clouds and clouds and clouds

THE HAUNTING

Today I shall use one of my poems to look at a love lost; a never forgotten love. I am the poet and she is the graceful love that was.

The title hints at the nostalgia-ridden subconscious one lives with when one cannot bear to let go. The mysterious protagonist is still remembered by those close to the poet. She still exists as part of the social structure that frames family and friends. She is, at times, brought up in conversation. However, to everyone, ‘she’ is just chatter; a topic of conversation. She is certainly not so for the poet. He had loved the person behind the name. The sound of that name, dropped so casually in conversation, is a truly painful jolt to the poet’s senses. It is a sudden bolt into the buried past of something that had come, and that had gone.  The poet cannot physically react to this emotional shock and stifles his explosive feelings with perfunctory social interaction, with… “thank-yous / and please”.

Joe Vandello - Cocktail Party

Now the name is out there, he cannot resist her lure. He feels he must delve into that memory and dig deeper to bring it back and to relive that lingering youthful emotion:

Do you ever feel
Oh do you feel

the need to steal 
and reel
from chasms deep
that one forgotten 
fragment of a face
that haunts 
latently 
lingers
patiently 
lingers  

He wants to bring her back. He wants to experience that unique explosive love of youth again, but he must hide her from the others. He will not speak her name, and he will use his masks of social niceties to hide it and to…

tuck it
nonchalantly 
camouflaged 
between cucumber 
sandwiches
and tea

Nobody realises that the poet is struggling with this ghost from the past. The social interaction pleasantly continues and everyone is conveniently satisfied.

THE HAUNTING

I have heard her name
over toast and teas
have feigned a fondness
for pastries 
thank-yous 
and please

Do you ever
stumble
upon a name
that jolts 
your hand-me-down 
approximation 
of a life

Do you ever hear 
that name
dropped 
for convenience 
with an olive 
in your martini

Deftly 
dropped
with a smile
as garnish 
laced with style

Do you ever feel
Oh, do you feel

the need to steal 
and reel
from chasms deep
that one forgotten 
fragment of a face
that haunts 
latently 
lingers
patiently 
lingers  

to tuck it
nonchalantly 
camouflaged 
between cucumber 
sandwiches
and tea

to smile
and sip
and say
nice day

TIRESIAS

Yesterday we looked at the degradation of love and sex through The Fire Sermon, by T. S. Eliot. The narrator, as we saw yesterday, is the transgender blind seer, Tiresias. Today I shall tell you who he is and how he came to be.

Ovid’s Metamorphosis tells us the story. Juno (Hera for the Greeks) and her husband Jupiter (Zeus for the Greeks) quarrel about a very sensitive issue. They can’t agree on who enjoys sex more during intercourse, the man or the woman. Juno thinks that she is merely servicing Jupiter, while Jupiter believes that Juno is the one who is enjoying the act more. To settle this dispute, they decide to call Tiresias, the blind seer who has lived as both man and woman. Tiresias, in fact, was transformed into a woman when, walking in the woods, he hit two copulating snakes with a stick. 

Don’t mess with Nature because she’ll mess with you! Tiresias was a trifle hardheaded, since several years later, walking in the woods as a woman, sees the snakes again and hits them, yet again, with a stick. He is the turned back to a man. 

Anyway, back to our story. In this dispute, Tiresias agrees with Jupiter, saying that women actually enjoy sex more than men. Juno is outraged that Tiresias does not agree with her, and so punishes him by blinding him. Jupiter feels sorry for him and so gives him the gift of prophecy, hence the blind, transgender seer!

T. S. Eliot says that Tiresias is the most important character in The Waste Land, since he knows all and represents all mankind, irrespective of gender. 

Do you remember how he was described in yesterday’s piece, The Fire Sermon? “I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs”. Tiresias also reminds us that he was in Thebes, walking with “the lowest of the dead.” Tiresias was there indeed. The reference here is to the episode in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, when Tiresias is well aware that the aridity and blight of Thebes is due to the incestuous marriage between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. He had unwittingly married her after killing his own father, Laius. 

