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The story of Maurice is very simple, you could summarise it in one sentence. But the story about Maurice is complicated.

He began writing it in 1912 and finished it more or less a year later. He wrote it knowing it could never be published in his lifetime. He was writing it entirely for himself. But soon he began to let a few friends read it, with varying responses. It’s a curious thing reading a novel that the author knew couldn’t be published in his lifetime, maybe never.

Forster had a problem. He began thinking that it was perfectly okay to be a homosexual so long as you kept your relationships platonic (a very strange idea to modern ears). Then he changed his mind, reasonably. But he always believed “nothing is more obdurate to artistic treatment than the carnal��. So the first big three year long relationship Maurice has is ascetically pure. The second one isn’t, but Forster the author is still far too queasy to go into details. And that’s understandable, this book was written before Lady Chatterley’s Lover and before Ulysses. After it was finished it sat in a drawer for sixty years.

In the UK homosexuality was made illegal in 1885 and by 1955 over 1000 men per year were being thrown in jail for it. When some prominent toffs were busted Parliament became unhappy and an investigation began. In 1957 their report recommended decriminalisation. It took another ten years for Parliament to pass the law making homosexuality legal.

During this limbo period Forster’s friends encouraged him to publish Maurice but like Amy Winehouse he just said no, no, no. He knew that the roof would fall in on him if he did. He died aged 91 in 1970 and Maurice was published in 1971.

People think this book is brave but flawed, and they’re right. He determined that his hero would be a dour, unimaginative, dull upper middle class guy, as opposed to all the aesthetic Wildean types and the outrageous Anthony (Brideshead) Blanches. Here’s one example of the way Maurice thinks :

The feeling that can impel a gentleman towards a person of lower class stands self-condemned.

Like that? Here’s more :

”I’ve had to do with the poor too,�� said Maurice, taking a piece of cake, “but I can’t worry over them. One must give them a leg up for the sake of the country generally, that’s all. They haven’t our feelings. They don’t suffer as we should in their place.��

So his homosexual hero is made deliberately unlikable. And then, he wanted to really upset the applecart with his novel’s ending. He wrote :

A happy ending was imperative, I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. 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�� it has made the book more difficult to publish…if it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well��

All of this is very good. But for me there were a few too many passages where Forster strayed into what sounded like pure blather to me :

The love that Socrates bore Phaedo now lay within his reach, love passionate but temperate, such as only finer natures can understand, and he found in Maurice a nature that was not indeed fine, but charmingly willing. He led the beloved up a narrow and beautiful path, high above either abyss. It went on until the final darkness—he could see no other terror—and when that descended they would at all events have lived more fully than either saint or sensualist, and would have extracted to their utmost the nobility and sweetness of the world. He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice’s spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought “Am I led; am I leading?�� Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

Even so I’m inclined to give Forster a huge amount of the benefit of the doubt. This is a landmark novel

LET’S CONCLUDE WITH ONE OF THE BLEAKEST DESCRIPTIONS OF A HETEROSEXUAL MIDDLECLASS MARRIAGE YOU WILL EVER READ

When he arrived in her room after marriage, she did not know what he wanted. Despite an elaborate education, no one had told her about sex. Clive was as considerate as possible, but he scared her terribly, and left feeling she hated him. She did not. She welcomed him on future nights. But it was always without a word. They united in a world that bore no reference to the daily, and this secrecy drew after it much else of their lives. So much could never be mentioned. He never saw her naked, nor she him. They ignored the reproductive and the digestive functions.

In conclusion, probably not a 4 star read, but definitely a 4 star novel.