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Loves from Different Points of View in Iris Murdoch's Novels

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Loves from Different Points of View in Iris Murdoch's Novels MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Loves from Different Points of View in Iris Murdoch’s Novels Diploma Thesis Brno 2009 Supervisor: Written by: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph. D. Bc. Kamila Nevěčná DECLARATION I declare that I have compiled my diploma work by myself and that I have used only the sources listed in the bibliography. I agree with my thesis being stored at the Masaryk University Brno in the Library of the Faculty of Education and being available for study purposes. .................................... Kamila Nevěčná 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincere thanks are due to Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for her kind help, comments, views and valuable advice that she provided me through the work as my supervisor. 3 CONTENTS CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................................ 4 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 5 1 LIFE OF IRIS MURDOCH IN A NUTSHELL .......................................................................... 6 2 THE NOVELS ........................................................................................................................... 7 3 LOVE OF HUMAN DOING .................................................................................................... 11 3. 1 LOVE OF ART ....................................................................................................................... 11 3. 2 LOVE OF WORK ................................................................................................................... 22 4 HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS AND LOVE ................................................................................ 25 4.1 LOVE OF FRIENDS .............................................................................................................. 25 4. 2 INCESTUOUS LOVE ............................................................................................................ 28 4. 3 POWER RELATIONSHIP AND LOVE ................................................................................ 32 4. 4 LOVE OF A MAN AND A WOMAN ................................................................................... 37 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................. 52 RESUMÉ ........................................................................................................................................... 54 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 54 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................................. 55 APPENDIX 1 ........................................................................................................................................ 57 APPENDIX 2 ........................................................................................................................................ 58 APPENDIX 3 ........................................................................................................................................ 59 APPENDIX 4 ........................................................................................................................................ 60 APPENDIX 5 ........................................................................................................................................ 61 4 INTRODUCTION Iris Murdoch, one of the most prolific female writers of the second half of the twentieth century, wrote a number of novels and is partly considered a realist. She is an author of twentysix novels and several philosophical pieces, she also wrote poetry and drama. Murdoch projects philosophical reflection into many of her novels where she deals with question of good and evil . She is “best known for her stories regarding ethical and sexual themes.” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Murdoch#Bibliography> Her philosophy is closely associated with human relationships, this Milada Franková notices in her book Human Relationships in the Novels of Iris Murdoch (1995). Based on the reading and the facts mentioned above a hypothesis may be formulated that love is one of the central themes of Murdoch’s novels. The thesis explores to what extent the theme of love is included in the author’s novels and which forms are possible to locate. For this purpose, the three of her works have been chosen: Under the Net (1954) , A Severed Head (1961) and The Black Prince (1973). The work is composed as a review of the twentyfirst century reader. In the thesis, the novels’ plots are introduced and particular “loves” are analysed from different points of view. Murdoch in her novels describes several aspects of human relationships such as love and hate (not as contrasts, but as emotions existing side-by-side), but also power, incest, machination and a question death. Love stands in the foreground in some of Murdoch’s novels. “Murdoch’s love” work could be understood on two levels, the first one is love of work, which means love reflected in human doings, and the second one is love of people, the socalled love in human relationships. In one example, we can even find love of “mute creature.” The first category of love points out human doing, in this thesis it is a question of work and its sense and a question of art and its nature. The other view of love is possible to observe by people and their relationships. The reader encounters love of friendships, incestuous relationships, power relationships and relationships between men and women. The analysis shows how mutual the relationships’ affections are. This is not the complete specification of all possible loves in Murdoch’s work, but the above mentioned are the most notable in the three novels. 5 1 LIFE OF IRIS MURDOCH IN A NUTSHELL Iris Murdoch (see APPENDIX 1 ) was born in Dublin in 1919. Her parents were an Irishwoman and an Englishman. Irene Alice Richardson, Iris’s mother, was an opera singer. Wills John Hughes Murdoch, Iris’s father, was a civil servant in World War I and later he worked for the government. The Murdochs moved to London, where Iris grew up. She studied ancient history and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/imurdoch.htm> Iris was the member of the Communist Party, but the ideology disappointed her and that was the reason why she resigned. Between the years 1938 and 1942 Iris worked at the Treasury as an assistant principal and later, between the years 1944 and 1946, worked for the United Nations relief organization UNNRA in Austria and Belgium. When she was unemployed, she studied philosophy under Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since 1948 until 1963, Iris worked as a tutor at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. At that time, Iris devoted herself to writing and was a lecturer at the Royal College of Art. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/imurdoch.htm> Murdoch’s partner was Franz Steiner, a Czech Jewish poet and polymath, but unfortunately, in 1952 he died of a heart attack. Iris also had an affair with his friend Elias Canetti. In 1956, she married John Bayley. He was younger than Iris, worked as a professor of English at Oxford and published fiction as well. Iris and John lived happily more than thirty years in an old house called Cedar Lodge at Steeple Ashton. Later they moved into the academic suburb of North Oxford. Iris did not desire to have children, and although she had some love affairs, John tolerated them. Iris Murdoch wrote many novels and the last one was written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease. Her loving husband was a great encouragement for her. She died in 1999. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/imurdoch.htm> During the last years of her life, Murdoch became like „a very nice 3year-old,“ her husband said. In his memoir, Elegy for Iris (1999) John Bayley portrays his brilliant wife lovingly but unsentimentally. ”She was a superior being, and I knew that superior beings just did not have the kind of mind that I had.“ Her disease did not break Murdoch’s benevolent personality. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/imurdoch.htm> John Bayley loved her wife above all; it is supported in Richard’s Eyre’s film Iris (2001), starring Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, and Kate Winslet. The film is based on Bayley’s memoir. 6 2 THE NOVELS This chapter shortly presents the plot and the main figures of the three novels mentioned in the introduction Under the Net, A Severed Head and The Black Prince , and some of the circumstances on which the novels came into existence. The chapter opens the first view of them. In the 1940s, Iris Murdoch was studying philosophy. She was interested in existentialism 1 and met French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre 2. She published her first work and that was a critical study called Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953). One year later, she made her debut with the novel Under the Net (1954); Murdoch is said to have written the piece as a reaction to Sartre’s philosophy. Sartre examined the ego and the will and although Murdoch admired his work, she did not share ”his existentialist view of freedom and preoccupation with the self, his rejection of religion and bourgeois morality.“ (Franková 2004) What Murdoch especially minded was how Sartre portrayed human relationships. Sartre did not attach much value to
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