Maurice: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

The next term, Maurice and Durham pick up where they left off, though, if anything, the vacation has drawn them closer. Durham tells Maurice about how his mother took it when he told her that he wasn’t Christian and how it came up again at Christmas when he decided not to receive communion. She said that he was wicked. Durham tells Maurice that he must have been pretending to like his mother, and now the lie has been shattered: he despises her. He asks Maurice for advice, but as they talk, they begin playing with each other’s hair, and the thoughts of religion and family turmoil fade into the background.

As they spend more time together, Maurice and Durham walk arm in arm through campus, and Maurice often strokes Durham’s hair, none of which attracts the attention of their friends. Maurice also has an overwhelming desire to impress Durham. While Durham is “unorthodox,” in the sense that he is a nonbeliever, Maurice feels comforted by the beliefs he grew up with. He tells Durham that he cares a lot about the Holy Trinity, and religion, which, ultimately, prompts Durham to take him to task. “It doesn’t seem to me that you have any opinions to respect,” Durham says. “They’re all second-hand tags—no, tenth-hand.”

Maurice and Durham debate the Trinity, and Maurice feels himself losing ground. He tells Durham that it may be true, that he may not believe in the Trinity, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a Christian. Instead, he believes in the essentials. Durham asks him what he means. “The Redemption,” Maurice says. But, Maurice thinks, he does not believe in the Redemption any more than the Trinity, and he fears that Durham will sense this lack of conviction. Durham responds that belief is always right, and it’s unmistakable. Each person has a belief they would die for, Durham says. But he wishes, he tells Maurice, that Maurice should find his own beliefs to die for instead of accepting ones handed down to him. Within 10 days, Maurice has given up taking communion and feels a profound dislike of Christianity.

In a translation class, Cornwallis says to omit any mention of the “unspeakable vice of the Greeks.” Afterward, Durham says that Cornwallis should lose his fellowship for that kind of academic hypocrisy. To omit mention of it, Durham says, is to omit a mainstay of Greek society. He tells Maurice that he should read the Symposium. It’s all in there, Durham says, and when he says it, Maurice feels a “breath of liberty” touch him.