On 15th Feb 2011 presented to I MA students of VOC COLLEGE

1. Iris Murdoch’s The Bell

2. Irish Murdoch
An Introduction

3. Birth
• Date of Birth 15-07-1919
• Dublin, Ireland
• Daughter of William John Hughes and Irene
Alex Richardson

4. Education
• Froebel Demonstration School
• Badminton School Bristol
• Somerville College Oxford, Read Classics
• Newnham College, Cambridge studied
Philosophy
• Fellow of St. Anne’s College

5. Marriage and After
• She married teacher and critic John Bayley in
1956
• She had no children
• She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease
• Died on 8th February 1999
• Ashes scattered in the garden of Oxford
Crematorium

6. Profession
• Assistant Principal at the Treasury, during war
• Worked with UNRRA in London Belgium and
Austria
• Egan her writing career with an evaluation of
Jean Paul Sartre
• Became a novelist with the Publication of Under
the Net in 1954

7. Awards and Honours
• Awarded CBE in 1976
• Made a DBE in 1987 New Year’s Honours List
• Gold Pen in the 1997 PEN Awards for
Distinguished Service to Literature

8. Literary Prizes
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her The
Black Prince published in 1973
• Whitbread Literary Award for Fiction for her
work The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
published in 1974
• Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea published in
1978

9. Her Writing Career
• In 1954 Under the Net was published
• It was typical of its time in giving a richly amusing view
of the Angry Young Man rushing after affluence and
seeking truth where no truth exists.
• In 1956 The Flight from the Enchanter was published.
• It was a study in cruelty and power, the sufferings of a
man who allows others to cause the suffering which he
himself cannot bear to inflict.

10. Her Writing Career
• Her works tightly constructed studies of human
relations under stress.
• Her The Sandcastle was published in 1957 and The
Bell in 1958.
• Her approach is rather intellectual than
passionate
• She depends on the symbolisms of actions and
situations

11. Her Writing Career
• Juxtaposition of the sombre and the comic
• Presents unbalanced characters incapable of
dealing with normality
• A Severed Head[1961] is the triumph of militant
woman, highly intelligent and cruel.
• The characters move and interchange
relationships in a way related to human
emotions

12. Her Writing Career
• Sex and sexual symbolism, even horror, become
more apparent in further convolutions of love
desire in her later novels.
• Some of her contemporaries are Muriel Sarah
Spark, Doris Lessing, Brigid Antonia Brophy,
Edna O’Brien et al.

13. List of Her Works
• Under the Net [1954] • The Time of the Angels
• The Flight from the [1966]
Enchanter [1956] • The Nice and the Good
• The Sandcastle [1957] [1968]
• The Bell [1958] • Bruno’s Dream [1969]
• A Severed Head [1961] • A Fairly Honourable Defeat
• An Unofficial Rose [1962] [1970]
• The Unicorn [1963] • An Accidental Man [1971]
• The Italian Girl [1964] • The Black Prince [1973]
• The Red and the Green • The Sacred and Profane
[1965] Love Machine [1974]

14. Under the Net
• Set in London, it is the story of a struggling
young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the
philosophical and the picaresque has made it
one of Murdoch's most popular works.

15. The Flight from the Enchanter
• Murdoch brings to life a circle of friends and
acquaintances each of whom has a somewhat
obsessive connection to one man, Mischa Fox,
an enigmatic, wealthy, and powerful mover and
shaker in London. Murdoch was brilliant at
interweaving the lives of her characters, and
describing the world in which they lived
somewhat disconnected from everyday
existence.

16. The Sandcastle
• It is the story of a middle-aged schoolmaster Bill
Mor, with political ambitions who meets a
young painter Rain Carter, come to paint the
Headmaster Demoyte’s portrait. The plot deals
with immaterialized love between Bill and
Carter.

17. A Severed Head
• Set in and around London, it depicts a power
struggle between grown-up middle class people
who are lucky to be free of real problems.
• A satire involving adultery and incest

18. An Unofficial Rose
• Iris Murdoch's novel deploys her gift of high
comedy in a family.
• It dwells deep on the complex life of a family.
• Filled with wit and irony.
• It is a traditional family novel

19. The Unicorn
• A gothic romance
• When Marion Taylor takes a post as governess
at Gaze Castle, a remote house upon a coast, she
finds herself confronted with weird mysteries.
• Some crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps
the house under a spell, whose magic also
touches the neighbouring house of Riders,
inhabited by a recluse.

20. The Italian Girl
• Edmund has escaped from his family into a
lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he
finds himself involved in the same awful
problems, together with some new ones. He also
rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-
changing "Italian girl".

21. The Red and the Green
• An extended Anglo-Irish family living in the
vicinity of Dublin on the eve of the Easter
Rebellion of 1916 reflects the attitudes and
pressures that lead eventually to the cataclysmic
events at the Dublin Post Office.

22. The Time of the Angels
• Carel is rector of a non-existent City church (it was destroyed in
the war). In the rectory live his daughter, Muriel, his beautiful
invalid ward, Elizabeth, and their West Indian servant, Patti.
Here too are Eugene, a Russian emigre, and his delinquent son,
Leo. Carel's brother, Marcus, co-guardian with him of Elizabeth,
tires to make contact with Carel but is constantly rebuffed. These
seven characters go through a dance of attraction and repulsion,
misunderstanding and revelation, the centre of which is the
enigmatic Carel himself - a priest who believes that, God being
dead, His angels are released. At the end, Muriel finds herself
with the power of life and death over her father.

23. List of Her Works
• A Word Child [1975] • The Good Apprentice
• Henry and Cato [1976] [1985]
• The Sea, The Sea [1978] • The Book and the
• Nuns and Soldiers [1980] Brotherhood [1987]
• The Philosopher’s Pupil • The Message to the
[1983] Planet [1989]
• The Greek Knight [1993]
• Jackson’s Dilemma
[1995]

24. List of Her Works
Non-Fiction
• Sartre: Romantic Rationalist [1953]
• Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues [1986]
• Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals [1992]
• Existentialists and Mystics [1997]

25. The Bell- An Introduction
• A story of lay community outside Imber Abbey
• Dora Greenfield returns to live with her
husband
• Imber Court is a haven for lost souls seeking
tranquility
• Lost Abbey bell is rediscovered
• It is the legendary symbol of religion and magic
• Hidden truths and desires are forced in to light.

26. List of Characters
• Dora Greenfield- art student • Nick Fawley- member of the
• Paul Greenfield- art teacher abbey
• Noel Spens- a boyfriend of Dora • Catherine Fawley- nun aspirant
• Sally- Dora’s friend • James Tayper Pace- religious
• Michael Meade- Owner of Court member
outside abbey • Father Bob Joyce
• Toby Gashe- a young boy • Mother Clare
• Mark Stafford- member of Imber • Sister Ursula
community • The Bishop
• Margaret Stafford- member of • The Abbess
Imber community • Peter Topglass- a member
• Patchway- gardener

27. To Be Continued…