The Role of Mysterious Elements in Selected Novels by Muriel Spark

Masaryk University

Faculty of Education

Department of English Language and Literature

Diploma thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Author: Bc. et Bc. Julie Večeřová

Brno 2018

Declaration

I hereby declare that I wrote this thesis independently and that I used only sources listed in the bibliography section.

Brno, March 2018 ______

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Lucie

Podroužková, PhD. for her helpful guidance, patience and valuable advice.

Anotace

Diplomová práce analyzuje využití mysteriózních prvků v románech The Comforters a Memento Mori skotské autorky Muriel Spark. Cílem práce je poukázat na specifickou roli, kterou ve vybraných dílech hrají právě mysteriózní prvky, a popsat jejich úlohu pro výstavbu narativu a charakterizaci postav. Výsledkem je tak poskytnutí podrobného náhledu na neotřelou narativní techniku, kterou Muriel Spark používá.

Annotation

The diploma thesis deals with the use of mysterious elements in the novels The

Comforters and Memento Mori by a Scottish author Muriel Spark. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the specific function of such elements in the selected works and to describe their role in building the narrative and depicting the characters. As a result, the thesis provides a detailed outlook on the creative narrative technique Muriel Spark uses.

Klíčová slova

Muriel Spark, mysteriózní prvky, postmodernismus, The Comforters, Memento Mori, narativ, postavy

Key words

Muriel Spark, mysterious elements, postmodernism, The Comforters, Memento Mori, narrative, characters

Table of contents

1. Introduction ...... 7

2. The Prime of Mrs Muriel Spark ...... 9

3. The times of Mrs Muriel Spark ...... 12

4. A short insight into the choice of The Comforters and Memento Mori ...... 18

5. The mystery of another voice ...... 21

5.1. The sound of a typewriter as an additional voice in The Comforters ...... 21

5.1.1. Various responses to the mysterious voice as a means of characterization in The

Comforters ...... 24

5.2. Anonymous call as an additional voice in Memento Mori ...... 29

5.2.1. Different descriptions of the voice as a means of characterization in Memento Mori

...... 30

6. The mystery of independency and existence ...... 36

6.1. The mystery of free will in The Comforters ...... 36

6.2. The mystery of existence and freedom in Memento Mori ...... 40

7. The mystery of special abilities or obsessions ...... 43

7.1. The mystery of special abilities in The Comforters ...... 43

7.2. The mysterious obsession with faculties in Memento Mori ...... 46

8. Mystery transformed into a detective story ...... 48

8.1. Mystery or a crime in The Comforters ...... 48

8.2. Mystery or a crime in Memento Mori ...... 51

9. Supernatural mysteries ...... 53

9.1. Diabolism in The Comforters ...... 53

9.2. A miracle in The Comforters ...... 53

9.3. Disappearing of a character in The Comforters ...... 54

10. Mysteries of everyday life ...... 56

10.1. The mystery of an old lady as a leader of a gang in The Comforters ...... 56

10.2. Mysterious coincidence in The Comforters ...... 57

10.3. Mysteries in relationships in Memento Mori ...... 58

10.4. Mysterious research in Memento Mori ...... 60

11. The mystery of Muriel Spark as the goddess of the novel ...... 62

11.1. Omniscience in The Comforters ...... 62

11.2. Omniscience in Memento Mori ...... 65

12. Conclusion ...... 68

13. Works cited ...... 70

13.1. Primary sources ...... 70

13.2. Secondary sources ...... 70

1. Introduction

The thesis focuses on the narrative technique of a famous Scottish writer Muriel Spark.

In two selected novels of hers her creative way of characterizing the heroes and playing with the role of the narrator is examined. The thesis will particularly devote attention to the motive of mysterious elements occurring in her novels and their use as a special device of depicting the characters, determining the narrator and having a great influence on the whole narrative in general. The role of mysterious elements will be discussed namely in her novels The Comforters

(1957) and Memento Mori (1959), where slightly different kinds of mysteries appear, each having a specific impact on the story, the characters and, not less importantly, on the readers.

Firstly, Muriel Spark will be shortly introduced as an outstanding woman and the crucial chapters of his life will be described. Secondly, her activity within the world of literature and her considerable contribution to its richness will be presented along with an attempt to state her place in the literary history. Then the attention will be drawn on mysterious elements in each of two selected novels of hers, The Comforters and Memento Mori, and the choice of these particular pieces of work will be clarified. In each of these pieces of writing several examples of mystery appear, whether it is a mysterious, inexplicable coincidence, a weird or irrational event, a character either behaving in an unpredictable, mysterious way or having special abilities, obsession, hobbies or secrets. For the purposes of this thesis the term “mysterious” is used as an umbrella term for many cases of irrationality, inexplicitness, extraordinariness or oddity that occur in the selected novels and which will be closely analysed. In addition to this, the categories of narrator and author in the selected novels will be discusses as well, because as for the role of author and narrator in Muriel Spark’s novels, there are signs of mystery around it, too.

The aim of the thesis is to prove that it is thanks to what the thesis refers to as mysterious elements that Muriel Spark’s novels are so special and what enriches them with an additional level of the whole narrative. In other words, that the mysterious elements are used not only as an unusual aspect of the plot, but that the author uses them as an indispensable part of her narrative technique. The special role of each mysterious element identified in The Comforters and Memento Mori will be studied deeply and the thesis will aim to find out the purpose as well as specific consequences of them for the whole novels. Throughout the whole diploma thesis the role of mysterious elements in the chosen novels will be examined, compared and contrasted.

2. The Prime of Mrs Muriel Spark

Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (1918 – 2006), apart from novels, the genre she was most famous for, was the author of poems, short stories, drama, critical works and even her own autobiography. She established her career in 1957 by publishing her first novel The Comforters.

According to The Chicago Tribune, she was “a major twentieth-century writer and an extraordinary and unique talent: her gifts were unusual — a piercing eye; an acute ear; an incisive, often caustic wit; a voice so distinctive; and a style so inimitable”.

She was born as well as educated in Edinburgh, which she termed “her own city”

(Wylie), and her personality was closely connected with her Scottish roots, which was apparent also in some of her works. How apt it was when she, only at the age of twelve, received the literary prize named according to the giant of Scottish literature, the Walter Scott prize for her poem “Out of a Book” (“Writing Scotland - Muriel Spark”). In a way, although the most prominent genre in her career was a novel, Patterson argues that Spark stayed a poet for her whole life and she reminds the author’s own words and her view on being a novelist: “The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.” It was at the James

Gillespie's High School for Girls where she met the teacher Christina Kay (“Muriel Spark –

Childhood.”), who became inspiration for the protagonist of her most celebrated novel The

Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), for which she is famous even in the Czech Republic.

As her interests in writing continued, after leaving school she took a course in précis writing at the Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh. In her Curriculum Vitae Spark mentions: “I was fascinated from the earlies age I can remember by how people arranged themselves. I can’t remember a time when I was not a person-watcher, a behaviourist. I was also an avid listener” (18). Here Muriel Spark refers primarily to endless flows of her parents’ friends calling

at their flat, but this is the point where I also see the beginnings of her future career. She had the opportunity to observe people and their behaviour and this is what she then as a writer did in her novels, she arranged people, i.e. the characters, to fit well into the story she wanted to tell.

After a short period of teaching English she started to work as a secretary in a department store in Edinburgh's Princes Street. At the age of 19 Muriel Camberg got married to Sydney

Oswald Spark and already as Mrs Muriel Spark spent some time in Africa, Southern Rhodesia

(now Zimbabwe), where her husband worked as a teacher. In 1938, a year after the wedding, their son Robin was born, but the marriage was not a happy one also due to her husband’s manic-depressive behaviour. In 1944 she returned to England and worked for the Political

Intelligence department of the British Foreign Office.

