Book Club Guide

Maurice

by E.M. Forster · 1971 · Classics

Key themes

A gay man in Edwardian England — and the options available to him
Class and sexuality as the novel's dual subjects
The happy ending as a political statement

About this book

Maurice Hall, a Cambridge student, falls in love with Clive Durham, a conservative aristocrat who eventually marries and rejects his homosexuality. Maurice then meets the gamekeeper Alec Scudder. Written in 1913-14, Forster's novel was published posthumously in 1971 because he could not publish it in his lifetime. The ending offers something genuine novels about homosexuality rarely offered before the Wolfenden Report.

Written 1913-14 and revised periodically, Maurice was published posthumously in 1971. Forster wrote 'Terminal Note' in 1960 explaining his choices: 'A happy ending was imperative. 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.'

Discussion questions

Maurice was written in 1913-14 but published in 1971 after Forster's death. What does knowing this delay add — and what couldn't have been published in 1914?
The novel ends happily — Maurice and Alec escape together. Forster insisted on the happy ending as a refusal to confirm what the period demanded of gay love stories. How does this political choice function artistically?
The three men Maurice loves — Clive, Scudder, and the schoolmaster — represent three different ways of being gay in Edwardian England. How does Forster develop these alternatives?
Class is everywhere in the novel — the relationship between Maurice and the gamekeeper Alec crosses it in both directions. What is Forster saying about class and desire?
Maurice occupies an unusual place in Forster's work — different in tone from the other novels and written in a specific urgency. How does it relate to Howards End and A Passage to India — and what is Forster working through here that he could not explore in those novels?