Depictions of Gay Desire in Maurice

Sexuality and Stigma in Cinema: Gay and Transgender Representation

According to the sociological theorist Erving Goffman, to bear a 'stigma' is to viewed by society as abnormal. "Stigmatized people are those that do not have full social acceptance and are constantly striving to adjust their social identities: physically deformed people, mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc." (Crossman 1). Until relatively recently, people in Western society who possessed same-sex desire were stigmatized as 'homosexuals' and deemed to be deviant. The films Maurice and the Naked Civil Servant show two different responses to stigmatization: in Maurice, the hero appears to do all he can to avoid living under such a stigmatized status while in Naked Civil Servant, the hero Quentin Crisp quite blatantly and proudly uses his stigmatized identity as a badge of honor. However, both men ultimately strive to reconfigure society's stigmatized attitude into something more positive and it may be Maurice who is offers the more radical vision of the two in his challenge of the norms of his society.

Maurice is a relatively conventional man who first discovers his desire for men in his relationship with his college friend Clive. Clive initially pursues Maurice but the two are very different: Clive is afraid of physically expressing his love and wants to keep their passion 'Platonic' and idealistic while Maurice, the less intellectual of the two, does not. It is implied that Clive, anticipating a great political career and inheritance, does not see becoming physically intimate in a stigmatized fashion as keeping with his public image. He can psychologically tolerate homosexual passion if it has the trappings of intellectual 'Greek' desire (although during one scene when students are seen reading ancient Greek, the professor refers to same-sex desire as the "unspeakable vice of the Greeks").

Clive eventually rejects Maurice and tries to 'pass for normal' by marrying. Maurice makes a few abortive attempts to change during the film such as when he goes to a hypnotist and a doctor to whom he confesses he is an "unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort." However, Maurice ultimately chooses group association (albeit of a covert kind) over the forced assimilation practiced by Clive. Unlike Clive, Maurice refuses to marry and to pretend to be heterosexual. The film concludes with Maurice not only crossing sexual barriers but also social barriers and leaving his position in society to run off with Alec the gamekeeper. Maurice's happiness at the end of the film is clearly contrasted with Clive's cold and emotionally stunted relationship with his wife Anne.

Goffman noted that one of the main sources of stigma is "blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will" (Crossman 1). Stigmatized people have a number of available responses: they can conceal their stigma like Clive, masking it and attempting to draw attention to other aspects of their character such as wealth and privilege which are not stigmatized. But as Clive finds, "hiding, however, can lead to further isolation, depression, and anxiety and when they do go out in public, they can in turn feel more self-conscious and afraid to display anger or other negative emotions" (Crossman 1). He cannot neatly compartmentalize his desire for Maurice and lead a full life.

Another possible response to stigma, of course, is to actively embrace the stigma as part of one's identity. This is seen in The Naked Civil Servant, a film about the real-life gay activist Quentin Crisp. Crisp is openly flamboyant, dying his hair and wearing women's clothing. Since he cannot hope to 'pass' as normal, he adopts a posture which completely mocks any attempts to do so. His positive embrace of a stigmatized identity suggests that there is nothing 'bad' about being stigmatized as gay at all.

Crisp's effeminacy is very different from the sexual identity of both Clive and Maurice who clearly identify with men even while they also desire men. It should also be noted that Crisp's posturing is also different from transsexuals as famously depicted in the film The Crying Game. In the film, one of the central characters named Dil is such a convincing transgender woman that her lover thinks she is a woman until he tries to go to bed with her. When she is forced to cut her hair and wear male clothes to hide from the IRA in the film, Dil experiences this as a profound disruption in her sense of self, despite the fact she is physically male.

Ironically, because Dil can pass as female and tries to do so as a transgender woman she experiences less overt stigma than does Crisp who is openly harassed when he dyes his hair bright red or wears makeup. Crisp's status in an indeterminate gender category causes him to be more stigmatized than a transgendered person or someone whose gayness is not proclaimed to the world in a homophobic society. However, even in Maurice, shame and stigmatization is still possible when a gay man is 'caught,' given that homosexual acts are legal crimes. Simply to be openly gay puts someone outside of the pale of society, regardless of the persona the individual adopts.

Goffman notes that obviously stigmatized people, if they cannot or do not wish to conceal their stigmatized status, have a number of tools at their disposal, one of which is humor. It is this humor, liberally adopted by Crisp, which enables him to survive and to actually make a living as a wit and raconteur. "The stigmatized should try to help reduce the tension by breaking the ice and using humor or even self-mockery" (Crossman 1). For Maurice and Clive, however, there is no self-mockery and Dil regards her status as a woman as something serious, not the subject of humor. However, even sometimes for Crisp the expected posturing of the stigmatized that the "stigmatized should either ignore or patiently refute the offence and views behind it" occasionally becomes too much to bear (Crossman 1). Crisp says when put on trial for his conduct: "my appearance sets me apart from the rest of humanity. It is not easy for me to make human contact -- with strangers it is almost impossible." For Maurice and Clive, human contact and social respectability is available, but only at the price of total concealment. Clive chooses social approbation while Maurice chooses to cast away the conventional trappings of social approval in a quest for his 'true self.'