After World War II Muriel Spark focused on writing poetry and criticism. She served as an editor of The Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949 and wrote a series of critical biographies e.g. about Mary Shelley or Emily Brontë. It was in 1954 when Muriel, a daughter of and English mother who was a Presbyterian and a Scottish father who was a Jew, converted to Roman

Catholicism. This turned out to be a crucial point of her life and the motive of Catholic faith can be also identified in her works.

Muriel Spark published her first novel The Comforters in 1957 and it “earned critical acclaim from such established British writers as Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh“ (“Muriel

Spark Biography”). It was followed by Robinson (1958), Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of

Peckham Rye (1960), The Bachelors (1960), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) which become a bestseller and by 1966 had been adapted for the theatre and made into a film starring

Maggie Smith, too. In the 1960s, the author decided to leave London and live in New York, where she experienced a full social life.

Her next destination was Italy and Rome became her place of living for many years.

Here she wrote what she considered to be some of her finest work, e.g. her favourite The

Driver's Seat (1970), The Hothouse by the East River (1973), The Abbess of Crewe (1974) and others. In the 1980s Spark lived in Tuscany in the home of her closest friend and here in piece continued with her writing. Other works such as A Far Cry from Kensington (1988) followed.

The complete number of Muriel Spark’s novels counts 22 pieces, some of them being made also into movies. Her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, was published in 1992. In 1993 she was made a dame of the British Empire and in 1997 received the David Cohen British

Literature Prize for her lifetime achievement. In 2004 Spark published her very last novel The

Finishing School. She died on April 13, 2006, in Florence, Italy.

Although Muriel Spark spent almost her entire life and wrote nearly all her works in the

20th century, she is far from being forgotten and her works are still topical and valuable even in the 21st century. Two years after her death The Times included her on the list of the 50 greatest

British writers since 1945. In addition to this, on the occasion of one hundred years since her birth, the publishing house Polygon revealed new editions of all of her novel beginning publishing them in November 2017 and continuing till August 2018. Moreover, in 2001 The

Muriel Spark Society was found in Edinburgh and Wylie defines its purpose as “to promote the understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of Muriel Spark's work, and to provide opportunities to meet, discuss her work and learn more about her wide range of interests including art, music and fashion.“ Apparently, Muriel Spark as a personality as well as by her works appeals to people even nowadays, she is still being in her prime, she is still fashionable.

3. The times of Mrs Muriel Spark

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce Muriel Spark as an author with a specific position in the English and Scottish literature. It will try to identify what was so special about her works that she became a famous writer. In addition, it aims to describe the era in which

Dame Muriel Spark published The Comforters (1957) and Memento Mori (1959) and to find out whether, focusing on the features of the two mentioned novels, she can be regarded as a representative of a particular movement or era.

Wickman claims that “…Spark often seems out of step with her own historical moment” (63). First of all, an outline of the historical moment she lived in need to be done.

Spark entered the literary world with her first novel in 1950s. She started to write The

Comforters in 1954 and published them in 1957. As Memento Mori and The Bachelors were published in the same decade, I will focus mainly on this period, i.e. what trends there were in the literary world at the beginning of her career and what her approach to them was like. David

Lodge characterizes the 50s and its literary trends as follows:

The fiction of the 50s was dominated by a new wave of social realism, represented by

novels such as Lucky Jim, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Room at the Top,

whose originality lay in tone and attitude rather than technique. Typically they were

narrated in the first person or in free indirect style, articulating the consciousness of a

single character, usually a young man, whose rather ordinary but well observed life

revealed new tensions and fault-lines in postwar British society.

Spark’s novels, however, were different. She as an author lets her readers to look inside their characters’ minds, she uses more than one central hero and what is more, in case of The

Comforters and Memento Mori particularly heroines. Her narrative technique is what makes her novel attractive. The narrator is a leading figure of it but he switches from one character’s point of view to another. According to Lodge, Muriel Spark “violated the aesthetic rules not only of the neorealist novel, but also of the modernist novel from Henry James to Virginia

Woolf“. Moreover, she gives hardly any clues of the time period in which the story takes place because she does not aim to comment on the social situations of people living in a particular era. She touches the issue of social status and defines the time period more exactly in Memento

Mori but it is not the primary subject of it. She addresses rather more general and timeless topics going to the heart of human existence.

The era after the World War II in which Muriel Spark started to be active in the literary world was the era difficult to define by itself, which does not facilitate to state Spark’s place within it. Moreover, Wickman says about Spark that “she implicitly re-channels our energies from efforts to situate her within cultural history to attempts at reading culture by way of her” (64). Regarding the features of The Comforters and Memento Mori, I have to completely agree with Wickman that with the unclassified nature of her works it is difficult to present Spark as a clear representative of a particular movement. Wheeler in her ‘A Critical Guide to

Twentieth-century Women Novelists’ puts Muriel Spark into the chapter called Early Post-

Modernist Innovations. As far as the term postmodernism is concerned, Docherty believes the term “postmodern” to be ambiguous. He explains it in more detail as following: “On the one hand it is seen as a historical period; on the other it is simply a desire, a mood which looks to the future to redeem the present” (2). Thus it can be stated that even the notion of the movement the features of which I try to identify in Spark’s first novels is problematical. On the other hand, if ambiguity or ambivalence is considered to be one of the features of postmodernism, I am convinced that I can truly say that Muriel Spark is a postmodern writer because these are also features of the two selected novels this thesis deals with.

As the title of a study by Chikako Sawada devoted to Muriel Spark called Muriel Spark’s

Postmodernism implies, she really is regarded as a representative of postmodernism. The possessive in the title indicates, however, that Spark approaches it in a specific way, it is her own postmodernism. Sawada comments Spark’s first novel as follows: “Her debut novel, which calls into question the boundary between reality and fiction, was also a decided first step in her own postmodernism” (162).

As for postmodernism in general I chose for the purposes of this thesis a definition from

The Atlas Society website by Thomas which I personally identify with and which sounds as follows: “In literary theory, it is associated with Deconstruction, Queer theory, and a general denigration of the idea that there should be standards, or that literary analysis can in any way or should in any way be objective”. In my opinion, Spark’s early novels definitely show signs of deconstruction and they are everything but standard. The magic of Muriel Spark’s novels can be found in their incompleteness, uncovering, providing space for the readers to create their own opinion on the plot as well as characters and to understand them in their own way. Thus, the literary analysis even cannot be objective.

The reason for saying so is that Spark’s novels are not easy to classify and that is why they are so special. Although quite thin in their extent, they are very rich in what they cause in reader’s mind. “Her art of fiction was so entirely new and unique that it has baffled, and indeed even terrified, as much as it has fascinated her readers.” (Chikako 3) Spark is the kind of a writer that disturbs her readers and challenges literary tradition. She deconstructs the realist literary tradition, her art is to add something more to her novels. There are many things in her novels which are only gently indicated in the text itself, but they continue growing, extending and they are becoming ripe in readers’ minds. Her novels are complete only when being read and they are complete only with the stream of thoughts they undoubtedly provoke in one’s mind. Novels by Muriel Spark are a shining example of the proverbial phrase “Less is more”.

Her stories in the books give birth to those in our mind. It all makes Muriel Spark such a brilliant novelist.

