Previous
Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Maurice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sacrifice
Sexual Orientation, Homophobia, and Self-Acceptance
Masculinity and Patriarchy
Religion
Class
Summary
Analysis
Clive sits in the Acropolis, but he only sees fading light and a dead land. He thinks the past is as absent of meaning as the present, a place where cowards go to seek shelter. He has written a letter to Maurice: “Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it.”
Ancient Greece—the Ancient Greece Clive has thought of as a kind of utopia for its acceptance of gay relationships—seems like a “dead land” to Clive. Notably, when he writes to Maurice to tell him that he is no longer attracted to men, he says he has “become normal,” showing the kind of entrenched homophobia that, in some ways, Clive seems to be retreating into, seeking shelter in accepted heteronormative relationships instead of taking the risk to continue being with Maurice.
Themes
