Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Maurice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sacrifice
Sexual Orientation, Homophobia, and Self-Acceptance
Masculinity and Patriarchy
Religion
Class
Summary
Analysis
Clive Durham grew up deeply religious with an acute sense of right and wrong. He knew from a young age that he had a desire “obviously from Sodom.” He wondered why he, of all Christians, had been punished with it. Life became torture at 16. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going through and ultimately experienced a breakdown, which caused him to leave school. During his convalescence, he found himself falling in love with another man. It was hopeless, he thought.
Up to this point, the novel has been told in a third-person narration, mostly from Maurice’s perspective. This chapter switches to a third-person recounting of Clive’s childhood and upbringing. Notably, while Clive acknowledged to himself that he was gay at a younger age than Maurice, he still struggled with accepting himself, especially in the face of the homophobia of the church he was brought up in.
Themes
Clive first encountered a different manner of thought in Phaedrus. Surely Plato couldn’t be saying what he seemed to be saying, Clive thought at first, though upon further reading he determined that he was. And that gave him an alternative to the Bible, Plato’s reasoning gliding past Christianity without directly opposing it. Clive decided “to make the most of what I have,” not to wish he were different or someone else. Eventually, Clive felt compelled, though, to abandon Christianity. Clive wished Christianity would compromise with him, but the Church’s interpretation opposed him and who he knew himself to be.
Clive is again shown here to be grounded and intellectually curious. While Maurice first finds inspiration that a different path might be available through a person—through Risley—Clive’s self-exploration is grounded in books and scholarship. Even when it comes to the church, Clive does not especially want to abandon Christianity but feels compelled to once he is clear that the arguments put forth by the church are unbending and will not accommodate who he is.
Themes
At Cambridge, Clive developed feelings for other undergraduates, and in his second year, he met Risley, who was also “that way.” Risley shared that secret rather freely, though Clive did not reciprocate. He didn’t especially like Risley or Risley’s friends, but he was glad to have met other people like him, and he found their frankness refreshing. Hall was only one of several men who Clive had feelings for. Hall was “bourgeois, unfinished and stupid,” but Clive sensed there must be something deeper there, and he liked being thrown about by a strong and dashing boy. But Hall liked women; you could tell that just by looking at him.
The novel clarifies here that Risley, while not out of the closet in a contemporary sense, shared the fact that he was gay “rather freely,” while Clive doesn’t. This passage is also one of the first instances in which the reader gets information about Maurice from a perspective other than Maurice’s own. At first, Clive thinks Maurice is “bourgeois, unfinished and stupid.” This assessment contains within it a critique of Maurice’s class status and also of his unwillingness to interrogate his own feelings and beliefs.
Themes
Toward the end of the first term after they met, though, Clive became certain that Hall loved him. Knowing that he did, Clive began to let his guard drop and then confessed his love. Hall’s rejection proved that he must loathe Clive. Hall said it himself. Hall was just a healthy, normal Englishman who never knew what Clive had been feeling. Clive’s whole worldview shattered. He’d never risk becoming close with a young man again for fear that he might corrupt him.
Even though Clive knew from a young age that he was gay, he still struggled with deeply internalized homophobia. When Maurice rejected him, he didn’t suffer as much from the heartbreak as from the thought that he might have “corrupted” Maurice—that he contaminated Maurice by being attracted to him.
Themes
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Clive is in the midst of this upheaval when good, blundering Maurice comes to comfort him. And then, as if in a dream, Clive whispers Hall’s name, “Maurice.” Clive says he loves him, and Maurice says that he loves him back. The two kiss, and then Maurice slips back out the window.
The novel shifts from a recounting of Clive’s past to the novel’s present, which has been, up to this point, told from Maurice’s perspective. The novel picks back up after Maurice comes to Clive’s room, tells Clive he loves him, and then leaves when Clive doesn’t believe him. Now, when Clive says Maurice’s name, Maurice feels the tranquility of his Sunnington dream again and goes back through Clive’s window. The two tell each other they love one another and then kiss.
Themes
