The following article I wrote as a graduate student in 1995. I am posting it here because the Trollope and His Contemporaries online group I belong to is currently reading Forster’s Howards End and have been discussing Forster’s homosexuality and how he depicts homosexuality in his novels. I should note that when this article was published, not much had yet been written about Forster’s gay novel Maurice. The sources about homosexuality also reflect their time and psychological arguments about homosexuality that are no longer in line with more political views on homosexuality and do not necessarily reflect my own views. By why post this article at the Gothic Wanderer’s blog? Of course, while Forster did not use Gothic elements in his novel, homosexuals are often depicted as Gothic wanderers in literature, even if their homosexuality is only hinted at. Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and many other Gothic novels have homosexual overtones to them. For more information on homosexuality and the Gothic, see my post on the Stoker biography Something in the Blood.
A Working Class Lover: Class and Homosexuality in E.M. Forster’s Maurice
E. M. Forster
Because of its posthumous publication in 1971, Maurice is usually criticized as being inferior to E.M. Forster’s other novels. However, it is Forster’s only novel that fully develops his concept of the connection between homosexuality and class structure. If Maurice is not satisfactory in its resolution, this is because Forster found society’s treatment of homosexuals as unsatisfactory; if Forster depicted homosexuals’ lives in any other way, it would have been unrealistic.
E.M. Forster chose the domestic comedy as the form to express his opinions on homosexuality and class relations. Like his predecessor Jane Austen, Forster was concerned with the business of marriage, but while Austen’s novels always end in a happy marriage knot, there are no happy marriages or even successful heterosexual relationships in Forster’s novels (Trilling 115-6). Forster saw marriage as an exclusively economic state rather than the result of love. This theme exists in Forster’s earlier novels and would come to fruition in Maurice. Critics have argued that in Howards End Margaret’s true purpose is to achieve economic stability; because her house is being torn down, Margaret marries Henry Wilcox, not for love, but to have a new home (Born 152-4). Marriage also means economic stability rather than a spiritual union for Jackie Bast. She mistakenly thinks Leonard Bast will marry her and make her life easier (Finkelstein, “Howards End,” 96).
The main theme of Howards End is to connect with others. Forster’s favorite medium for connection is love, but he did not believe that spiritual love could be achieved through marriage (Stone 392). The only true connections in Howards End are between people of the same gender; Margaret connects with both Mrs. Wilcox and with Helen, but no one connects with his or her spouse.
In The Longest Journey, the character Ansell even speaks out against marriage. Ansell and Rickie have a friendship with homosexual overtones. Because Ansell prefers male friendship, he feels Rickie should not get married. Ansell argues that “men and women desire different things. Man wants to love mankind; woman wants to love one man” (Forster 88). Ansell tells Rickie not to marry because, “You are also unfitted in soul: you want and you need to like many people, and a man of that sort ought not to marry” (Forster 87). Of course, Rickie’s marriage is disastrous.
True love between men and women was deemed impossible by E.M. Forster. Instead of heterosexual marriage, Forster believed homosexual love was the highest, most spiritual relationship. Heterosexual love’s purpose is to procreate, and this detracts from its ability to create a spiritual union between two people. In contrast, Forster believed homosexuality’s only purpose is love, so it can result in a spiritual union between two people (Page, “Maurice,” 82).
Although Forster saw male friendship/homosexuality as the highest, most platonic relationship, the homosexual ideal was still difficult to achieve because society disapproved of it (Colmer, “Marriage,” 122). Critics have argued that if Forster believed homosexuality was the highest spiritual ideal, Maurice’s final relationship should be platonic, not sexual. Stone argues that Maurice and Clive’s platonic love is the only normal relationship in Forster’s novels, but it does not last (393). Instead, Maurice ends up with Alec in what critics have considered a lust-based relationship. In the “Terminal Note” to Maurice, Forster remarks that Lytton Strachey was the first to hold this opinion. “He wrote me a delightful and disquieting letter and said that the relationship of the two rested upon curiousity and lust and would only last six weeks” (Forster, Maurice, 252). Stone, in agreement with Strachey, says Forster could not find the “fictional alchemy for transmuting lust into love” (398).
However, Forster felt he must depict a realistic homosexual relationship. To understand why Forster felt it was more likely for Maurice to end up with Alec than Clive, Forster’s own homosexual background and Edwardian England’s views of homosexuality need to be understood.