Spark’s first novels encourage the readers to be a part of them and to be a co-creators of the final picture of them in their minds. However, surprisingly enough, I have to also agree with

Glavin who says about Spark that: “In a way, she is the most knowing of novelists, constantly interrupting narrative chronology with prolepses of future events, creating comedy out of a wit the characters can rarely share” (234). From this statement emerges that Muriel Spark controls the whole narrative very consciously. I am convinced that her specific narrative technique when she often interrupts the narrative chronology, sometimes provides only hints about the characters, does not always and directly say whether they are good or bad, and through all this gives space to the readers and their interpretations and understanding, is an intentional and very well considered plan. Thus the argument that she is a knowing novelist is a valid one.

Sanes articulates as one of the contrary characteristics of modernism and postmodernism surface and depth. Modernism is associated with depth, it looks beneath the surface. It attempts to discover the way things work in order to control the world and not be controlled by it.

Postmodernism, however, promotes an idea that our belief that we can know reality is an illusion and our self, society, reality, the whole life is only a fiction. What should people do then? They should take their life as a play and be active creators of it, not only discoverers of it. The postmodern view can appear pessimistic at the first sight, but in fact it offers much more space for people to use their creativity than the modern one. As for literature, Sanes claims that:

“In reality, the text is merely a play of signs, a surface without depth, which is there to be explored, toyed with, and expanded on, in the act of reading“. I think both of the examined

Spark’s works, The Comforters as well as Memento Mori, are examples of texts Spark plays with and they are supposed not only to be explored but also be completed in the act of reading, thus they are postmodern novels. Sawada also supports this thought when she claims: “Spark

is profoundly sceptical of ‘profundity’, that is the assumption of ‘depth’ underneath anything that can be seen as ‘surface’” (167). Muriel Spark sees the whole art as a surface, she takes it as a play and if the readers are eager to understand her play, which they definitely are, they must approach her novels as a play and be willing to be playful themselves.

Lanchester also perceives Muriel Spark as a postmodern writer, more exactly as “a sort of proto-postmodernist, a writer with a sharp and lasting interest in the arbitrariness of fictional conventions; a writer whose eager adoption of the conventions of the novel have always been accompanied by a wish to toy with, subvert, parody, and undermine them“. It is genuinely true that Spark’s novels are everything but conventional. She is the kind of novelist that masters the construction of novel but uses her talent to deconstruct it and thus to make it unique, disturbing and favourable for those who like to be disturbed and provoked.

Moreover, David Lodge also sees Spark’s first novels as postmodern and about

Memento Mori, her third novel, he claims:

Spark was a postmodernist writer before that term was known to literary criticism. She

took the convention of the omniscient author familiar in classic 19th-century novels

and applied it in a new, speeded-up, throwaway style to a complex plot of a kind

excluded from modern literary fiction – in this case involving blackmail and intrigues

over wills, multiple deaths and discoveries of secret scandals, almost a parodic update

of a Victorian sensation novel.

In Spark’s new approach towards the omniscient narrator I see her uniqueness and success of her novels. His narrating is quick, fresh and it makes the reader to stay focused to be able to understand the plot and the relations between numerous characters.

In this chapter I listed several opinions that consider Muriel Spark’s early novels to be postmodern pieces of work and I identify with this view. As for the development of Spark’s style in the following decades, Sawada claims: “Spark established a high-economy, high-style writing around 1970, and the resulting change in her fiction was obvious” (7). So as an author she developed, there has been a change in her style and according to Sawada she stopped to be

“a good-like novelist” (7), but this part of Spark’s career is not an object of this thesis.

4. A short insight into the choice of The Comforters and Memento Mori

In this part of the thesis I would like to briefly clarify why the two particular novels from the title of this chapter were chosen to be an object of this thesis and they will be shortly introduced. Not only that both The Comforters (1957) and Memento Mori (1959) were published approximately in the same period, they also share some other common motives and features. Throughout both of them there is a line of various mysteries going on across the whole narrative. This motive of mysteriousness that occurs in various forms in the selected works will be closely examined in the following chapters. What is more, The Comforters and Memento

Mori are also the books that helped to Muriel Spark to establish her career as a novelist.

The Comforters was Muriel Spark’s first novel that she published in 1957. One of its main characters is a young woman called Caroline who is working on a book with a title “Form in a Modern Novel”. Actually, the novel Comforters she is a character of also touches the theme of the form of a novel and the role of the author and the characters in its creation. Caroline starts hearing voices and she realises that she herself as well as her friends are characters in a novel, the voice of its author, whom she calls the Typing Ghost, she can hear. The inspiration for using this motive comes from Muriel Spark’s own experience. Smith mentions that: “According to

Spark, the notion of the Typing Ghost came from hallucinations she involuntarily gave herself by taking Dexedrine“. As for the title of the novel, it is an allusion for the Book of Job and Job’s useless friends who comfort him in his suffering. Spark studied and wrote about the Book of

Job in the 50s and it influenced also her fiction. Caroline’s as well as Job’s comforters are rather convinced about their righteousness than being really comforting and supportive (Smith). Apart from the most prominent mystery, i.e. the voice that Caroline keeps hearing, other mysterious elements in this piece of work will be analysed. The Comforters is a book in which no trivial fact goes astray, every detail is used absolutely consciously and these details help to solve some

of the mysteries resembling those in detective stories because The Comforters includes a crime, death under slightly strange circumstances, but also other mysteries such as miracles, interest in diabolism, certain strongly developed abilities or simple but unbelievable coincidences. And last but not least, thanks to the analysis by her first novel one of the mystery of Muriel Spark’s art as an outstanding novelist, i.e. her work with the narrator, the plot and the reader’s involvement in this all, can be at least party revealed too because I absolutely agree with Ali

Smith’s statement that “The Comforters involves its readers by revealing the mechanics of our involvement.”. Thus the mechanics of reader’s involvement in the novel will be examined too.

Memento Mori, Muriel Spark’s third novel, was published in 1959 and it is generally considered to be her first masterpiece. David Lodge characterizes it as follows: “Formally the novel seems as fresh and original today as it did when it was first published, and thematically more relevant to the preoccupations and anxieties of the present century's first decade than to those of the 50s“. I completely identify with this evaluation of the novel. The topic Spark deals with in Memento Mori is death, death as a part of human life, the awareness of it and its inevitability. Most of the characters from the novel are over seventy and one of the protagonists characterizes the period of life they are currently in as follows: “’Being over seventy is like being engaged in in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying on a battlefield’” (MM 1 37). But it would be far a lot from the truth to claim that

Memento Mori is a depressing piece of writing as it could seem at the first sight. On the contrary, it consists of many witty and funny moments too. Lodge points out, however, that “in the 50s it was an unusual choice for a youngish novelist at the beginning of her career“. Muriel Spark wrote Memento Mori at the age of 41 when she was still a starting novelist as she began with fiction only two years earlier when she surprised with her debut novel The Comforters. Old age,

1 In the whole diploma thesis MM is used as an abbreviation of Memento Mori. All the citations come from the edition listed in the “Works cited” section.

coping with it, difficulties that it brings and the ability to accept it as well as the attitude towards life are themes topical in every period, therefore I challenge Yee’s point of view who speaks about the lack of universal themes in this novel:

A more practical problem is that much of Memento Mori now seems dated: as Guy

comments to Charmian at one point, "without a period-sense as well, no-one can

appreciate your books". Outside the largely unelaborated theme of the phone calls there

is little reflection on universal themes and many of the particular obsessions and

preoccupations of the English over status, class, sex, religion and so forth, no longer

have the same resonances.