Tiresias is one of my own favourites. He encapsulates all that is human, all that is spiritual and all that is knowing; or should I say, she.

ZOMBIE LOVE

Eliot's Unreal City

Yesterday’s poet was Alfred Lord Tennyson and the poem Marriage Morning. A perfect poem to read at a wedding!  Today I shall take a dramatic U-turn and write about love in a very different way. 

We are now in a new century, the 20^th, after a devastating First World War. I shall show you how the lack of moral and spiritual values in that period caused love to plummet into an abyss of squalor and apathy. The poet who best expressed this degradation was T. S. Eliot, who wrote a very long articulate poem with the symptomatic title, The Wast Land; a dry, new land, but also a dry new soul, made up of ashes and dust.

The Waste Land through the dead eyes of Dr. Eckleburg 

The extract from this long and difficult poem that best portrays the demise of love (and sex) in all its positive aspects, is The Fire Sermon. In this poem even sex is depicted as being as arid as the waste land. Let’s face it, sex is a beautiful and passionate part of love. Actually sex can be a beautiful act in itself, even without love. Eliot manages to portray the death of sexual pleasure and physical sensuality, describing sexual activity as frigid and robotic. A kind of zombie love. The narrator of the story is the mythological character Tiresias, a transsexual, blind seer. I shall be writing about Tiresias tomorrow.

Here is the story. A typist returns home in the evening after a long day at work, in a dystopian robotic world where the human engine waits like a taxi. She returns to her dingy little apartment which is untidy and messy. Her breakfast stuff is still around, her clothes strewn all over the place, and her washing is still hanging out the window. She clears up and starts preparing a meal for he boyfriend, who is about to arrive for dinner. What is she going to prepare? It is, after all, a special romantic evening with her boyfriend. Which crockery? Which porcelain? No, she simply “lays out food in tins.”

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, 

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see 

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, 

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights 

Her stove, and lays out food in tins. 

Out of the window perilously spread 

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed) 

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs 

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— 

I too awaited the expected guest.

She waits passively for her guest. He finally arrives. What’s he like? A knight in shining armour? No! He is an insignificant little man with pimples on his face and arrogance in his ways. They eat with lassitude and when he thinks the time is ripe, he tries to engage in sexual contact.  She is totally cold and apathetic. She doesn’t even react to his caresses and lets him do whatever he wants to do.  Any other man would stop and ask why she is being so cold. Any other man would be hurt that his approaches are being ignored. Any other man would be disgusted at her lack of reaction; at the fact that his partner is acting like an inanimate mannequin while he is trying to make love to her. No. Not at all. He is satisfied and “makes a welcome of indifference”. He ploughs forward to make love to this cold, lifeless being. He completes his physical sexual act and sees it as a victory, after all “His vanity requires no response”.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, 

One of the low on whom assurance sits 

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. 

The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, 

Endeavours to engage her in caresses 

Which still are unreproved, if undesired. 

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; 

Exploring hands encounter no defence; 

His vanity requires no response, 

And makes a welcome of indifference.

He is ready. His job is done. He gives her kiss; but not a loving kiss. It is a “patronising kiss”, a soulless kiss from a heartless man. When he leaves the apartment, he ominously walks into darkness, “finding the stairs unlit…”

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all 

Enacted on this same divan or bed; 

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 

And walked among the lowest of the dead.) 

Bestows one final patronising kiss, 

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

The situation up to this point is squalid and depressing, but the final reaction of the typist is devastating. She barely notices that her lover has left and almost pragmatically says, “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” She then continues with her robotic existence by fixing her hair with “automatic “ hand and putting on some music.

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, 

Hardly aware of her departed lover; 

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” 

When lovely woman stoops to folly and 

Paces about her room again, alone, 

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, 

And puts a record on the gramophone.