Although Forster said he tried to create characters unlike himself in Maurice, studies have shown that many homosexuals have similar childhood environments as do Forster and his characters. Often, homosexuals have dominant and over-protective mothers. E.M. Forster’s own mother was controlling as are Forster’s depictions of Clive and Maurice’s mothers (Beauman 94). Freud stated that homosexuals:
“pass through a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation to a woman/(usually their mother), and that, after leaving this behind, they identify themselves with a woman and take themselves as their sexual object. That is to say, they proceed from a narcissistic basis, and look for a young man who resembles themselves and whom they may love as their mother loved them” (Beauman 120-21).
Maurice and Alec in the 1987 Merchant Ivory film. Maurice is played by James Wilby and Alex by Rupert Graves.
Homosexuality is also often a search for the missing father figure, whether the father has died, is absent, or is not accepting of his son. E.M. Forster’s own father died when Forster was twenty-two months old; similarly, Maurice and Clive both have deceased fathers from the time they are children. Beauman writes in her biography of Forster, “It would not be for merely sexual reasons that Morgan’s lovers would be younger than himself, the traditional love of the older man for the younger” (183). Forster’s homosexual relationships were largely a recreation of his own father’s homosexuality (Beauman 183). To make up for the absence of his father during his childhood, Forster tried to copy his father’s past through his homosexuality. Bieber and Bieber, in their study Homosexuality, state that the return of the homosexual’s love by a man acts as a replacement for the missing love of the father. Often in adulthood, the homosexual will be attracted to a man who in some way resembles his father. Acceptance by this other male then allows the homosexual to adjust to the psychological problems that originated in his childhood (Bieber 11).
Although the background of Clive and Maurice’s lives are largely based on Forster’s own background, when Forster wrote the first draft of Maurice between 1913 and 1914, he had not yet experienced a homosexual relationship. His knowledge of homosexual coupling was primarily through his acquaintance with the homosexual couple Edward Carpenter and George Merrill. In the “Terminal Note” to Maurice, Forster states that he first met Carpenter “as one approaches a saviour” (Forster 249). Carpenter and Merrill eventually taught E.M. Forster to accept his homosexuality and consider the possibility of homosexual relationships in his own life. Forster’s first meeting with the couple also inspired him to write Maurice.
Why Forster did not accept his homosexuality sooner lies in the attitudes toward sex in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Young men and women rarely even thought about sex before marriage. Even those who were knowledgeable about sex were often hesitant to engage in it. In the 1860s, Dr. William Acton wrote:
“The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind…. No nervous or feeble young man need, therefore, be deterred from marriage by an exaggerated notion of the duties required from him” (Pool 186).
Forster was also fairly naive about sex, and stated, “not till I was 30 did I know exactly how male and female joined” (Beauman 119). Until adulthood, Forster was not always aware that the stirrings in his body were sexual, much less homosexual (Page “Maurice” 91).
This naivety about sex is expressed in Forster’s novels. Forster admitted the scene in Where Angels Fear to Tread when Gino tortures Philip had “stirred him,” but he “neither knew nor wondered why’” (Page, “Novel: Maurice,” 91). After Gino’s baby dies, Philip claims to feel guilt, but since Philip knows Gino will resort to anger and violence, why does he say, “You are to do what you like with me, Gino” (Forster, Angels, 95) unless he secretly wishes to be physically punished by Gino because he finds Gino sexually attractive? In Maurice, Forster writes of Clive and Anne that, “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” (164).
Neither does Maurice always understand his homosexual desires. At school, he continually experiences sexual bewilderment. Finkelstein argues that this bewilderment is not a sign of Maurice’s future homosexual behavior, but the lack of girls at school for Maurice to have boyhood crushes on (“Maurice” 143). However, when people are with only members of their own sex, as in ancient Greek society or in modern day prisons, it is not uncommon for an otherwise heterosexual man to engage in homosexual acts. After years at a boys’ school, Maurice has almost no knowledge of women other than those in his family; therefore, it is almost natural for him to find his own sex attractive.
As a child, Maurice does not understand his feelings for the gardener boy, and even after his homosexual relationship with Clive, he still does not fully comprehend his nature. When Maurice finally realizes he has uncontrollable lust for men, then “certain obscurities of the last six months became clear” (Forster, Maurice, 151). Such examples support Norman Page’s statement that “the varieties of sexual impulse and behavior, so prominent in the public and private discourse of our time, would simply not occupy a readily accessible region of the Edwardian bourgeois mind” (“Novel: Maurice” 91).
