Although Maurice stands far apart from the five novels published during Forster's lifetime, it does contain a number of thin threads unraveled from other pieces. For example, the issues of class distinctions and class struggles, snobbery, pride, money, and the search for happiness raise themselves everywhere in Forster's fiction. Characters who champion those issues can march beside each other: Leonard Bast and Alec Scudder each possesses a strong sense of pride associated with the lower classes, and each wants to bully his way up the social ladder. The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels (from Howards End, 1910; see separate entry) would have little difficulty mingling with Clive Durham and Maurice Hall—all of them holding their heads high and snubbing everyone they consider beneath them. Charles Wilcox, Maurice Hall, and Ronald Heaslop would make a compatible trio of social snobs, joined, on the periphery, by the minor...