In Maurice, sacrifice is associated with the highest form of love and is presented as a defining factor of what it means to be human. If one is incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the novel suggests, then they are missing out on genuine love and are thus not living a full life.
When Maurice first goes to public school at Sunnington, he has a dream in which a face he can hardly make out says, “That is your friend.” The dream fills him with tenderness. He thinks that he would die for such a friend and would allow that friend to die for him, underlining the idea that close relationships entail a certain willingness to embrace sacrifice. Initially, Maurice tries to interpret this “friend” as a symbol of Christ. When that interpretation fails to persuade him, though, Maurice looks for this friend in the material world. He first finds a version of that friend in Clive. When Clive abandons him, forcing Maurice to confront the absence of the spiritual kind of love he has been looking for, he is cast so deeply into loneliness that he contemplates suicide. He ultimately finds solace, though, when he falls in love with Alec. In Alec, Maurice finds someone for whom he will give up his station in life, his career, and his family, and Alec reciprocates these sacrifices.
In contrast, Clive tells both his wife, Anne, and himself a lie, insisting that he is heterosexual when, in reality, it seems quite clear that he is attracted to men. In doing so, Clive makes a sacrifice of sorts, but not the kind that leads to a rewarding romantic partnership: he sacrifices his romantic life in order to fit into a heteronormative society. He thus ensures his own unhappiness while Maurice does the opposite, sacrificing his public image in a homophobic society in order to find genuine happiness with his lover. In turn, the novel intimates that, while sacrifice can enrich certain relationships, this is only the case when the sacrifice itself is in service of a rewarding and genuine romantic partnership in the first place.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Love and Sacrifice ThemeTracker
Love and Sacrifice Quotes in Maurice
To love a noble woman, to protect and serve her—this, he told the little boy, was the crown of life… “It all hangs together—all—and God’s in heaven. All’s right with the world. Male and female! Ah wonderful!”
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.”
During this Lent term Maurice came out as a theologian. It was not humbug entirely. He believed that he believed, and felt genuine pain when anything he was accustomed to met criticism—the pain that masquerades among the middle classes as Faith. It was not Faith, being inactive… it didn’t exist till opposition touched it, when it ached like a useless nerve.
“You’ve read the Symposium? … It’s all in there—not meat for babes, of course, but you ought to read it this vac.”
No more was said at the time, but he was free of another subject, and one that he had never mentioned to any living soul. He hadn’t known it could be mentioned, and when Durham did so in the middle of the sunlit court a breath of liberty touched 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!”
It was all so plain now. He had lied. He phrased it “been fed upon lies,” but lies are the natural food of boyhood, and he had eaten greedily … he would not deceive himself so much. He would not—and this was the test—pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved me and had always loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.
So deeply had Clive become one with the beloved that he began to loathe himself. His whole philosophy of life broke down, and the sense of sin was reborn in its ruins, and crawled along corridors … He was damned.
When they parted it was in the ordinary way: neither had an impulse to say anything special. The whole day had been ordinary. Yet it had never come before to either of them, nor was it to be repeated.
“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—”
Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
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 …
He descended the theatre wearily. Who could help anything? … μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον, sighed the actors in this very place two thousand years ago. Even that remark, though further from vanity than most, was vain.
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.
How happy normal people made their lives! On how little had he existed for twenty-four years!
They looked at one another for a moment before beginning new lives. “What an ending,” he sobbed, “what an ending.”
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?
“I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.” […]
“Now listen to me, Maurice, never let that evil hallucination, that temptation from the devil, occur to you again.”
The voice impressed him, and was not Science speaking?
He wanted a woman to secure him socially and diminish his lust and bear children. He never thought of that woman as a positive joy … for during the long struggle he had forgotten what Love is, and sought not happiness at the hands of Mr Lasker Jones, but repose.
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.