For a homosexual in Edwardian times, sexual thoughts were also probably repressed. After Oscar Wilde’s trial in 1895, homosexuality became a crime with a penalty of up to two years in prison (Pool 190). Stone sees Maurice as the work of a homosexual who felt like an underground criminal; Forster, like other homosexuals, felt ashamed of himself because society told him he should be ashamed (387-8).
Since homosexuals were criminals, they lived in guilt and fear of exposure. Blackmail was a common occurrence in the lives of homosexuals from the 1760s through Forster’s time (Nadel 183-4). Maurice, however, fears blackmail not only because of his homosexuality but because his fear is a “conditioned, middle-class reflex” (Nadel 184).
Maurice believes that both the discovery of his homosexuality and his sexual relations with one of the lower class would be equally shameful (Finkelstein, “Maurice,” 166). Edwardian society believed a relationship with one’s social equal, even if unsatisfactory, was preferable to a relationship with one of the lower class (Nadel 184). Clive echoes this belief when he warns Maurice that members of the lower class cannot be trusted to be loyal or honest (Forster, “Maurice,” 205). Forster, however, was against the class structure in England. He personally preferred the lower classes, so he felt it necessary for Maurice to end up with Alec who is of the lower class.
Because Forster was from the upper middle class, he could accurately portray it in his fiction, but it is usually not a glowing representation. Forster was greatly disgusted by the false values of his class, values like those of Henry Wilcox in Howards End. Henry is forgiven by his wife Margaret for committing adultery, but he cannot forgive Margaret’s sister Helen when she makes the same mistake. Maurice also feels he is superior to others. He says of the poor, “They haven’t our feelings. They don’t suffer as we should in their place” (168). Only after he becomes involved with Alec does Maurice consider that “servants might be flesh and blood like ourselves” (Finkelstein, “Maurice,” 167).
Forster detested snobbery from childhood. As a boy, he preferred playing with hired garden boys over his own cousin (Olson 390). Neither did he like his fellow schoolmates, of whom he said, “if they were not the sons of gentlemen they would not be so unkind” (Olson 390). For Forster, being upper class meant being materialistic; in contrast, he felt the lower classes were less snobbish and more spiritual.
In his novels, Forster depicts his lower class characters as being wiser and more spiritual because of their association with the land. Jean Olson refers to these characters as “noble peasants.” They have instinctive wisdom because they or their ancestors have used their hands to do physical labor that connects them to the land. This connection to the earth makes the noble peasant morally and spiritually superior (Olson 389). However, when the noble peasant is uprooted from the land to the city and made to serve the rich, he loses touch with the land and begins losing his spirituality (Olson 394).
In Howards End, Leonard Bast is on a quest to regain this spirituality, but his separation from the land makes this difficult for him (395). Similarly, Mrs. Wilcox is a noble peasant; she is descended from the yeoman class and attached to her country home, yet she is forced to live in the city with her family (Olson 393). In Maurice, Alec Scudder is first viewed by Maurice as a type of “noble peasant” because he is a gamekeeper, but later we learn his family are merchants.
Forster’s belief in the spirituality of the “noble peasant” or the lower class connects with his belief that male friendship is a higher spiritual ideal than heterosexual marriage. John Addington Symonds, an early proponent for the homosexual movement, also saw homosexuality as superior to heterosexuality because homosexuals were less bound by material considerations (Summers 147). His contemporary Edward Carpenter, and other homosexual proponents, did not agree with him, yet Symonds’ theory is logical. Marriage can be entered into for romantic or financial reasons. Homosexuality, however, was a crime in Forster’s day. People in homosexual relationships were putting their lives in danger. Therefore, it is more likely that a homosexual would only enter into a relationship if he were in love.
However, Forster has been accused of basing Maurice and Alec’s relationship on lust rather than love. Considering the restraints society placed on the homosexual, Forster may have felt this was the most realistic way to depict homosexuality in his time. Because homosexuality was a crime, many homosexuals probably stayed in the closet. This made it more difficult for homosexuals to find suitable partners. The homosexual may have settled for the first partner willing to stay with him, rather than search for one’s soulmate, meaning many homosexual relationships would have been based on lust and security. Alec, unlike Clive, is willing to stay with Maurice. While Maurice is between relationships, he suffers from great feelings of loneliness and an inability to control his lustful thoughts. Although there are indications that he does love Alec, Maurice seems to be looking for security in a relationship. Forster should not be criticized for concluding the novel with a lust-based homosexual relationship; this was probably the only option for many homosexuals because of the restraints society placed upon them.