I argue that it was not Muriel Spark’s aim to reflect on the problems of upper middle classes in the 1950s. In her book there is hardly ever an allusion on the historical period, not mentioning politics at all, which I find as an advantage because as a result the novel can now be read as easily as it the times of its publishing and can be read also in the future. Various characters from Memento Mori start receiving a mysterious phone call from an anonymous caller who has just one and the same message for all of them. Thus Memento Mori also resembles a detective story in some aspects and even a murder occurs in it, but also other mysterious elements like secrets in relationships including unknown husband in a will and many love affairs. Finally, Memento Mori is also a good demonstration of Muriel Spark’s unique narrative technique and her work with omniscient narrator and the mystery of involvement or non-involvement of the reader in the story.

5. The mystery of another voice

Features of challenging the boundaries and overlapping between supernatural and natural can be identified both in The Comforters and in Memento Mori. Glavin develops a view that: “Just as she admits no distinction between the experience gained from books and other kind of experience, Muriel Spark also sees no line separating the supernatural from the natural” (223). This part of the thesis will devote attention to two examples of using a supernatural mysterious element of a voice of an unknown source and its impact on the lives of characters.

5.1. The sound of a typewriter as an additional voice in The Comforters

Spark’s debut novel was partly inspired by her paranoia and mental breakdown she experienced and after it converted to Catholicism. The main character of The Comforters is a young woman called Caroline Rose who realises that she is actually a character in a novel and who tries to escape her fate. The motive of a typewriter and voices that one of the protagonists hears will be analysed here with all the consequences for the whole novel.

Caroline Rose is Laurence’s girlfriend who has just become a Catholic and is staying at

The Pilgrim Centre of St Philumena to have some rest there. She is also a writer, currently working on a book called “Form in a Modern Novel”. It is interesting that even before she starts hearing voices in her head, she somehow seems to be interested in a kind of voice issues because when Mrs Hogg is explaining to her how she became a Catering Warden at St

Philumena’s thanks to the advice of Their Lady (meaning St Maria), Caroline is asking her:

“’Did you actually hear a voice?’” (C 2 34)

Caroline is a sort of a person that likes to have her things well organised. She devised her own technique how to pack a suitcase for example, in the train she is putting the case right in the middle of the rack. She desires everything to be well organised. What is not well organized, however, are her thoughts. The stay at The Pilgrim Centre did not really help her to calm down, she felt rather uncomfortable there and it is after her return from St Philumena’s, when she is in quite unbalanced state, when she hears the sound of a typewriter for the first time. She is back at home thinking about her not very successful trip and hoping that Helena

Manders, her boyfriend’s mother, will understand that she did not like the place that she recommended to her. Then she hears a sound of a typewriter which is followed by a voice retelling her own thoughts. The exact extract reads as follows: “On the whole she did not think there would be any difficulty with Helena. Just then she heard the sound of a typewriter. It seemed to come through the wall on her left. It stopped, and was immediately followed by a voice remarking her own thoughts. It said: On the whole she did not think there would be any difficulty with Helena.” (C 42)

The voice Caroline can hear says utterly the same thing Caroline has just only though about. It is interesting, however, that the voice do not only directly repeats Caroline’s thoughts as if there was an echo of what is happening in her mind, but it speaks about Caroline in the third person. Actually, in Caroline’s view, it is not only one voice, but rather a whole chorus of voices, “something like a concurrent series of echoes” (C 43).

Of course, the first thing that naturally hits the readers’ mind when searching for the explanation of this incident is to have doubts about the character’s mental health. And even

2 In the whole diploma thesis C is used as an abbreviation of The Comforters. All the citations come from the edition listed in the “Works cited” section.

Caroline herself is thinking in this way and she is asking herself: “Am I going mad?” (C 44)

When she starts to examine the situation, other questions occur to her such as whether she might be haunted by some people. She even speculates about the possibility of being haunted not by real people but by spirits of people who can read her thoughts. She desires to find the source of the voices. She is not afraid of the typewriter, she is not even afraid of the voices. What she fears most is the fact that she might possibly go mad and that the voices are just hallucinations of her own mind. To find for example a machine operated from a distance emitting those sounds would be a more acceptable explanation for her that admitting her insanity. Nevertheless, when she is desperately trying to find and identify the source of the voices, she has to admit that the voice could not be produced by anyone from the house she lives in. She decides to leave her flat because she does not want to stay there and she spends a night at her old friend‘s place whom she calls the Baron. She describes the voices to the Baron as one voice with several tones and always speaking in the past tense. To a certain extent she hopes the voices will appear again because she believes her boyfriend Laurence might be possibly able to track them down thanks to his special talent for observing every detail. She still longs for tracing the source of the voices but she is a bit calmer because she came to the conclusion that they were not produced by her imagination.

Now, when the mystery of the sound of a typewriter followed up by a chorus of voices and how it occurred in the novel was introduced, various questions concerning this motive emerge. What is the purpose of it? Why did Muriel Spark decide to include it into her novel?

What impact will it have on the plot or the characters? The role of the sound of a typewriter for the whole novel will be closely examined in the following subchapters.

5.1.1. Various responses to the mysterious voice as a means of characterization in The Comforters

Caroline’s problem of hearing voices is reflected by various protagonists of the novel as well as by Caroline herself. Attention will be drawn to their different attitudes to the possible cause and source of the voices because I would like to prove that their reactions and interpretations reveal some traits of them and thus the voices serve as a specific device to depict the characters.

One of the first characters who learn about Caroline’s experience is her former boyfriend

Laurence. He considers her issue to be a kind of obsession, a kind of disruption of her mental health and her mental balance. Also, he perceives the situation from his own point of view and speculates about what it would mean to him: “From the time he had learned about the voices, he had been debating within himself what this might mean to his relationship with

Caroline.” (C 94) As for Caroline’s and Laurence’s relationship, they had to split up but they are still very close and spend time together. The reason for their breakup up was Caroline’s conversion to the Catholicism, more exactly the fact that her new faith does not allow them to live together without getting married. Nevertheless, Laurence is now worried about something different concerning their relationship. He is not sure whether, if Caroline’s problem will continue, it is possible that all her others characteristics will stay the same and she will be the same Caroline that he loves now. It might seem to be a selfish view of this situation, on the other hand, Laurence is very supportive to Caroline. He wishes to prove her that the voices are only delusion by the fact that they were not recorded on a tape-machine, but Caroline does not consider it as an evidence strong enough to prove the non-existence of the voices. Laurence fears that the situation will force them to break up.

While Caroline wants to identify the source of the voices much more than to stop hearing them, Laurence would prefer to prove that they do not exist at all. It corresponds with his

personality of someone who is used to solving many things by his attentiveness and who behaves rationally. Therefore, when the voices were not recorded on a tape, they do not exist for him. As for the starter of Caroline’s troubles, Laurence blames Mrs Hogg, now a Catering

Warden at St Philumena’s, once a house maid of his family, to cause it. “’I think honestly she’s to blame for Caroline’s relapse. She must have touched a raw nerve.’” (C 72) He thinks so because Caroline left the Pilgrim Centre on Mrs Hogg’s account and started hearing voices after her return. It is revealed later in the story that Mr Hogg used to be a governess to Laurence when he was small and he as well as his brother rather detested her. “They had found her to be a sneak, a subtle tyrant.” (C 139) I put forward a theory that in his hatred of Mr Hogg there can be found reason why he suspects Mrs Hogg to start Caroline’s problem. To summarize what can be deduced from Laurence’s attitude to Caroline’s problem, it is definitely true that he loves

Caroline, though he is also a bit selfish and feels to be endangered by the voices and their impact on their relationship. He regards Caroline’s issue as an obsession. Surprisingly, he himself is a sort of obsessed with his special ability of being an extraordinary good observant, which will be discussed later in this thesis. Besides, his hatred towards Mrs Hogg is revealed.

