Maurice Hall is preparing to enter public school at Sunnington when the assistant schoolmaster at his current prep school, Mr. Ducie, pulls him aside for a talk. Because Maurice has recently lost his father to pneumonia, Mr. Ducie sees it as his obligation to guide Maurice into adulthood. In his talk, Mr. Ducie discusses “the mystery of sex,” and says that the union of men and women allows the world to continue. Maurice cannot relate, and at the end of the conversation, he tells Mr. Ducie that he thinks he “shall not marry.”
At Sunnington, Maurice is an average student at an average school. He has two dreams there, one in which he follows a blank figure who turns into George, the former gardener at his mother’s house, who Maurice was infatuated with before George left the job. In the other dream, a face he can barely see says, in a voice he can hardly hear, “That is your friend.” The dream fills Maurice with beauty and tenderness, and he knows, deep down, that he wants to find that person in his life, a friend for whom he would sacrifice everything and who would sacrifice everything for him.
After finishing at Sunnington, where Maurice finds himself popular without fully understanding why, he goes on to study at Cambridge. At Cambridge, he continues to be friends with other graduates of Sunnington at first, not venturing too far outside of the life he has always known. That changes when he meets Risley, an irreverent cousin of the Dean of the college who makes “exaggerated gestures” when he speaks. When Maurice goes to Risley’s room to try and talk to him again, he finds Clive Durham instead. Clive and Maurice begin a close friendship, walking arm and arm together through campus and stroking each other’s hair, none of which arouses the attention of their friends. Clive pushes Maurice to examine and question his beliefs, and Maurice soon renounces his Christian faith. After months of this kind of intimacy, Clive tells Maurice that he loves him. Maurice is horrified and says that he won’t hold it against Clive because he knows he doesn’t mean it, and he must never speak of it again. Clive leaves and slams the door before Maurice finishes talking.
After the dissolution of their friendship, Maurice is devastated. He feels himself going mad, and, at night, is overtaken by sobs to the point that he can’t sleep. In his pain and anguish, Maurice begins to see that he was lied to while he was growing up and that he has accepted those lies as truth. After this realization, he decides he has to save himself and Clive from unnecessary pain, resolving to tell Clive that he loves him. When he does, Clive first thinks that Maurice is just trying to be nice, but then he accepts that Maurice is telling the truth.
The two become a couple—though, at Clive’s insistence, they kiss but do not have sex for the course of their relationship. Maurice skips lectures to spend time with Clive, and, after he acts impertinently to the Dean, Maurice is expelled from college. He goes back home and wonders if he would have received the same punishment if he had been observed spending so much time with a woman instead of a man.
While Maurice does not go back to college, he becomes a stockbroker with his father’s former partner. Over the next two years, Clive and Maurice share abundant happiness. But then Clive travels alone to Greece and has a realization. He writes to Maurice to tell him that he has “become normal—like other men” and that he does not love him anymore—he is now attracted to women.
Clive’s abandonment wrecks Maurice. He doesn’t know how to proceed with his life and begins contemplating suicide. He gradually gives up on the idea, but the end of his suicidal ideation does not lead to a renewed sense of vitality. He goes through life dimmed, lonely, and miserable, practicing what he calls “self-discipline.” His mother receives a letter from Mrs. Durham, saying that Clive is engaged to be married to a woman named Anne.
Maurice, unable to think of other options, decides to see a doctor, hoping that he might “cure himself” of his attraction to men. He visits his neighbor, Dr. Barry. When Maurice tells Dr. Barry that he is “an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” Dr. Barry says, “Never let that temptation from the devil […] occur to you again.” After Dr. Barry’s reaction, Maurice decides to see a hypnotist. He attends multiple sessions, though ultimately the hypnotist tells Maurice that hypnotism won’t work for him and that he would be better off moving to a country where homosexuality is legal, like France or Italy.
Maurice, at Clive’s invitation, goes to visit Clive at his family’s estate, Penge. During his visit, Maurice goes in a group to shoot rabbits, and they are accompanied by Penge’s gamekeeper, Alec Scudder, who is planning to emigrate to Argentina in three weeks. At first, Maurice thinks Alec is rude for turning down the tip he tried to give him, believing that Alec rejected it because it was too small. Alec later apologizes, though, for the misunderstanding. On a different night, Maurice wakes up to hear himself yell out, “Come!”, and moments later Alec arrives, asking Maurice if he called for him. The two spend the night together before Alec leaves for work in the morning.
Maurice returns to town, and, when Alec writes him asking to meet again at the boathouse at Penge, Maurice does not respond. Alec continues to write letters, and the letters take a threatening turn, as Alec insists that he “knows something” that Maurice wouldn’t want others to know. Maurice thinks that Alec is trying to blackmail him and decides to meet him to resolve the issue at the British Museum. When they meet, though, Maurice thinks that the physical love they shared—followed by abandonment—led Alec to act rashly out of fear. He asks Alec to spend the night with him, and the two go to a hotel. When they wake up, Maurice asks Alec to give up the plan he has formulated to go to Argentina, asking him to stay in England so they can spend their lives together. Alec says he cannot do it, and Maurice thinks that love has failed.
On the day of Alec’s departure for Argentina, Maurice goes to Southampton to see off his ship. When the departure time comes and Alec still hasn’t arrived, Maurice knows what it means. He sets off for the boathouse at Penge, the place where they were initially supposed to meet, and finds Alec waiting for him. The two decide to renounce the lives they have lived up to that point so that they can be with each other. Later, Maurice goes to find Clive, who is busy with work. Maurice tells him that he and Alec are planning to be together and to be together forever. When Clive tries to tell Maurice that he can help him get out of this situation, Maurice laughs and walks out the door. Maurice and Clive never see each other again, and Clive is left alone, trying to come up with a lie he will tell Anne to smooth things over if she has any questions about why Maurice visited.
