Maurice presents the rigid class hierarchies of 1913 England as another arbitrary social stricture that leads to discrimination and prejudice, oppressing some and inhibiting others from living authentic, fulfilling lives. Though it comes late in the novel, one of the central conflicts of Maurice is that the two lovers who hope to spend their lives together, Maurice and Alec, come from different classes. After he first sleeps with Alec, Maurice admonishes himself, telling himself that he must be with someone of his own class. Throughout the novel, Maurice often recites ruthless ideas about class that are common amongst people in his socioeconomic sphere, saying, for example, that “the poor… haven’t our feelings. They don’t suffer as we should in their place.” He also says that “poor people” are looking for love and sympathy but that they will not get it from him. These views show the prevailing attitudes of the time, as Maurice himself comes to represent the worldview of most British suburbanites. Maurice’s views also show how deeply he has internalized prejudices based on class. When he falls in love with Alec, then, he must overcome those prejudices to be with someone he truly loves, not just sacrificing his social standing and his own class, but dismantling the systemic beliefs of superiority and inferiority that have shaped and defined his ill-fitting and unfulfilled life up to that point.
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Class Quotes in Maurice
“Mr Abrahams told me to copy my father, sir.”
He whispered, “George, George.” Who was George? Nobody—just a common servant. Mother and Ada and Kitty were far more important.
In a word, he was a mediocre member of mediocre school, and left a faint and favorable impression behind… beneath it all, he was bewildered.
He scarcely saw a voice, scarcely heard a voice say, “That is your friend,” and then it was over, having filled him with beauty and taught him tenderness. He could die for such a friend, he would allow such a friend to die for him; they would make any sacrifice for each other, and count the world nothing, neither death nor distance nor crossness could part them, because “this is my friend.”
He also called upon his father’s old partner. He had inherited some business aptitude and some money, and it was settled that when he left Cambridge he should enter the firm as an unauthorized clerk; Hill and Hall, Stock Brokers. Maurice was stepping into the niche England had prepared for him.
“I knew you read the Symposium in the vac,” he said in a low voice.
Maurice felt uneasy.
“Then you understand—without me saying more—”
“How do you mean?”
Durham could not wait. People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, “I love you.”
Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul, and exclaimed, “Oh, rot!”
“A disgrace to chivalry.” He considered the accusation. If a woman had been in that side-car, if then he had refused to stop at the Dean’s bidding, would Dr Barry have required an apology from him? Surely not. He followed out this train of thought with difficulty. His brain was still feeble. But he was obliged to use it, for so much in the current speech and ideas needed translation before he could understand them.
“Well, he is his own master. This place is his. Did he tell you?”
“No.”
“Oh, Penge is his absolutely, under my husband’s will. I must move to the dower house as soon as he marries—”
He saw only dying light and a dead land. He uttered no prayer, believed in no deity, and knew that the past was devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards
Well, he had written to Maurice at last … “Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it.” The words had been written …
It humiliated him, for he had understood his soul, or, as he said, himself, ever since he was fifteen. But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable. There had been no warning—just a blind alteration of the life spirit, just an announcement, “You who loved men, will henceforward love women. Understand or not, it’s the same to me.” Whereupon he collapsed. He tried to clothe the change in reason, and understand it, in order that he might feel less humiliated: but it was of the nature of death or birth, and he failed.
Yes: the heart of his agony would be loneliness… he began to contemplate suicide. There was nothing to deter him. He had no initial fear of death, and no sense of a world beyond it, nor did he mind disgracing his family. He knew that loneliness was poisoning him, so that he grew viler as well as more unhappy. Under these circumstances, might he not cease?
He had abused his host’s confidence and defiled his house in his absence, he had insulted Mrs Durham and Anne. And when he reached home there came a worse blow; he had sinned against his family.
He faced Mr Borenius, who had lost all grasp of events. Alec had completely routed him. Mr Borenius assumed that love between two men must be ignoble, and so could not interpret what had happened. He became an ordinary person at once, his irony vanished.
He waited for a little in the alley, then returned to the house, to correct his proofs and devise some method of concealing the truth from Anne.