Another person that finds out about Caroline hearing voices and expresses her opinion on its cause is Eleanor Hogarth, a friend of Caroline from the college. She is also the Baron’s mistress, who split up with him, however, as she claims, due to his practising of the Black

Masses, but in reality because of discovering him to be a bigamist who already has one wife.

In Eleanor’s view, it is because of the Baron and his interest in diabolism that Caroline started hearing voices and now is haunted by spirits because of him. Objectively said, Caroline had been already hearing the voices before the Baron put her up for the night. Actually, she looked for his company because of the voices and her need not to be alone during the night. This is something Eleanor either does not know, more probably is aware of, but refuses to take into account because it would deny her interpretation and would not entitle her to blame the Baron.

The narrator does not specify, however, whether Eleanor is familiar with the right version and sequence of events or not, so it is up to the readers to make their own opinion. It appears, as if she needs to blame the Baron for something as a kind of revenge for their split up, although it was her who abandoned him. In general, Eleanor is depicted as a woman who tends to play various roles. She does not really pretend to be someone else or tries to be dishonest, she simply immerses herself in acting the role she believes she is supposed to play in a certain situation. In these cases “wholeheartedly, her personality was involved, so that it was impossible to distinguish between Eleanor and the personality which possessed her during those hours; as well try to distinguish between the sea and the water in it” (C 87). It appears that her identities change regarding the particular situation without her being intentionally hypocritical. It is just a specific trait of herself. Now she tunes in the role of a woman who is not only familiar with

Caroline’s problem, but also the one who is able to propose if not a solution, at least the cause of it. In fact, she centres the attention to herself, quite similarly as Laurence does when dealing with Caroline’s trouble.

Laurence tried to deal with Caroline’s trouble rationally. Caroline, on the contrary, being a writer, an artist, does not assess things only by reason. A turning point in the issue comes when she is talking about the voices with a priest and she formulates her ideas about the voices like this: “… it is as if a writer on another planet of existence was writing a story about us.” (C 63) All of a sudden, Caroline is sure that this is the truth although the priest, Jeromy, puts emphasis on the fact that Caroline started hearing voices shortly after her return from the

Pilgrim Centre. As a result, he looks at Caroline’s issue as at religious experience. It is natural for a priest to look for the cause of Caroline’s experience in the religion because this is his sphere of activity. All the mentioned examples, Laurence’s, Eleanor’s, Caroline’s as well as the priest’s view on Caroline’s issue, show that their opinion on the voices mirrors aspects that are related to their own life, that are close or valuable to them.

As for Caroline’s interpretation of the source of the voices, I believe Muriel Spark wants the readers to accept it as the right one because it provides The Comforters with another dimension, i.e. the reflection on the art of creating a novel. Moreover, it is not without reason that The Comforters are sometimes called a novel about a novel. Caroline is convinced that her friends as well as herself are used as characters in a novel and as an evidence she quotes what she heard from the voices: “The characters in this novel are all fictitious” (C 95). She also admits that she suffers from delusion and that she is insane: “I have what you ought to call a delusion. In any normal opinion that’s a fact” (C 96). By admitting so she proves that she is still able to think rationally and she wants to investigate what she heard and does not want the voices to disappear. Nonetheless, apart from hearing a writer of an unknown kind, Caroline meditated also about other possibilities, which she listed in her notebook. Although Helena

Manders, Laurence’s mother, does not know what she actually reads, she finds in Caroline’s pocket notebook under a note “Possible identity” following items:

Satan

a woman

hermaphrodite

a Holy Soul in Purgatory (C 124)

In her journal Caroline tries to record and put down in shorthand the exact words that she hears and these are apparently her speculations about the source of the voices, which quite vary. It appears that they somehow reflect (unconsciously or not) what the other characters suggested.

Satan would correspond with Eleanor Hogarth’s idea that Caroline is being haunted by spirits because of the Baron’s interests in diabolism. A woman and a hermaphrodite are suggestions of her own. They might be connected with what the voices sound like to Caroline. It means that

according to the tone of the voice she concluded that it is a woman’s voice. And according to the fact that it sometimes sounds as more voices in one, as various tones of one voice, she puts forward and idea of hearing a hermaphrodite, also being associated with two natures in one.

And finally, a Holy soul in Purgatory may be related to her recent conversion to the Roman

Catholic Church, her stay in the Pilgrim Centre and might be also supported by Jeromy’s, the priest’s, view of her problem as religious experience.

Towards the end of the book readers learn that Caroline had finished her book about novels and now is going on holiday where she intends to write one. She says that the novel will be about “’characters in a novel’” (C 202). One of the characters, Edwin Manders, suggests

Caroline should make it a straight old-fashioned story ending “with the death of the villain and the marriage of the heroine” (C 202). Caroline agrees that it will end this way. Regarding what has happened, i.e. that Laurence’s grandmother Louisa Jepp married Mr Webster at the end of

The Comforters, Mrs Jepp can be considered the heroine of the story. Mrs Hogg, on the other hand, is the villain because she dies at the end of the book. These are direct indicators that

Caroline’s version of defining the voices is supposed to be considered the right one by the readers. Therefore, a surprising fact about the novel The Comforters emerges at the end of it when the readers realize that what they are actually reading for the whole time is a novel written by a character.

Moreover, at the very end of the novel, it is for the first time when somebody is directly called to be a character and it is Laurence Manders in the following line which reads: “A few weeks later a character called Laurence Manders…” (C 202). Laurence Manders decides to write a letter to Caroline where he tells her that he found a lot of notes for her novel and he expresses his opinion on them. He thinks Caroline mispresented all of them, meaning his friends and family, e.g. the characters in her new novel, and that she does not understand them. In addition, in his final point he notes: “I dislike being a character in your novel” (C 203). Finally,

he decides to tear up the letter he wrote into pieces and the wind bears them away. But surprisingly, it is included in Caroline’s novel which is clear from the following words: ”and he did not foresee his later wonder, with a curious rejoicing, how the letter had gone into the book” (C 203). Thus, The Comforters is a novel about the act of creating a novel, about a character recognizing herself to be a character in a novel, a character becoming a writer and thus gaining her independency.

5.2. Anonymous call as an additional voice in Memento Mori

In Memento Mori Muriel Spark also uses a mysterious motive of an unknown voice.

This time, however, unlike The Comforters, the voice keeps saying one sentence only. The author of this sentence is an anonymous caller, whose identity is unknown. The caller contacts various characters from the novel, always says the same thing to them and rings off. The only words the speaker pronounces are ”Remember you must die” (MM 10), the Latin equivalent of which stays in the title of the book. The event is reported to the police, but with basically no result. In this part of the thesis I would like to prove that the anonymous call has more important role in the narrative than being only a mystery to be solved and to make the plot more gripping.

During the whole novel when the readers wait whether the identity of the speaker will be revealed or not, the call and more exactly the reactions of their receivers to it together with their descriptions of the voice serve as a brilliant device Spark uses to characterize them. Thus, apart from the narrator’s and character’s ones, the anonymous call presents additional voice of the narration. Similarly as in The Comforters it is an example of using an unknown sound as an extra voice in the narrative. Reizbaum points out that: “There is a strange quality to Spark’s narrative voices. They always seem anonymous, like the source of the phone calls in Memento

Mori, even when we think we know whose they are” (41). Although the narrator in Memento

Mori does not reveal the speaker’s identity, the readers can feel they are guided by him to choose from the provided possibilities different characters put forward a particular one as the right answer.

