Maurice

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-19

Part 2, Chapters 20-25

Part 3, Chapters 26-32

Part 3, Chapters 33-37

Part 4, Chapters 38-46

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3, Chapters 33-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 33 Summary

Clive and Maurice’s phone conversation gives Clive hope that Maurice is willing to be friends. He views their prior relationship as a necessary step towards adulthood and wants Maurice to reach a similar realization: “But for Maurice he would never have developed into being worthy of Anne” (163).

Meanwhile, Clive basks in newlywed happiness. He initially considers revealing his relationship with Maurice to Anne, but her complete ignorance of sex prior to their wedding night dissuades him:

Secrecy suited him […] though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative, and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted (165).

Part 3, Chapter 34 Summary

In August, Maurice goes to Penge for a week. As he arrives, he notices a gamekeeper flirting with two maids.

Anne greets Maurice and shows him to tea. Clive is away canvassing, but Mrs. Durham and a rector named Mr. Borenius are present, and the group discusses politics. Maurice is dismissive of the lower classes’ plight: “I just don’t think about [the poor] except when I’m obliged. These slums, syndicalism, all the rest of it, are a public menace, and one has to do one’s little bit against them. But not for love” (169).

After tea, Maurice goes to his room. Hurt by Clive’s absence, he weighs his options and eventually arranges to telegram the hypnotist regarding an appointment.

Clive has returned by the time Maurice goes downstairs to dinner. After the meal, the group settles in the drawing-room, where a leak in the ceiling interrupts their conversation. While servants move the piano and place a basin under the hole, Clive suggests that Maurice go hunting with Pippa’s husband the following day. They agree, and Clive orders one of the servants—the gamekeeper—to ensure things are ready for them. The group then retires for the night; Maurice tries to read but can’t concentrate.

Part 3, Chapter 35 Summary

Maurice spends a boring day hunting with Archie London, but receives a telegram confirming his hypnosis appointment. Before bed, Clive visits Maurice’s room, urging him to return to Penge after his appointment the next day: “Clive felt that the visit had been a failure […] He was vexed too at forgetting that today was Maurice’s birthday—and was urgent that their guest should stop over the [cricket] match” (174). Maurice is reluctant, and he lies that his “appointment” involves a would-be fiancée. This pleases Clive, who says they’re now free to “care for [each other] in the real sense” (175); he kisses Maurice’s hand to honor their past together but clarifies that he sees that chapter of their lives as closed.

Maurice’s mind drifts after Clive leaves; at one point he startles himself by calling “Come!” aloud. He closes the window, which he had been sitting beside, and writes a statement for the hypnotist.

Part 3, Chapter 36 Summary

The next morning, Maurice and Archie wait for the gamekeeper to bring the coach; Maurice complains about the man refusing his tip, and the men discuss how to handle impertinent servants. On the ride to the station, Maurice catches a glimpse of the gamekeeper amongst some rose bushes.

Maurice nervously rereads his statement before meeting the hypnotist—Mr. Lasker-Jones—but the man’s professional demeanor reassures him. After looking at the statement, Lasker-Jones explains that 75 percent of his patients consult him for “congenital being gay” (180); of these, he says he has “cured” half. He questions Maurice about the nature of his relationship with Clive, and then begins to hypnotize him.

When Lasker-Jones judges Maurice is sufficiently under, he directs him to jump a crack in the floor and examine a portrait; though half aware that neither the crack nor the picture exists, Maurice obeys. Lasker-Jones tells him the painting depicts a beautiful young woman, but Maurice disagrees, and begins crying as he says he prefers short hair. He comes to his senses later and tells Lasker-Jones he dreamed of someone telling him he has a friend; he doesn’t remember the session, but Lasker-Jones assures him he’s suggestible. He advises Maurice to remain in the countryside until their second appointment the following week.

Part 3, Chapter 37 Summary

When Maurice returns to Penge, Clive is once again campaigning. Feeling restless, Maurice goes for a walk in the garden, where the gamekeeper—Scudder—approaches to apologize; he also tells Maurice he’s happy to see him back at Penge.

