E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, first written from 1913 to 1914 and published posthumously in 1971, is often noted for being the only one of Forster’s novels to feature an explicitly gay protagonist. This, as well as the fact that the novel has a happy ending, is what kept Forster from publishing it until after his death (Forster 250). According to Forster, Maurice “was the direct result of a visit to Edward Carpenter at Milthorpe [sic]” where Carpenter’s partner, George Merrill, touched Forster on the backside and apparently made a strong enough impression that Forster began writing Maurice right away (Forster 249-250). As one scholar Wendy Parkins writes, Carpenter’s life with Merrill at Millthorpe involved trying to live as close to nature as possible, away from “the trappings of civilization” (Parkins). It also involved “a new way of seeing, like a new way of living, that offered an opportunity to enrich daily experience, once the conventions of middle-class domesticity were set aside” (Parkins). Parkins associates this lifestyle with queer ecology, an emerging theory which draws from queer theory and ecocriticism—among others—in order to examine the ways in which sexuality connects to nature and the environment. While Parkins focuses on Carpenter’s life, it is also useful to consider how Carpenter and Merrill’s lifestyle is echoed by the presence of nature in Maurice, as well as the ways in which nature influences the characters and their relationships. This can be done using the theory of queer ecology to provide new insights into the novel’s perspective on queerness. Maurice can also be seen as a precursor to queer ecological theory due to the entanglement of queerness and nature in the text. In Maurice, Forster repeatedly associates heterosexuality with society and homosexuality with nature, challenging the dominant ideas of heteronormativity and homophobia in English society at the time. Whereas homosexuality was often seen as unnatural by English society, Forster’s association of homosexuality with nature implies that it is, in fact, natural and should not be criminalized or condemned. By linking boundaries between nature and society with boundaries between heterosexuality and queerness, and by showing the way these boundaries can become blurred, Maurice demonstrates that the parts of nature that are deemed ideal for one society are not the full picture of what is actually natural.