5.2.1. Different descriptions of the voice as a means of characterization in Memento Mori

Dame Lettie Colston is the first character from the novel who starts receiving the mysterious call. She has taken actions against the anonymous speaker by reporting the incidents to the police and is required to inform them about its every occurrence. At first she speaks about the call quite calmly: “’There is no danger. It is merely a disturbance’” (MM 9). As for the way the speaker pronounces the sentence, she refers to as: “’quite matter-of-fact, not really threatening’” (MM 9). Nevertheless, throughout the story her attitude to it changes dramatically and she starts taking it more seriously as it is indicated in her thoughts: “No one, she thought, is going to kill me through fear” (MM 103).

Whereas her fear was appearing only slowly, she feels a strong desire to track and stop the caller right from the beginning. As the calls don’t stop and they occur approximately three times a day, she begins to long for a help, for a strong friend. She does not look for a compassion, she looks for strength. When she is considering her acquaintances, she decides that the only person who is stronger than herself is Tempest, her opponent in committee-siting. It is peculiar that she does not turn to anybody from her family or friends. It is not a matter of mistrust as such, the reason is rather their lack of strength which she looks for. Thus, she believes that if anyone can, Tempest, her opponent, is endowed with enough strength to settle her issue. Tempest, however, suddenly dies of cancer.

As I mentioned earlier, she is the first person from the book that starts to receive the calls. As if she needs most to remind of the existence of death. It appears that it is important for the caller it is Dame Lettie who receives the message because he or she calls even to her brother’s house when she is staying at his place and the speaker asks her brother: “’Tell Dame

Lettie,’ it said, ‘to remember she must die’” (MM 13). When she thinks about the identity of the caller, she is sure she has no enemies and she consider him to be a mad man: “Of course the man’s mad” (MM 9). On the other hand she is convinced she is being followed by someone because she told no one that she will spend the night at her brother’s house.

Dame Lettie has acquired a habit of confiding in Miss Taylor, Charmain’s former caretaker, now living in a nursing home. She has been receiving the anonymous call for four months now, so she tells about them also to Miss Taylor and asks her for advice because they are gradually worrying her more and more. She does not want to give up the phone but she admits that it is a very stressful situation every time the phone rings. “’One never knows if one is going to hear that distressing sentence. It is distressing.’” (MM 38) When she confesses that the sentence actually troubles her deeply, Miss Taylor says to her: “’Perhaps you might obey it’” (MM 38). It appears as a reasonable piece of advice. All in all, the speaker is not threating anyhow in his call, he does not add anything to the one sentence, so he might really wish the receiver only to remember that he or she must die. Dame Lettie, however, does not care for this kind of advice. She just wants the criminal to be caught. The following citation exactly depicts

Dame Lettie’s problem. “’It’s difficult,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.’” (MM 39) Dame Lettie does not want to hear such utterances, let alone admit that they are true and especially true about herself. She is a strict, mean, independent women who hates being told what to do and her reaction to the call only confirms it.

Lettie changes her will all the time, putting one of her nephews Eric or Martin either in or out. This time she excludes Eric from it and an old friend of the Colston’s family, a sociologist Alec Warner thinks she did so because she suspects Eric to be the caller. But a young woman Olive argues that: “’She suspects everyone”’(MM 92). While at first she did not pay much attention to it and did not consider it to be a danger, she starts to be very mistrustful and suspects even the Chief Inspector Mortimer whom she hired to work on the case privately. She is convinced the police did not track the culprit because they simply cannot admit that it is their former chief. Nevertheless, she continues to consult him about the case, so that he did not have an idea about her suspicions. Next, she suspects Alec Warner and even writes him a letter where she directly asks him about it. What is more, she even hires a resident maid in order to have someone in the house to answer the phone. But whenever the young maid answers the telephone, the speaker only announces a wrong number. It seems that the call is determined to eldery people only. Finally, she comes up to a conclusion that the offender must be someone who is included in her will and she concludes the culprit really is the former Chief Inspector

Mortimer who knows she included in his will and now he wants to frighten her to death, so she arranges to have her telephone disconnected. She begins to be quite paranoiac, searching the house as well as garden every night before going to bed, suspecting everyone, locking not only the door of the house, but also of every room taking away the keys, sleeping with a heavy walking-stick prepared by her bed. In the end, quite accidentally thanks to her young housekeeper whom she hired to answer the phone and who now left her job because Dame

Lettie’s paranoia started to be unbearable, a story spreads that there is an old woman alone in the house who is moreover cut off her phone. Burglars break into her house and she is battered to death by the stick that was supposed to protect her. Her dead body is not discovered until four days pass. Surprisingly enough, although Lettie resisted the call and she refused to become

conscious of the meaning of the message, her efforts to protect herself finally led to her death the awareness of which the speaker stressed.

Another character considerably influenced by the anonymous call is Lettie’s brother

Godfrey Colston. When his sister starts receiving the calls, he says about the speaker: “’He must be a maniac’“ (MM 10). Referring to how Godfrey perceived the anonymous speaker, calling him a maniac, Godfrey himself can be, to a certain extent, perceived as a maniac too. A maniac who is obsessed with himself, his faculties and in general very selfish. It appears that the way particular characters evaluate the caller mirrors their own character. It happens several times that Godfrey answers the phone and the anonymous speaker asks him to take the message to Dame Lettie. Once, however, Godfrey is not asked to pass the message to his sister, this time the message, saying as always remember you must die, is meant for him, as the speaker directly states: “’The message is for you, Mr Colston’” (MM 120). Godfrey is very surprised and alarmed by it right from the beginning. When he learns for example that a photographer is coming to their house the next day because of Charmian, he would prefer her to put him off, as he does not wish any strangers in the house. Also, he is also angry about the incompetence of the police. “‘It’s preposterous, when we pay our rates and taxes, to be threatened like that by a stranger.’” (MM 124) When he tells about the call Mrs Pettigrew, she thinks he may pretend feebleness of mind in order to evade his obligations. A huge difference occurs between the receivers’ evaluation of the caller’s voice. Godfrey comments on his identity as follows:

“’Sounds a common little fellow, with his lisp’” (MM 100). He also calls him “’a barrow boy’”

(MM 100) and as for the tone of his voice, he finds it “menacing” (MM 147) and “strictly factual” (MM 147). To him he sounds “young, like a Teddy-boy” (MM 147). On the contrary, his sister Lettie perceives him in a completely different way when she says that “’he is quite cultured. But sinister’” (MM 100). And unlike Godfrey describes him as “‘a middle-aged, cultivated man’” (MM 100).

Godfrey’s wife Charmian is the third one who receives the anonymous call. She replies to the caller that she has thought of death from time to time and does not forget about it. This time, the caller does not ring off and he says to her: “’Delighted to hear it’” (MM 127). Thus, it seems that what the speaker really wants is to draw receiver’s attention to death and to make them aware of it. Charmian is the first one who fulfils his demand or wish. Later she says in a newspaper article: “’We are not in the least perturbed by the caller. He is a very civil young man’” (MM 142). Charmian even feels sorry for the young caller and she thinks he may be lonely and only desire to talk to other people. It is interesting that to Charmian the caller sounds as if being young. Youth is generally considered to be positive, moreover, she considers him to be very civil. She truly does not afraid him or the call. In my opinion, her approach to the call and its speaker reflects her approach to death itself, to death she is aware and not afraid of.

Not only the Colston’s family, but also other people, most of them being in some relation to them and all being aged, received the call too. The fourth person who receives the call is a sociologist Alec Warner currently running a research dealing with people of old age.

