Acceptance of the Homosexual Self: An Examination of E. M. Forster’s "Maurice"

Edward Morgan Forster penned Maurice (1913) at a time when homosexuality was a punishable crime and generally viewed as an abomination in the UK. The intervening years have been relatively kind to this persuasion, with the softening of laws on homosexual behaviour in Wales and England in the late 1960s, which led to the publication of the novel in 1971, the year after its author’s death. New readers of Maurice are often surprised by two factors: (1) the tenderness every page exudes, and (2) the uncharacteristic happy-ever-after ending. It is also for these reasons that the novel was dismissed by eminent critics upon publication. It was somehow deemed unrealistic that the novel’s homosexual characters should go on to lead a life that even heterosexuals dared not dream of. Several decades later, with our understanding of homosexual life having evolved to a more sophisticated level, we know better. We now see that what Forster proposes in Maurice is anything but a sentimental fantasy.

Maurice Hall starts out as an impressionable, well-meaning young man who is ignorant of the ways of the world and of himself. When he reaches adolescence and physical urges overmaster him, he feels obscene, “as if some special curse had descended on him” (17). These urges turn out to be of a different kind, and he is thrown into confusion. Up at Cambridge, he meets practising homosexuals for the first time and is appalled by their behaviour. When one of them, Durham, declares his love for him in an exceedingly romantic passage, his reaction is one of disgust:

Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, rot!’ … ‘Durham, you’re an Englishman. I’m another. Don’t talk nonsense … it’s the only subject beyond the limit as you know, it’s the worst crime in the calendar, and you must never mention it again. (48)

His repulsion does not last long. He has a breakdown that same evening, and after the emotional storm has passed, he awakes clear-eyed, realising that he has been living a lie:

He would not deceive himself so much. He would not – and this was the test – pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. (51)

Maurice’s epiphany is only the first step in his long journey towards self- fulfillment. Not long after, he encounters his first love in the form of Clive, a passionate young man with an equally privileged upbringing. They declare deep affection for each other, and Clive even ranks their love above all else:

I feel to you … far more nobly, far more deeply, body and soul, no starved medievalism of course, only a – a particular harmony of body and soul that I don’t think women have even guessed. (78)

As with all first loves, this one is doomed to crash and burn. Clive’s mysterious illness and subsequent trip to Greece alter him and his attitude towards homosexuality, to the point where he convinces himself to fall out of love with Maurice and to turn “straight.” He longs to be “normal” like other “happy normal people”, regretting “how little had he existed for twenty-four years” (104). His rejection of Maurice is abrupt and cold. When Maurice comes to see that Clive’s betrayal is an irrevocable reality, he contemplates suicide, believing that death is his only solace.

But Maurice does not end his own life. He soldiers on like a stoic, learning “on how little the soul can exist” (126). He realises that he does not have a God or a lover, but dignity compels him to continue struggling. Forster adds that “struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity” (126). Maurice bumbles along, now half the man he once was. He remains friends with Clive, who has chosen to marry and have a family life (like thousands upon thousands of homosexuals in denial). Under Clive’s influence, Maurice begins to doubt his own sexuality and seeks to have it treated by medical men as though it were a congenital disease. These episodes lead him to a cul-de-sac, and he returns to Penge (Clive’s estate), where he has previously sighted Clive’s gamekeeper (Forster’s salute to D. H. Lawrence?) Alec Scudder and is intrigued by his person. Sexual tension between the two begins to mount. During a tennis match, where Maurice and Alec are placed in the same team, the following is said about their union:

They played for the sake of each other and of their fragile relationship – if one fell the other would follow. They intended no harm to the world, but as long as it attacked they must punish, they must stand wary, then hit with full strength, they must show then when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph. (179)

This is the first indication Forster gives of the power of a homosexual union. The reader now roots for Maurice and Alec, but there is stormy weather ahead: Alec is bound for “the Argentine,” which means their union is threatened with dissolution and Love will again fail.

It will be imprudent of me to disclose the ending of the novel, but suffice it to say that Maurice emerges a victor. In the final chapter, Maurice has one last conversation with Clive in which he confesses to having fallen in love with his gamekeeper. Clive is mildly offended and urges Maurice to change his ways. But Maurice vanishes into the woods, “leaving no trace of his presence except a little pile of the petals of the evening primrose, which mourned from the ground like expiring fire” (218). Maurice, as foreshadowed in previous chapters where he is repeatedly mentioned in conjunction with Nature and the wilderness, will go on and live in freedom. Clive, on the other hand, will lead a deluded existence, incapable of grasping the meaning of true love.

The ending of Maurice reveals an aspect of homosexual life that many have been conditioned to disregard: that being a homosexual does not mean you are automatically excluded from happiness. Happiness is a possibility for the homosexual, as long as he is courageous enough to face himself and the antagonistic world. Forster understood this back in 1913, but many of us living in the 21^st century are still stumped by it.