Over dinner, Maurice and Borenius discuss politics; Borenius won’t vote for either Clive (because he isn’t Christian) or the Radical candidate (who, though Christian, supports policies that might harm the Church). A servant interrupts to ask Maurice whether Scudder should prepare for him to visit the pond between cricket innings the next day. Maurice declines, but Borenius wants to speak to Scudder; Scudder is emigrating, and he’s concerned about his spiritual wellbeing.

Maurice goes for another stroll in the garden. When he returns indoors, Borenius is lamenting the fact that Scudder hasn’t been confirmed. Mrs. Durham suggests that Borenius send a letter of introduction to a local clergyman when he emigrates. Maurice retorts that he has been confirmed but doesn’t attend church, and he and Borenius argue about the Church’s responsibility for an individual’s soul. Afterwards, Maurice returns to the garden, where he encounters Scudder, and learns he’s going to Argentina.

Maurice struggles to fall asleep; when he eventually dozes, dreams of his hypnosis appointment blend with the dream of a friend, and he wakes opening the window and calling “Come!”. As he returns to bed, he hears someone ascending a ladder and climbing in his window: “[S]omeone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, ‘Sir, was you calling out for me?...Sir, I know...I know,’ and touched him” (192).

Part 3, Chapters 33-37 Analysis

Scudder’s arrival in Maurice’s room is the culmination of several of the novel’s themes. The scene parallels Maurice’s earlier entry into Clive’s bedroom almost exactly, with the obvious difference that it’s now Maurice who is calling for his lover from sleep. After this, however, the two storylines diverge; when the narrative resumes the following morning, it’s clear that Maurice and Alec (Scudder) have slept together, which Maurice and Clive never did. The addition of sex expands Maurice’s understanding of what’s possible in a relationship and begins outlining the novel’s vision of love between men.

The fact that Scudder is a servant also brings the novel’s class dynamics to a head. One of the forms classism took in turn-of-the-century England was the sexualization of the lower classes; middle and upper-class society tended to view the poor and working classes as less feeling, more impulsive, closer to nature, and, for all of these reasons, sexually available. Maurice arguably perpetuates some of these stereotypes, depicting Scudder as more openly sexual than the novel’s other characters; he first appears in an explicitly romantic context (flirting), his job aligns him with the natural world, and he’s later revealed to have slept with some of Penge’s female servants. That said, Scudder’s characterization grows more complex as the story progresses, and his portrayal in these chapters may partly reflect Maurice’s class prejudices. These are more obvious than ever, perhaps because Maurice recognizes his attraction to Scudder and is trying to resist it; while talking with Borenius, Maurice even claims that the poor are too unfeeling to “suffer as [the middle and upper classes] should in their place” (168).

Lastly, these chapters build on the idea that unconscious drives and feelings heavily influence human life. This is the entire premise of Lasker-Jones’s hypnosis sessions, which seek access to a person’s unconscious mind in order to alter it: “I shall try to send you into a trance, and if I succeed I shall make suggestions to you which will (we hope) remain, and become part of your normal state when you wake” (181). The fact that these efforts fail doesn’t change the novel’s stance on the unconscious, not least because another unconscious process is already underway while Maurice is attending his appointments: He’s falling in love with Scudder. The way the novel introduces Scudder underscores that Maurice is only semi-aware of what’s happening; Scudder first appears as an unnamed figure on the story’s periphery, then slowly grows more prominent in Maurice’s life.

The dreams Maurice has throughout the novel are another example of unconscious experience, but they’re also what distinguishes Maurice’s depiction from the conventional Freudian view. There’s a quasi-mystical dimension to Maurice’s recurring dream of “a friend,” which not only anticipates Scudder but perhaps also conjures him; Maurice’s later question about “men getting anyone in their power through dreams” seems to concern hypnosis (212) but could also imply that Maurice summoned Scudder (or vice versa) via his dreams. The idea that the unconscious might have metaphysical aspects contrasts notably with the more materialist Freudian understanding of the mind.