Surprisingly, he only asks the caller to repeat the sentence and then thanks him. Subsequently he makes an entry about it into his journal and his card containing information about him as he himself is also a part of his own research. The Chief Inspector Mortimer, who in fact investigates the case also receives the call, but unexpectedly, his caller is a woman. “’Gentle- spoken and respectful.’” (MM 153) As far as other person receiving the call, Guy Leet, is concerned, he approaches quite friendly to the anonymous caller when he says to him: “’Well, now, sonny, I’m busy at the moment. I have a poet friend here with me and we are just about to have a drink’” (MM 192). Maybe he reacts so because what he hears is a “‘clear boyish voice’” (MM 192). The caller asks him to pass the telephone to his poet friend Percy Mannering and Percy, however, hears a “’strong mature voice, very noble, like W. B. Yeats’” (MM 192).

It is not certain whether Percy really takes the caller’s message as a piece of advice one should

be aware of, but as a poet he transforms it into a sonnet, the last line ending with the peculiar sentence Remember you must die, so it did have a certain impact on him.

In Guy Leet’s opinion, the speaker he heard was a schoolboy, Tempest’s husband

Ronald Sidebottome depicts him as “’a man well advanced in years with a cracked and rather shaky voice and a suppliant tone”’ (MM 148), an unknown couple describes the speaker as “’an official person’” and being “’late middle aged”’ (MM 149) and one more lady as “‘a man of the

Orient”’ (MM 149). As everybody refers to the voice in a very different way, Dame Lettie suggests there must be a whole gang of callers. Mrs Pettigrew claims she did not receive any phone calls and that all the people just made it up but she is lying. She did receive it as well but she simply decided to forget it and she did not tell anyone about it and she persuaded herself she had not heard the caller at all.

Throughout the whole chapter I listed several examples of various reactions to the anonymous call along with different perceptions of the actual sound of the voice and I put forward a theory that these various reactions serve as a means of characterization of the heroes and heroines of the novel.

6. The mystery of independency and existence

6.1. The mystery of free will in The Comforters

Coming back to what Caroline really considers to be the right answer to the source of the voices, i.e. a writer writing a story about her and her friends, she later begins to call “The

Typing Ghost” (C 161), it opens a discussion of another issue I would like to deal with in this chapter and it is the question of freedom of characters in a novel. Bhatt claims that: “In a number of her novels, Spark reveals her postmodernist dilemmas by drawing the readers’ attention to the status of characters as fictional creations. She uses them at times to create false clues and to confuse the reader“ (188). I perceive the status of character as one of the mystery of The

Comforters and therefore it will be now closely analysed. At a certain point, Caroline begins to think about her close friends and family as about characters in a novel and starts to evaluate them like this. She does not believe for example that Laurence’s grandmother would really be a gangster in the real life. She finds it very improbable. Nevertheless, she considers it to be a suitable arrangement for a plot in a novel. Also, she tries to convince Laurence that the coincidence of the crest of Eleanor’s cigarette case he noticed with the one on Mrs Hogg‘s possession is not plausible. In her view, it is not something that happens in real life. Thus, it seems to her as a situation being designed for a novel. To be more specific, she believes that it had been made up as an action for a novel at first and then it happened in their lives. Therefore, they all are only characters in a novel. Moreover, Caroline points out that she and Laurence are doing what the voices have recently suggested and she wants to outwit them. “The narrative says we went by car; all right, we must go by train. You do see that, don’t you, Laurence? It’s a matter of asserting free will.” (C 97) But by force of unexpected circumstances, they are made

to travel by car (exactly as the voices announced). This leads to the questions of character’s free will.

When readers accept Caroline’s interpretation of the voices and agree to be a part of

Muriel Spark’s play, The Comforters are regarded as a book about the creation of another book.

In addition, it emerges that the characters of the book, the parts of which Caroline can hear and she is a character of, are not free because they are finally forced to do what the narrative said.

They can struggle with it, nevertheless their final fate is set and determined. Not only that

Laurence and Caroline travel by car at last, moreover, they have a car accident and suffer severe injuries.

On the other hand, in the passage which deals with the past of Mrs Hogg, i.e. her career as a governess to the Manders’ boys and her marriage, a great deal of attention (which provides the reader with wit and fun) is being paid to Mrs Hogg’s bosom. Caroline criticizes this part but as a response to her comes the following lines written in italics and thus signalising that it is the typing ghost who speaks now: “Tap-tap. It was Caroline herself who introduced into the story the question of Mrs Hogg’s bosom” (C 139). It alludes to the beginning of the book when

Caroline was staying in the Pilgrim Centre and Mrs Hogg’s bosom engaged her attention. This indicates that Caroline has a special position in the book, extracts of which she keeps hearing.

Not only Caroline’s actions are being controlled by the narrative that she hears, but she herself as a character in it influences and creates it somehow too. Finally, she becomes a writer herself and she decides to write a novel consisting of the extracts she hears. Maybe this is the reason why she could affect the narrative and introduce something into it because she will be the one who will finally put it all together. When the Baron tries to justify his passion for diabolism in a confrontation with Caroline, he says that his subject matter at least exists, it can be practised, whereas she is not able to produce evidence of the object of her interest, the voices she keeps hearing. Her reply “’The evidence will be in the book itself.’” (C 160) proves that she starts to

be sure about the actual source of all the noises and she intends to write a book according to what she hears, thus she will be a writer of the book, its creator using her own will.

When still in hospital and contemplating about the voices, Caroline confides to the

Baron her theory about hearing a writer creating fictional characters. What is more, however, she tells him: “’But one thing I’m convinced of’ – and she indicated her leg which had swollen slightly within the plaster case so that it hurt quite a lot – ‘This physical pain convinces me that

I’m not wholly a fictional character’” (C 160). It means that Caroline doubted whether she is a living being or only a character from a book. Finally, it is her physical pain that she regards as an evidence for herself that she leads an independent life. In my opinion, Caroline has an exceptional position in the book. She is both a character of it, both a creator of it and thus she is independent and she has free will. Nonetheless, this free will was given to her by Muriel

Spark who decided to write a book where she describes how a character, Caroline, realizes she is a character in a novel and finally becomes a writer who writes the novel, she is a character of, down. It is Muriel Spark, however, who decided to give her this free will, and the sense of independency. As for other characters, it is not stated in the novel whether they feel free or not.

In the special issue of The Bottle Imp, which was devoted to Muriel Spark, the contributor publishing under the pseudonym of Unreliable Narrator puts forward the question of Spark’s authorial control over the whole narrative. The author suggests that Muriel Spark’s control over the characters extends beyond the boundaries of the story and that the fate of the characters is done by the author. Before taking a stand on this issue, another question concerning characters emerges. It leads to a question that literary theory asks, whether the characters can “live” at all beyond the boundaries of the story. There is one moment in the book that could serve as an answer to this question. “However, as soon as Mrs Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy.” (C 156) From this extract it seems that not only Mrs Hogg does

not have a life beyond the boundaries of the narrative, she does not have a fully developed life even within its boundaries. As a result, it would be very complicated for the readers to even think about Mrs Hogg’s other life than this described in the novel. The readers learnt about her past and her life ends in the story when drowning in the river, her body never to be found.

Another key issue to be discussed, reaching the heart of the category of a character, is, whether character itself is only a text or it should be reckoned by the readers as a human being.

