'Bury Your Gays' is by now a well-known and deeply overplayed trope in which queer characters are disproporionately killed off in fiction and film. But that 'killing off' isn't always literal, and it isn't always perpetuated by straight writers. Tragedy and queerness have oft been intertwined even in 'own voices' fiction.

None of that to say that any queer writer drawing from their own experiences is obligated to write inauthetically just for the sake of a happy ending, but it is sad that even in fiction so many queer writers can only imagine our stories ending tragically, particularly those writing at the time of Forster.

Enter: 'Maurice.'

Is it really a spoiler to say that this ends happily when that was Forster's stated intention behind writing the novel in the first place? I'd say not, if for no other reason than that readers wanting something uplifting will know this is a safe bet.

Not to say there isn't struggle in 'Maurice.' Our titular character and his initial love interest struggle terribly, feeling the full weight of societal expectation.

Maurice repeatedly uses the word 'muddle' of the roller coaster of his feelings as he's trying to understand himself as a queer person in a world without the language to describe it.

He's at once confused, exhilerated, anxious, angry...and in love. And the only way he knows how to explain these feelings is: 'degeneracy of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It's no wonder the poor fellow was in a muddle.

It's only when he has his first sexual and romantic experiences while at university that the pieces start to fall into place, and he clings to his first lover, even as it becomes increasingly clear that this person, for a range of reasons, isn't going to give him what he wants in the end.

The section dedicated to Maurice's time at and just after university is a great exploration of the fluidity of sexuality, and how that differs from sexual identity. I.e. having same or opposite sex attraction has only a small bearing on how a person identifies.

And, ultimately, this is what causes the break in Maurice's first relationship; his boyfriend decides he no longer wants to identify as a gay man (though they don't use this word). He expresses that after a lifetime of thinking that he could only love men, he has discovered an attraction to women, and wants to live as a straight man (again, this isn't the language that is used in the novel as this categorization didn't exist when Forster wrote it). This decision isn't presented by Forster as repression or even what we may now call 'internalized homophobia,' but rather as an honest decision. The boyfriend, Clive, explains succinctly that he's simply not in love with Maurice anymore. Shortly thereafter he marries a woman, and in the sections written from his perspective, we see that he honestly loves her and is happy as her husband. This kind of nuanced take on sexuality and identity would be pretty unusual even now in 2021, so it's astonishing how well Forster was able to capture it in the 1910s.

Interestingly, in the afterward in this particular edition, which includes a short essay by Forster, he expresses his dismay that in the time between him writing 'Maurice' and writing that essay society had, in his estimation, become more hostile to queer people, not less. He postulates that this is because people were starting to understand in the post-Kinsey world that acts of 'homosexuality' were more common than most people at the time wanted to know or think about. Bringing that knowledge out into the open, Forster thought, was more than the British could handle, and the notion that some people didn't just dabble, but fell in love, was a bridge too far.

Returning to the novel, we find Maurice, post-breakup. Heartbroken, he falls into a deep depression, convinced, as so many of us are, that his first love was his only chance at happiness.

But, of course, it isn't.

After a half-cocked effort at conversion therapy fails to lesson his attraction to other men, Maurice is convinced he is doomed to a life of lonliness and isolation.

All is not lost, however, and in the end he does get to ride off into the sunset for his happily ever after.

'Maurice' is rich with angles to be tackled from. The exploration of sexuality is the most patent, and it bears mentioning that much of Maurice's 'muddle' is the result of an utter lack of representation. His lonliness, the result of his certainty that Clive was the only other person like him, and that even he would never have offered a real relationship. For Maurice to learn otherwise, he has to meet someone else like himself, who feels very differently to Clive, and who wants that well-rounded relationship too.

Queerness, like any other identity, isn't a monolith, and Forster highlights this beautifully.

Class is the other major theme in the novel, though the weaker of the two. Forster definitely seemed to want to say something about how it constrains people, and about how the upper classes, even when their own estates are in decline, look down on the hoi polloi. There was something there, but it felt at times a bit ham-fisted and slightly inconsistant, and the 'Lady and the Tramp' sort of vibe at the end verged on caricature. Unfortunate, considering how delicately Forster handles so much of the front half of the novel. Perhaps with 100 or so more pages it would have had enough room to breathe, but as it stands, the climax feels rushed and a bit unearned.

Still, despite the thematic and pacing issues at the finish line, the front half and even the novelty of a happy ending earns 'Maurice' a solid place in the queer literary canon. I would definitely sooner hand this to young queer people than something like 'Giovanni's Room' or films like 'Brokeback Mountain.' A great and important novel in its own right, and a well-regarded film, but just like straight kids first get introduced to romance with fairytale endings, queer youth deserve to know that in fiction, as in real life, they too can have happily ever afters.