“To love a noble woman, to protect and serve her – this, he told the little boy, was the crown of life.” Our hero Maurice Hall goes for a walk with one of his teachers, and as he is soon departing into public school, the teacher thinks to do a little explaining of the birds and the bees to him: The first chapter is the only chapter set at prep school, but it sets the foundations for the novel just as such schools set the foundations for the lives of the rich and privileged the world over. I remember my own prep school days fondly, and as my school was of the traditional sort, I found in Maurice much to prompt a kind of déjà vu. It is about as cosy an environment as one could hope for. Maurice begins with prep school, the first stage of private education in England, which takes boys, and occasionally girls, and raises them from the age of about eight till they are thirteen. He hoped that once he was dead it would be possible to publish it he had his wish. Forster, author of Maurice, only showed the novel to a few trusted friends during his lifetime.
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