Iris Murdoch Overview

Iris Murdoch's fiction has a way of exposing fears and insecurities; suspense and an impending sense of death drive the plots of many of her novels. Dark, uncontrollable forces are abroad in her world, and keep her readers shifting, looking over... [more]

Iris Murdoch's fiction has a way of exposing fears and insecurities; suspense and an impending sense of death drive the plots of many of her novels. Dark, uncontrollable forces are abroad in her world, and keep her readers shifting, looking over their shoulders, and counting the shadows on the wall. But for Murdoch suspense is not just a matter of plot. It is a matter of our fondest ideas being challenged. Murdoch set her stories amid sprawling circles of friends and relations. She often spoke about how being an only child kindled her creativity: inventing intricate tapestries of characters tied together by blood, love, or hate was a device to replace the missing partners of her childhood. Like Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, the two writers she admired most, she filled her writing with concealed intentions, romantic obsessions, moral struggles, and intrafamilial conflicts. Her most successful novels marry the lessons of the two masters: philosophical depth and human drama. For Murdoch, as for Dostoevsky, philosophical questions were often knotted to religious ones. Her novel "The Bell" (1958) plumbs the divide between the secular and the sacred in modern society. Its protagonist, Michael, whose active homosexuality has prevented him from becoming a priest, tries to find a compromise between religion and "regular" life by establishing a lay community next door to an abbey of nuns. The people who join the community offer a fascinating cross section of conflicted souls, drawn to the altruistic ideals of the sacred, yet unable to extirpate themselves from the pleasures of the body. Another ensemble cast fills the pages of "An Accidental Man" (1971), Murdoch's version of "Crime and Punishment." One of the main characters has fled from the U.S. to England to escape being drafted into the Vietnam War. The upper-class family he finds himself suddenly immersed in is rife with contradictions. Among its members is Austin, a man who has suffered a spate of incredible coincidences which link him to the deaths of his two wives and a child. Life, death, and our responsibility for them (or lack thereof) are Murdoch's principal themes. In her final novel, "Jackson's Dilemma" (1995), a story about a circle of young, excessively groomed intellectuals, Shakespeare's soul hovers close by. While the group prepares for the wedding of Edward and Marian, a note arrives indicating that the bride-to-be has fled. The friends, unaccustomed to chaos and distress, attempt to find Marian and deliver her to the altar. However, what begins as a mystery involving mostly trivial characters evolves into a thoughtful examination of personality and relationships. Because of Marion's departure, new couples form and marry; a happy, Shakespearean ending ensues. Murdoch's literary legacy includes 26 novels, 5 plays, 5 books of philosophy, and a single collection of poetry -- enough to make her one of the most prolific writers of her era. Yet her work was cut short by Alzheimer's Disease, which inhibited her not only from writing, but from enjoying her loving marriage with John Bayley (considered one of England's greatest literary partnerships). Through involvement with Buddhism, Murdoch and Bayley were able to approach her death with a sad yet unselfish serenity. And to the end Murdoch retained her sense for character. Once while visiting a friend whose home bordered a graveyard, she casually yet seriously asked, "Do you know many of the dead people in your cemetery?" [show less]