#all maurice analysismeta makes me lose my gd mind
re-reading maurice and noticing much more deeply how big of a role the theme of nature/transcedentalism plays in the story, how the decay of penge parallels the decay of clive’s love and his relationship with maurice, how clive represents civilization and alec represents nature, how nature is seen as the ultimate good and something to aspire to whereas the conformity inherent to society tarnishes the goodness of humans, how the book was influenced by edward carpenter/george merrill/walt whitman who all advocated these ideas and the love for nature above all else, how the main struggle of the story can not only be described as a struggle between repression/conformity VS pride in one’s sexuality but also a struggle between society VS nature, how clive represents the fear of nature and alec represents the love of nature, how clive is associated with ruins and how that foreshadows the downfall of his and maurice’s relationship because ultimately he chose to go to greece which partly represents an ideal but repressed civilization (although greece was/is also associated with homosexuality, the greek philosophers still believed it should be platonic only, as clive parrots), how clive metaphorically chooses the “old world” over the “new world” whereas maurice said he would have chosen to visit the new world, etc.