Maurice and Clive from the 1987 Merchant-Ivory film. Clive is played by Hugh Grant.
Forster preferred the working class because, as Ackerley said, working class boys were “more unreserved and understanding” (Nadel 187). The working class’s lack of financial power left them without reason to be snobbish. Unreserved could mean more honest, easier to talk with, or less pretentious. Forster’s guilt about sex might have been easier for him to work off on social inferiors simply because they were more understanding (Nadel 187). Probably the direct opposite is true when Maurice says of the poor, “They haven’t our feelings. They don’t suffer as we should in their place” (Forster 168). Servants probably suffered more than their masters because they not only had to care for their masters but also for themselves. Nor did they have the financial power to alleviate their suffering.
Maurice realizes the compassion that one of the working class can have after his second night with Alec. Alec is extremely gentle and soft-spoken with Maurice. After their second night together, Alec says to Maurice, “You comfortable? Rest your head on me more, the way you like more . . . that’s it more, and Don’t You Worry. You’re With Me. Don’t Worry” (228). Then Maurice sees in Alec all the qualities he has sought in a companion. “Scudder had proved honest and kind. He was lovely to be with, a treasure, a charmer, a find in a thousand, the longed-for-dream” (Forster 229).
When Maurice realizes he loves Alec after the first night, he asks Alec, until now simply known as Scudder, what his first name is. This begins the breakdown of class between the lovers. Maurice then tells Alec his own name, but Alec continues to address him as Mr. Hall (195). The distance created by class is also noticeable in the letter Alec sends to Maurice. Alec addresses it to “Mr. Maurice. Dear Sir” and signs it “A. Scudder (gamekeeper to C. Durham Esq.)” (207). However, Alec’s feelings for Maurice are displayed in the postscript when out of concern over the news of Maurice’s illness, Alec addresses Maurice by his first name.
Later when Alec and Maurice meet at the British Museum, and Alec confesses that he does not wish to blackmail Maurice, he again uses Maurice’s first name. Maurice responds, “Maurice am I?” (224) and Alec says, “You called me Alec. . . . I’m as good as you.” (225). Alec has earlier, in his third letter to Maurice, insisted on equality by writing, “I will not be treated as your servant” (216). Nadel argues that this equality can only happen outside of class (Nadel 186); he must now choose between his social position and the man he loves. When Maurice suggests they spend their lives together by escaping into the greenwood, he has finally broken the class barrier between Alec and himself. As earlier stated, Forster’s favorite way to “connect” was through love (Stone 392), and it is Maurice and Alec’s love that allows class boundaries to be overcome so they can connect.
Forster suggests through Maurice and Alec’s love that a good homosexual relationship cannot exist between two members of the same class (Page, “Minor Fiction,” 121); Stone argues that a normal love relationship does exist between Maurice and Clive (393). It is not their membership in the same class that eventually separates Maurice and Clive, but rather Clive’s change to heterosexuality which is brought on by his illness. The relationship is not totally broken down, however, because Maurice still loves Clive. Only when Clive disapproves of Alec does Maurice realize how false are the values of his own class; he then decides one of the lower class would be a preferable lover. By allowing Maurice to end up with Alec, Forster was making an attack against the false values of his class. Disgusted by class snobbery, Forster found it easier to free himself from the bonds of his own class through a relationship with a lower class man; furthermore, because Forster only had homosexual relationships with working class men, he may have felt it safest to write about what he knew.
Yet Forster’s disbelief in the superiority of one class over another is tied, strangely enough, to his belief in the need for one homosexual’s dominance over the other in a mixed class relationship. A working class lover could help boost the middle class homosexual’s self-esteem. Having a working class lover could improve one’s sense of self-worth by placing the upper or middle class homosexual in a dominant position over the working class homosexual. In Forster’s time, men were the heads of heterosexual households, but if two men were lovers, there was the question of who would take on the dominant role. If the lovers were of two separate classes, the working class lover could then be “dominated financially, socially and intellectually” (Nadel 188).