A devastatingly depressing description of love, sex and relationship.

THE ONLY GOLD

Today I am not writing about anyone, it will be the poet himself to reveal his worth. He is another 19th century writer who believed  that "It is better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.".  Who is it? I shall tell you tomorrow.

He has several famous works which I am sure you will recognise, but I choose to leave you with a lesser known one written for love and marriage. 

Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!


Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning start.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart,
Into my heart and my blood!


Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O' heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers,
Over the meadow and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.

...AS MY OWN BEING

Emily Bronte

When we talk of  love we cannot but talk about another 19th century woman, Emily Bronte (1816-1848). She only wrote her one novel, Wuthering Heights, but she also wrote fiery poems which emphasise her mysterious lovelorn soul. She is the fifth of six children. Charlotte, her elder sister, is the very well known writer of Jane Eyre, Villette, Shirley and The Professor. However, the passion and sensuality that transpires from Emily's only novel is unique and beyond comparison. I shall be looking at Wuthering Heights  and the profound, passionate and almost insane love it depicts.

The story is a simple straightforward one; it is the emotion that tumultuous. Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw live with their father at Wuthering Heights, an old farmhouse battered by the winds blowing from the moors. One day returning from Liverpool Mr. Earnshaw brings back a foundling boy, whom he calls Heathcliff. Catherine takes to him and becomes his friend, But Hindley is jealous and does not accept him. He treats him very badly, as a servant, and belittles him every chance he can. 

Hindley put out his tongue, and cuffed him over the ears. 'You'd better do it at once,' he persisted, escaping to the porch (they were in the stable): 'you will have to: and if I speak of these blows, you'll get them again with interest.' 'Off, dog!' cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay. 'Throw it,' he replied, standing still, 'and then I'll tell how you boasted that you would turn me out of doors as soon as he died, and see whether he will not turn you out directly.' Hindley threw it, hitting him on the breast, and down he fell, but staggered up immediately, breathless and white; and, had not I prevented it, he would have gone just so to the master, and got full revenge by letting his condition plead for him, intimating who had caused it.

After the death of Mr. Earnshaw, the situation gets steadily worse. As the children grow up, Catherine and Heathcliff become closer and their friendship develops into to love, a deep frenzied love. However, the situation with Hindley becomes untenable. The turning point comes when Edgar, a rich sophisticated neighbour, asks Catherine to marry him. Believing to protect her true love, Heathcliff, from the grasp of Hindley, Catherine accepts his proposal. Here she is talking to Nelly, the housekeeper, telling her that she will accept Edgar.

To-day, Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an answer. Now, before I tell you whether it was a consent or denial, you tell me which it ought to have been.'
'Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?' I replied. 'To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.'
'If you talk so, I won't tell you any more,' she returned, peevishly rising to her feet. 'I accepted him, Nelly.

Catherine then tells Nelly that in reality she loves Heathcliff. Her words of love are perhaps the most heartrending and passionate expression of love ever written. Heathcliff sadly overhears only the part where she tells Nelly that it would degrade her to marry him and that she would marry Edgar. He therefore escapes from Wuthering Heights and disappears.

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. 

Heathcliff returns three years later. He is now rich and full of vengeance. Catherine is married to Edgar, but her love for Heathcliff is still passionate and explosive. Heathcliff's revenge starts by his marrying Edgar's sister, only to make her life miserable. In the meantime both Catherine and Heathcliff develop an almost crazed relationship:

Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.'I wish I could hold you,' she continued, bitterly, 'till we were both dead! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, "That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff?' 'Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yourself,' cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.

 I shall refrain from telling you any more of this story in the hope that you will read it. Those who have already read it will know how lacerating and overwhelming their end is. 

I shall conclude with a very short poem by Emily Bronte on the theme of love, loss, and sorrow:

It will not shine again:Its sad course is done;I have seen the last ray waneOf the cold, bright sun.