Maurice still found Derby stultifying. Their home, with all its new machines, represented the ‘formula of suburban domestic stress’, he wrote. His job, secure as it was, felt like the ‘mechanical slavery of everyday employment’. Their habits were shaped by post- war austerity. They were thrifty, grew their own vegetables, threw nothing away that could be repurposed. Yes, they had a washing machine, but it wasn’t enough. ‘We knew,’ Maurice wrote later, ‘with the same certainty that Newton had for his theory about gravity, that our affluent, though mundane, life would not satisfy us forever.’"
-- Narration / Maurice (Part I Chapter 3)

Importance: This passage frames Derby as a symbol of constraint and disillusionment, where domestic comforts are oppressive rather than fulfilling. Maurice’s description links their dissatisfaction to broader post-war culture, suggesting their yearning for escape is as much generational as personal. The comparison to Newton signals an almost dogmatic certainty, foreshadowing the uncompromising choices that...