Maurice

Sleep is a prominent motif in Maurice, intersecting with themes of sexuality and personal growth in ways that might initially seem contradictory. Before Maurice realizes his sexual orientation, the novel often describes him as sleeping:

All which [his adolescent sexual urges], if it can be understood, took place in a trance. Maurice had fallen asleep in the Valley of the Shadow, far beneath the peaks of either range, and knew neither this nor that his school-fellows were sleeping likewise (24).

This is a common figure of speech even today; the phrase “sexual awakening” implies that the person experiencing it wasn’t previously conscious of their desires. In Maurice, however, this unconsciousness actually coincides with Maurice’s first sexual stirrings: the dream about George, and the dream about a “friend.”

Sleep is therefore both a metaphor for Maurice’s lack of self-knowledge and a state that facilitates greater self-knowledge. This is one of the areas where the novel’s debt to Freud is clearest; Freud argues that one of the stages of a child’s psychosexual development is a “latency phase” in which sexual desire seems absent but is in fact channeled into non-sexual pursuits. Freud’s 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams is also relevant, since it suggests that dreams are one of the ways repressed or unconscious urges and wishes manifest themselves. Even asleep, Maurice is therefore progressing towards greater awareness of his desires, and the ability to integrate them into waking life. This is especially clear in the twin passages describing the beginnings of Maurice's relationships with Clive and Alec; in each case, the relationship starts with one or the other man calling out for the other while asleep.

Maurice’s cultural and historical context are key to the role sickness plays as a motif. In the 19th century, Western society had begun to think of being gay less as a behavior and more as a tendency—that is, as a trait some people possessed even if they never engaged in sex. This shift coincided with medicalization, as gay desire increasingly came to be seen as a psychological disorder that could potentially be “cured.” Maurice himself has difficulty accepting this idea—his sexuality is so integral to his identity that he feels “body and soul would be violated” by changing it (170)—but it’s influential enough that he approaches two doctors and a hypnotist about his feelings.

These consultations go nowhere, and Maurice ultimately suggests that variation in sexual orientation is normal, and can only be judged with reference to individual predisposition: “Scudder, why do you think it’s ‘natural’ to care both for women and men? […] It isn’t natural for me. I have really got to think that ‘natural’ only means oneself” (222). Maurice underscores this point by framing the supposedly more “natural” orientation—heterosexuality—as itself arising from disease; Clive’s desire for women “[comes] during illness—possibly through illness” (118), and Maurice struggles to see it as anything other than a lingering symptom. It’s of course debatable how genuine Clive's change is, but the idea that it emerges “through illness” is significant either way. If sickness can also produce “normal” sexuality, it’s not a useful way of describing gay attraction, but simply a reflection of the fact that both disease and sexuality are bodily experiences: “It humiliated [Clive], 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” (118).

Sickness is also closely related in the novel to two other ideas associated with being gay: sterility and death. Although Maurice accepts his sexual orientation relatively easily, he remains distressed about never having children. His feelings seem to lie less in affection for children per se than in a desire for the symbolic immortality children provide; he “[thinks] seldom about disease and death, but […] with strong disapproval” (110) and feels “immense sadness” at the thought that he and his lover will “vanish utterly” after death (97). Clive offers no alternative to these fears, and in fact reinforces them by rationalizing love between men intellectually, and in terms of Ancient Greece: “The stories of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, of Phaedus, of the Theban Band were well enough for those whose hearts were empty, but no substitute for life” (110-11). It isn’t until Maurice meets Alec that he’s able to shake these associations by experiencing a kind of love that is living and creative without being procreative.

The motorbike and sidecar Maurice’s grandfather gives him represent his relationship with Clive. The two take the bike on an impromptu countryside excursion, which, in its exhilarating and transgressive nature, mirrors their feelings for one another: “They became a cloud of dust, a stench, and a roar to the world, but the air they breathed was pure, and all the noise they heard was the long drawn cheer of the wind. They cared for no one, they were outside humanity” (76). This depiction of ecstatic unity has sexual overtones, but it is ultimately misleading; Clive and Maurice never consummate their relationship, and eventually part ways entirely. The motorbike’s fate foreshadows this, since it breaks down during the ride and has to be abandoned.

Alec’s repeated requests for Maurice to meet him in the boathouse are symbolically significant. The boathouse is Alec’s favorite place at Penge; it’s also under his care as gamekeeper, and therefore “belongs” to him in the same way Maurice’s room “belongs” to him. The requests therefore assume the equality of the two men, despite their different social classes; since Alec has visited Maurice’s room, it’s only fair for Maurice to visit Alec’s boathouse.

The boathouse is also a counterpoint to the Normannia—the ship Alec plans to take to Argentina. As a place to store boats, the boathouse would seem to imply stasis, whereas the ship suggests movement and journeys. Figuratively, however, the opposite is true; traveling to Argentina is the safe and conventional choice for Alec, whereas remaining with Maurice is a symbolic voyage into the unknown.

Maurice and Clive meet at Cambridge, and for Clive especially, their relationship becomes defined by it; when Maurice visits Penge, for example, Clive tells him he arranged their rooms “as like college as [he] could manage” (88). This proves revealing, not least because Clive eventually comes to view their relationship (much like college) as a stepping stone on the way to full adulthood. Cambridge also encapsulates Clive’s intellectualism, which is another fault-line in the relationship; Maurice isn’t satisfied with the abstract, platonic romance Clive substitutes for physical love. Finally, Cambridge’s long history and elite reputation associate it with the English class system, and in particular with the upper classes who historically attended it. It is therefore part of the society Maurice leaves behind when he chooses to be with Alec, whereas Clive continues to cling to it until the end of his life, when he imagines “his friend […] beckoning to him, clothed in the sun, and shaking out the scents and sounds of the May term” (246).