Maurice

Intrigued by Risley, Maurice decides to visit him. However, when he goes to Risley’s room, a man named Clive Durham answers, explaining that Risley is out. The two chat about their musical preferences as Durham searches for a piece of music he’s come to borrow.

Maurice eventually leaves, but Durham catches up with him as he returns to his own campus. He helps Durham carry his piano rolls to the room of a classmate who owns a pianola and listens to Durham play a few favorite pieces. Durham and the classmate—Fetherstonhaugh—also discuss Sophocles, which both impresses and intimidates Maurice: “Fetherstonhaugh was a great person, both in brain and brawn, and had a trenchant and copious manner. But Durham listened unmoved, shook out the falsities and approved the rest. What hope for Maurice who was nothing but falsities?” (39).

In his discomfort, Maurice abruptly stands and leaves. However, he pauses in the courtyard outside, and calls out to Durham when he sees him leaving, awkwardly asking if he’d like tea. Durham declines, but offers Maurice a glass of whiskey. After finishing this, Maurice resumes his pacing before finally retiring to bed. He spends the next days and weeks carefully establishing a friendship with Durham.

Durham returns from winter break upset with his family; his mother had seemed to accept his agnosticism the prior summer but grew angry when he refused to attend Christmas services. Durham asks Maurice for advice, but Maurice doesn’t have any, and instead teases Durham by grabbing at his hair. This segues into playfighting, after which the two become physically closer: “When they sat it was nearly always in the same position—Maurice in a chair, and Durham at his feet, leaning against him” (45).

Hoping to impress Durham, Maurice begins trying to discuss Christianity with him. Durham initially avoids the subject, but finally begins presenting his arguments against Christianity; he says he normally avoids proselytizing out of respect for others’ beliefs, but that he doesn’t consider Maurice’s beliefs sincere. Maurice protests this characterization, and the two argue about it several times. Nevertheless, Maurice eventually concedes that his “belief” is hollow and becomes an agnostic.

One day, Durham and Maurice attend a Greek translation class, during which Mr. Cornwallis tells the reader to skip over “a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”—i.e. being gay (51). Afterwards, Durham complains that Cornwallis is omitting a foundational part of Athenian culture. He tells Maurice he should read Plato’s Symposium over the coming break.

Over break, Maurice writes to Durham frequently and tells his family about him. He also informs his mother he will no longer attend church, but to his disappointment, no one cares when he skips Easter services: “This disgusted him; it made him look at society with new eyes. Did society, while professing to be so moral and sensitive, really mind anything?” (53).

Meanwhile, a friend of Ada’s (Maurice’s sister) named Miss Olcott visits, and Maurice begins flirting with her: “[I]t seemed the proper thing to do. She responded. He put his muscles at her service by taking her out in his new side-car. He sprawled at her feet” (54). The more attention he pays to her, however, the colder she seems; when Maurice finally takes her hand, she recoils outright. Maurice is confused, but soon forgets the episode. His life is otherwise going smoothly; he has begun to advise his mother on household decisions, and has a position lined up at his father’s old firm.

Maurice feels awkward and unintelligent the first time he sees Durham after break. When asked, he says his vacation went badly, and finds that he means it. Durham asks whether the problem involved Miss Olcott, and Maurice says that he never liked her. Durham embraces him, and the two lie next to one another in Maurice’s room until a shout startles them apart.

The next time Durham sees Maurice, he draws him aside and expresses hope that, having now read the Symposium, Maurice will understand what he’s saying; he then blurts out that he loves Maurice. Maurice is shocked, and he tells Durham that he shouldn’t say “rotten” and untrue things (59). Durham runs to his room.

Maurice soon regrets his reaction to Durham’s confession. Publicly, they behave as though nothing happened, but when Maurice drives Durham home after a tennis match, neither man speaks; Maurice spends the following night crying, and even smashes some of his possessions in his grief. Maurice is calmer the next morning, and at last acknowledges the truth of his sexual orientation: “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 men and always had loved them. […] Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this” (62).

Maurice’s realization matures him: “Hitherto—if human beings can be estimated—he had not been worth anyone’s affection, but conventional, petty, treacherous to others, because to himself. Now he had the highest gift to offer” (63). He resolves to set things right with Durham but struggles to catch him alone. When he does, he accuses Durham of cruelty; he was confused, he explains, but now wants to discuss Durham’s declaration. Durham is reluctant. He believes Maurice’s unhappiness stems only from disdain and guilt, and tells him he has no reason to apologize; Durham simply “mistook [Maurice’s] ordinary friendliness” (65). Maurice insists that he loves Durham, but Durham won't listen, and Maurice eventually storms off.

Maurice spends a miserable night in the courtyard. At dawn, he realizes that since Durham is hurting, he will have to be the first to act; he climbs through Durham’s window, waking him up, and lies down beside him.