Despite this logic, we still cannot overlook the existence of lust in a homosexual relationship. Forster’s own words prove that he had intense feelings of lust for other men. He may have found working class lovers more desirable simply because they were more sexually attractive. Forster found himself sexually stimulated by violence and expressed this through his characters in Maurice. When Maurice wrestles with him, Clive realizes that “he liked being thrown about by a powerful and handsome boy” (Forster 71). Later, Alec also likes to roughhouse with Maurice. Sexual stimulation from violence is also hinted at in Where Angels Fear to Tread when Philip allows himself to be beaten by Gino. Writing scenes of roughhousing between men may have been Forster’s way of experiencing his own sexual fantasies. In 1935, Forster wrote, “I want to have a strong man of the lower classes and be loved by him and even hurt by him” (Nadel 187). Forster clearly felt that violence was inseparable from a homosexual relationship (Stone 390).
It is no more strange for a homosexual than for a woman to desire a working class man. Nadel states that the working class lover had a physical beauty that made him attractive to the middle class male (188). Working class men usually have jobs that are stereotyped as more masculine such as construction, carpentry, farming, or other physical labors. In most cases, men who do physical labor are more muscularly developed than others; therefore, an upper or middle class man may simply find a working class man more sexually attractive than one of his own class.
For a homosexual, this desire for a masculine man may also have a basis in most homosexuals’ negative relationships with their fathers. Children are always dominated by their fathers if only because fathers are physically more powerful than their children. The desire for a physically powerful male lover may be the homosexual’s desire to submit to a father figure who will accept and love him unlike how his own father treated him. This concept has been backed up by case studies (Bieber 100).
Homosexuality is often a psychological quest by the homosexual to repair the relationship between the father and son. This can be achieved symbolically by the homosexual’s submission to a masculine authority figure. For the middle or upper class man, then, submission to a man of the working class means being dominated. At the same time, the working class lover finds satisfaction in being “dominated financially, socially and intellectually” (Nadel 188). Therefore, both lovers can be dominated in some way by the other, as if they were submitting to their fathers, and this allows mutual satisfaction and psychological recovery from their negative childhood experiences. For two lovers of the same class, there could be no satisfaction because their equality did not permit either to exert power over the other. In this way, E.M. Forster was probably correct in his belief that only lovers of two different classes could achieve a spiritual union, and this spiritual union was based on the ability to overcome their psychological problems and become emotionally whole.
Howards End continually stresses the idea that people must connect. Jeane Olson, in her article “The ‘Noble Peasant’ in E.M. Forster’s Fiction,” states that there is no perfect noble peasant. Instead, there are pairs of characters who are able to achieve something close to the ideal when they connect (400-1). Howards End is an example of this. Mrs. Wilcox, Margaret, and Leonard Bast all have qualities that make them “noble peasants”; however, none of them achieve the ideal. Only the combination of their characters gives hope for the future. Mrs. Wilcox gives the house to Margaret, Leonard provides the child through his union with Helen, and Margaret intends to leave Howards End to Helen and Leonard’s illegitimate child. Lionel Trilling sees this child as the symbol of the future classless England, and as the only true symbol of the connect theme throughout Howards End (Trilling 135).
In Maurice, Forster again stresses the need for a classless England. Although there is no symbol as powerful as the child at the end of Howards End, Alec and Maurice’s union also represents the future of England. The homosexual relationship achieves the highest spiritual union in Forster’s opinion, and it also creates a union between England’s different classes. Colmer, probably borrowing from Trilling’s ideas, sees Maurice and Alec’s union as the promise of a redeemed classless England (“Maurice” 124). Maurice and Alec’s love may even be Forster’s best symbol of the future classless England because it contains a successful romantic relationship unlike in Howards End. The child in Howards End is not born out of love but rather Helen’s experimental ideas about class (Martin 124). Maurice and Alec’s relationship is based on love so it is more spiritual and may have the power to break down class structure.
However, most critics have been disappointed by the end of Maurice. Cynthia Ozick condemned it as “an infantile book that pretends to be about social justice but is really about wishing” (Grant, “Maurice as Fantasy” 191). E.M. Forster knew that an escape into the Greenwood was not realistic, but he wished it could happen. In the “Terminal Note” to Maurice, Forster himself admitted it was not realistic, especially since the book takes place in approximately 1912, and Maurice and Alec’s life in the Greenwood would have undoubtedly been interrupted by World War I (254). However, some critics have found the end satisfying. Colmer said that Maurice is beautiful because it gives hope to those controlled by laws (“Maurice” 127). This hope is hope for homosexuals, but also for everyone unjustly discriminated against, and in a class structured society there is always prejudice, so the novel may be foretelling a “redeemed, classless England.”
