A sensible thought

I’m reading “Maurice” and I really enjoy the novel. It has been hard at the beginning to get used to Foster way of writing but after the first tree chapters I could read without needing a dictionary every ten words. I mean, I used the dictionary just to check my understanding of words I had never met before. How satisfying it is to see how much I could guess with contextual keys!

I’m surprised by the story and fascinated by the author art of telling us the insides of human being: fears, hopes, passions and sorrows.
One of my favourite passages till now is when Maurice and Clive asked each other how they fell in love:

‘But had’nt you been getting hold of me for months? Since first you saw me at Risley’s, in fact.’
‘Don’t ask me.’
(…)
‘When did you first care about me?
‘Don’t ask me’, echoed Clive.
‘oh, be a bit serious -well- what was it in me you first cared about?’
‘like really to know?’
‘yes.’
‘well, it was your beauty.’
‘my what?’
(…)
‘Clive you’re a silly little fool, and since you’ve brought it up I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen, I love your voice and every thing to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.’
(…)
‘Those things must be said once, or we should never know they were in each other’s hearts.’

The discovery of passion, the wish for an exclusive love made of Maurice a selfish person and a true tyrant with other people and specially with his mother and sisters.
Later in the novel, because of the lost of love, he turned into a better person to his family. Maurice experienced a sorrow that makes him more sensitive.

Clive is an enigmatic character. He is a philosopher as it is shown by this sentence concluding their conversation: ‘Those things must be said once, or we should never know they were in each other’s hearts.’

This is, in my view, a sensible thought. I remember the sorrow of a friend of mine whose wife literary flew away after ten years of happiness. He told me: ‘so, she never loved me and all this has been a total lie’. At that moment, he couldn’t understand that feelings may change with time and he was deeply hurt by the idea that she probably had been lying during so many years. I told him that in fact she had loved him (she also was a friend of mine, and I was pretty sure of that!) although it was over. He felt a relief even if he still had to face the fact that her love for him was over.

What about you, dear classmates ? Have you already started to read the novel "MAurice" ? What feelings do you have ?

See you tomorrow !