Maurice Hall is brave, so declares his friends at school. ‘A great mistake—he wasn’t brave: he was afraid of the dark. But no one knew this.’

In Edwardian England, Maurice grows up in the suburban upper middle class, with a bright, friendly face, and a good build, although he is not too colossal at games nor at schoolwork. As a boy, he has a distinct sense that he’s being lied to, when his teacher, drawing diagrams on the sand, explains to him the sacrosanct matter of sex. While at his next school, he moves in a most tormenting darkness. What his subconscious hints at makes him believe it’s a lone curse that’s befallen him: a dream, wherein he plays football with a naked George, once a garden boy for the Halls. And a second dream, which speaks to him of a friend whom he does not find in waking. To conceal his mind full of carnal thoughts—his mind which he believes to be most vile, to present himself as a rather empty creature, he’s unkind to his sisters and, because he believes school necessitates it, unkind to his schoolfellows, even the boys therein around whom ‘he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly, and be unable to work.’

Once in Cambridge however, Maurice discovers that in leading others to see he’s dimensionless, he’s been deceiving himself about their nature. People are alive, he sees, with real insides, not vile as his own but insides all the same. And now he softens. It was against his nature to be cruel. He finds Risley, his senior, to be a man with an eccentric inside. Upon meeting him, Maurice, still in undiminished, inarticulable darkness, feels not a want of him as a friend, but that he might be able to help him in some way. And it is in search of him one evening that Maurice Hall meets Clive Durham, and finds himself dwarfed by an intellect which bares his own pretenses, thereby igniting both admiration and self-doubt. Over the terms, he feels the growing intimacy of their friendship, and, to impress Clive, bluffs about Christ’s doctrines to demonstrate that he thinks too. When Clive challenges his beliefs, his defense falls short, but he scarcely minds it, as all this successfully lets Clive maintain an interest in him. The reason why he cares for this interest Maurice desists asking himself. But he does face it, in a most agonizing revelation showing him the beauty he could have had, after Clive has professed his love for him, and he’s acted coldly: ‘Durham! a rotten notion really—’. He faces that he loves, has always loved, men.

Maurice is lifted out of the darkness. He now reciprocates love to his lover: he kisses him. Emboldened, he cuts lectures the next day to roam with Clive, heedless of the Dean’s call, and refuses to apologise to any authority demanding it, for Maurice has now grasped the truth and cannot withdraw, he now sees the world’s double standard: if it were a girl he’d gone out with—since everyone cuts lectures—no one would’ve cared about an apology. And foolishly Maurice believes his relationship with Clive can live without bending to the world. Invited to Penge by Clive, Maurice marvels at the grandeur but remains blind to the positive impression he’s made on the Durhams, for at all times his gaze is solely for Clive, even though he still doesn’t comprehend all of Clive’s intellect: ‘Maurice did not interrupt: it was all charming nonsense to him.’ Even though their relationship, albeit tender and harmonious, is more chaste than sensual thanks to Clive, Maurice happily obliges. When Clive is down with influenza, he happily cares for him, before—to Maurice’s disgust—a nurse is insisted on. Catching himself naked in the mirror one night, he sees a body wrought for two, with its strength no longer at odds with his soul. But all this is shadowed by his concern over Clive’s growing annoyance at him. Maurice’s constitution is slow, but it is also patient, and it can impart a most profound, unwavering love to his beloved. And when this beloved returns from Greece without having responded to his letter, he attempts to ease Clive’s troubles: ‘One ought to talk, talk, talk … You can’t trust anyone else. You and I are outlaws.’ And in a violent ending, he learns Clive is willing to love not him but women from now on, Maurice learns he no longer has one who will take and give this love. He no longer has a friend.

Now a stockbroker as his late father, Maurice descends once again to loneliness, hoping at first Clive, apologising or not, will return, and Maurice will apologise. He turns once again unkind, falsely accusing his sister, Ada, of making advances to, and thus repelling Clive. Dreams from his school years visit him. And one day his moribundity strikes him so, he really sees nothing that should deter him from ending himself. But this gloom softens him too. He tries to mend things with his sisters, albeit indifferent to their unforgiveness.

Soon as he learns that Clive’s getting married, he briefly chances upon Dr Barry’s young nephew, and mistakes him for a second Clive, and though reveals nothing, later meditates on the feeling he harboured toward him, understanding it didn’t bear any resemblance to his love for Clive. Understanding, with much self-disgust, that it was purely lust. This, joined with an experience in an empty carriage where an old man nearly assaults him, and he knocks him down and sees in the man’s ‘disgusting and dishonourable old age his own’—impresses on him an utter need to find a way out of his homosexuality. He confesses to Dr. Barry, in terror, that he’s ‘an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort’. The verdict is ‘Rubbish!’ He protests anguished, ‘It’s not rubbish to me’, but asks too, ‘Am I diseased? If I am, I want to be cured’.

Invited to a now married Clive’s Penge, Maurice finds himself still hoping for something from Clive. But after receiving a welcome uncoloured of the past, his care for him readily shrinks. Desperate for a cure, he consults a hypnotist. Yet he thinks back and forth to the little encounters with Scudder, the gamekeeper at Penge—all unimportant meetings, all Maurice tries to dump, but, on suffering a nightmare because of the hypnosis, he finds himself outside in the night, desiring to go into the woods outside Penge, before questioning the use of that desire, and retiring to his bed. When Alec Scudder steps out from the woods and into his room, Maurice yields to his love.

‘Did you ever dream you’d a friend, Alec? … Someone to last your whole life and you his.’

The night’s union makes Maurice warm as much as discomforted—Alec is emigrating soon. And although during the cricket match while batting with him, he feels a distinct sense of unity, Maurice misinterprets his behaviour after the match as impertinence, and flees Penge, asking Clive guardedly about the nature and class of Alec, fearing the night’s events might be used against him. When on returning to London he receives Alec’s letters, asking him to come to his boathouse, he’s more convinced he’ll be blackmailed if he responds. These misreadings occur solely because Maurice has internalised society’s verdict on Class as he has its verdict on Homosexuality: ‘The feeling that can impel a gentleman towards a person of lower class stands self-condemned.’ He ventures to name this too, as lust, ending up unconvinced. And it isn’t until they meet that he’s out of his muddle. He confronts his prejudice. In the British Museum, even though Alec actually blackmails him now for not responding or going, Maurice isn’t troubled—not because of naivety, but because of a quiet certainty. Though he does get indignant, because of Alec’s unwisdom: ‘the police always back my sort against yours’. After their dispute recedes, and each falls back on his care for the other, Maurice sees it for what it is now, which is not lust. He implores Alec to stay on in England, wills even to dump his own job in the city for living with him will require that: ‘You can do anything once you know what it is.’ When nonetheless Alec deems it foolish, Maurice, convinced that loneliness will always be certain for him, goes to see his ship off, where, meeting his family, believes they’re better suited to make Alec happy than he ever will be. Life reemerges when he sees Alec has stayed. Set for the boathouse, he encounters Clive one final time, and in the face of advice and concern, recounts defiantly about him and Alec, then severs that old tie forever, not out of anger, but out of a will to keep the old isolated from the new.

In the boathouse, Maurice finds his friend. In being curious amidst conformity, he’s found the truth, and in knowing the truth amidst threat, he’s embraced it firmly. And so, Maurice Hall is brave.

Thank you to Chelsea Allen for writing a wonderful character arc description.

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