Despite Forster’s marvelous efforts, none of his novels completely succeed in making the union of classes convincing. There is hope in the child of Howards End, but this child is not born of love. In Maurice, there is love, but no child is born. If there was a child of hope born out of love, then the image of England’s classless future would have been stronger. However, because Forster believed no true happiness could exist in a heterosexual marriage, and obviously children are not born of homosexual relationships, he could not produce the image of a child born out of love. Maurice best portrays Forster’s idea that homosexuality is the strongest spiritual union, but the homosexuality in the novel is also what mars Forster’s powerful theme.
Forster wrote one more novel, A Passage to India (1924), a decade later. This novel again deals with connection, though between people of different race as well as class. The novel also contains homosexual overtones in the friendship between the British Cyril Fielding and the Indian Aziz Banerjee. However, Cyril and Aziz’s friendship is affected by the tyranny of the British Empire over India. Cyril, because he is British, is a member of the upper class; Aziz’s Indian blood makes him a lesser class citizen. At the end of A Passage to India, Aziz exclaims to Cyril that the British must clear out of India:
“and then,” he concluded, half kissing him, “you and I shall be friends.”
“Why can’t we be friends now?” said the other, holding him affectionately. “It’s what I want. It’s what you want.” (361-2).
However, the narrator states that the earth and nature do not want it. “They didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not there’.” (Forster 362).
These are the last lines to Forster’s last novel. It was his final statement about mankind’s ability to connect, and through the friendship of Aziz and Cyril, it is also his final statement about homosexuality; no matter how beneficial Forster sees homosexuality, the world, and especially society, continually say “not yet.” Maurice and Alec will not be accepted by society, so if they want to be together, they must hide their true feelings. This is the meaning of their disappearance into the greenwood. Forster knew a happy homosexual relationship would always be marred by society’s disapproval.
In writing Maurice, Forster was only wishing for homosexuality’s acceptance. Yet, Colmer is wise to say the novel gives hope for the future and those controlled by the laws (“Posthumous Fiction”127). In this hope, Forster saw the future. Fortunately, he lived to see the repeal of the laws against homosexuality, although he was eighty-one when it finally occurred in 1960. Since then, England has also become more classless. Therefore, in its prophesying of things to come, perhaps Maurice is far more superior than most critics have claimed.
Works Cited
Beauman, Nicola. E.M. Forster: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Bieber, Irving et al. Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1988.
Born, Daniel. “Private Gardens, Public Swamps: Howards End and the Revaluation of Liberal Guilt.” Novel 25 (1992): 141-59.
Colmer, John. “Marriage and Personal Relations in Forster’s Fiction.” E.M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations. Eds. Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982. 113-123.
Colmer, John. “Posthumous Fiction.” E.M. Forster: The Personal Voice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. 109-136.
Finkelstein, Bonnie Blumenthal. “Howards End.” Forster’s Women: Eternal Differences. New York: Columbia U P, 1975. 89-116.
———. “Maurice.” Forster’s Women: Eternal Differences. New York: Columbia U P, 1975. 137-72.
Forster, E.M. Howards End. 1910. In E.M. Forster: Three Complete Novels. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993.
———. The Longest Journey. 1907. New York: Random House, 1993.
———. Maurice. 1971. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987.
———. A Passage to India. 1924. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
———. Where Angels Fear to Tread. 1905. In E.M. Forster: Three Complete Novels. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993.
Grant, Kathleen. “Maurice as Fantasy.” E.M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations. Eds. Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982. 177-89.
Nadel, Ira Bruce. “Moments in the Greenwood: Maurice in Context.” E.M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations. Eds. Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982. 113-123.
Olson, Jeane N. “The ‘Noble Peasant’ in E.M. Forster’s Fiction.” Studies in the Novel 20.4 (1988): 389-403.
Page, Norman. “Minor Fiction: Maurice and the Short Stories.” E.M. Forster. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988. 117-26.
———. “Novel: Maurice.” E.M. Forster’s Posthumous Fiction. British Columbia: U of Victoria, 1977. 67-102.
Stone, Wilfred. “Overleaping Class: Forster’s Problem in Connection.” Modern Language Quarterly 39.12 (1978): 386-404.
Summers, Claude J. “The Flesh Educating the Spirit: Maurice.” E.M. Forster. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983. 141-180.
Trilling, Lionel. “Howards End.” E.M. Forster. 1943. Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou, 1964. 113-35.
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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, and Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City. Visit Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com and www.GothicWanderer.com.