I believe that it depends on the author what he or she allows to their characters and also on the readers and how they perceive the heroes. Some of Spark’s characters in The Comforters and

Memento Mori are not really characterised and developed in details (e.g. Laurence or Caroline from The Comforters) so it would be quite impossible to imagine their life beyond the boundaries of Spark’s story about them and trying to invent their past or future. Spark uses the characters rather to build the plot as she intends, or to transmit some thoughts, than to create a detailed elaborated physical and psychological characterization of them. Others, on the other hand, (e.g. Charmian or Mrs Pettigrew from Memento Mori) already lived out nearly their entire life with which the readers were partly familiarized with, so there is not much space for the readers to invent their past or surprising future. Moreover, they also dies in the story. To sum it up, regarding the characters of the two novels analysed, their characters live only within the boundaries of the narrative invented by Muriel Spark and I identify myself with the opinion that

Muriel Spark’s control over the characters extends beyond the boundaries of the story and that the fate of the characters is defined by the author.

What is more, Rimmon-Kenan even challenges the existence of the character as such when she speaks about “the death of character” (30). As one of the key concept this thesis focuses on is character, I believe it is a part of the narrative fiction that is “alive” and worth studying. I would interpret the death of character rather as the death of the traditional pictures of entirely good or bad, easily read characters. Muriel Spark and her brilliant play with the

characters as well as her unconventionally way of depicting them can serve as a compelling evidence of the importance and liveliness of the narratological category of character. The characters are a part of narrative fiction that Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan defines as follows: “By

'narrative fiction' I mean the narration of a succession of fictional events” (3). According to this definition, it is apparent that events are considered to be the main core of the narrative fiction.

The narrative is build up from events, from actions. However, these fictional events has to be happening to somebody or has to be acted by someone. Thus, the importance of characters is set and their place in the narrative fiction justified.

6.2. The mystery of existence and freedom in Memento Mori

In The Comforters Muriel Spark introduced the question of free will when Caroline, realising herself a character in a novel, wanted to outwit the Typing Ghost, i.e. the narration about herself and her friends she heard, and finally found an evidence of her independency in the physical pain she felt. In Memento Mori Spark continues in touching the issue of free will, but this time approaches it in a different way. The characters of Memento Mori are not aware of being heroes and heroines of a novel, so here Spark puts forward a question of existence, free will and independency of people in general.

When Dame Lettie tells Miss Taylor about the anonymous calls she is receiving, Miss

Taylor suspects Alec Warner to be the caller. She thinks it would be the sort of thing he would do for purposes of his sociological study, e.g. he might try to analyse Dame Lettie reactions to the call. His response is rather peculiar when he answers to Miss Taylor’s direct question: “’…I doubt if I am the culprit’” (MM 67). It is a sort of mysterious and ambiguous reply and even when he is directly asked whether he is the caller or not for the second time, Alec Warner

answers in a similar way: “’I don’t know’, he said. ‘If so, I am unaware of it. But I may be a

Jekyll and Hyde, may I not?’” (MM 67) It seems as if the call makes him doubt his own freedom, his independency, his control over his own life and personality. Moreover, Jean Taylor recalls how he once asked her: “’Do you think, Jean, that other people exist? … I mean, Jean, do you consider that people – the people around us – are real or illusory?’” (MM 68) When Jean confirms she is sure about her own existence Alec continues in his asking: ‘”Given that you believe in your own existence as self-evident, do you believe in that of others?’” (MM 69) Jean

Taylor believes that other people do exist. She supposes a graveyard to be a kind of evidence of it. “’But the graves are at least reassuring,’ she said, ‘for why bother to bury people, if they don’t exist?’” (MM 71) It is not stated in the novel, why Alec Warner askes such mysterious questions. As s sociologist, he tends to study people, their behaviour, actions and reactions in various situations. He also tends to ask philosophical questions and doubt things. Why does he do so, however? Jean Taylor provides the reason when she discovers it to be “a self-protective manner of speech which he used exclusively when talking to women whom he liked” (MM 68).

The call influences its receivers to different extent. Its impact on Dame Lettie is probably the biggest one. When suspecting various people to be the callers, it makes her changing her will several times, excluding the possible culprits. Next, she decides to have her phone cut off and live without it. Finally, it basically leads to her death when burglars break into her house and she is killed by a stick that was supposed to protect her against the offender of the anonymous call. Therefore, the anonymous call can be regarded as a tool which challenges the receivers’ free will and makes them do things they would not do by their own choice. What is common for all the receivers, is the fact that they cannot escape death. Moreover, Dame Lettie even goes to meet her fate earlier.

Although in a very limited way, the issue of freedom of characters in a novel appears in

Memento Mori as well. Similarly as in The Comforters, one of its main characters is also a

writer. Godfrey’s wife Charmian is a novelist, now experiencing a rebirth of her fame and reeditions of her novels. She expresses her opinion or the art of writing and the role of characters and the author and she says that when she was writing a novel the characters “’seemed to take control of my pen after a while’” (MM 187). The role of characters is judged here from a different perspective than in The Comforters. Whereas in The Comforters, the typing ghost was the one who controlled the characters, Charmian in Memento Mori admits that the novelist can be influenced in his or her decision concerning the story as well.

7. The mystery of special abilities or obsessions

7.1. The mystery of special abilities in The Comforters

In The Comforters Muriel Spark provides one of its main characters with a very specific ability. Stated simply, Laurence Manders is extremely good at observing and noticing various things. His ability will be analysed throughout the whole story to see what function it has in the whole text and what consequences emerge from it.

Laurence Manders is a young man who is spending his holiday at his grandmother’s place and one of his characteristics the readers are immediately informed about is that he notices details. Apart from this readers also learn that he abandoned religion, works on the B.B.C, where he gives commentaries on the football and the races, and that is basically all. Laurence is not characterised in more details even later in the story. As it gradually shows, the piece of information about his job is not really relevant for the story because the plot has nothing to do with it. Thus Laurence can serve in the narrative as the author’s mediator to communicate something about religion. He is a kind of the opposite to her mother who is a believer and to his girlfriend who has converted to Catholicism recently, but as it turns out during the story, his main importance for the novel lies in his special observational talent. To be more specific and to show that there is a reason to consider Laurence’s ability to be something extraordinary, special and thus something that falls into the category of what this thesis refers to as mysterious elements, several cases will be mentioned that prove those details he manages to notice to be very absurd ones.

One quite bizarre and funny Laurence’s remark reads: “‘There’s been a cobweb on the third landing for two weeks, four days and fifteen hours, not including the time for the making’” (C 10). It is apparent that people usually do not notice such details. As for this

example, it seems that one of the functions Laurence’s ability has in the narrative is to entertain the readers, which definitely is a very important aspect of it. It proves that Muriel Spark’s novels are also funny and witty. Other notes of Laurence of this kind includes e.g.: “‘Uncle Ernest uses ladies’ skin food, he rubs it in his elbows every night to keep them soft.’“ (C 10) or “‘Georgina

Hogg has three hairs on her chin when she doesn’t pull them out’“ (C 10). But surprisingly enough, the role of these statements does not reside only in their entertaining aspect. It is shown later that these utterances indicated something more and only later the readers are able to interpret them more accurately. In fact, Ernest turns out to be a gay, so in his special care about his body his sexual orientation can be indicated. But what the readers cannot be sure about is whether Laurence pronounced this remark only as a stating of a fact or whether he at the time of pronouncing it was aware of his uncle’s sexual orientation and wanted to show to other relatives that he knows. This is what Muriel Spark as the author did not say directly in her novel and what she let up her readers’ interpretation.

Another example of Laurence’s extraordinary oddity is the situation when he is accommodated in his grandmother’s room and without any ulterior motives starts to inspect her drawer. “In another drawer he found a comb with some of his grandmother’s hair on it and noted that the object was none too neat.” (C 9 – 10) The narrator comments Laurence’s feelings about this event as following: “He got some pleasure from having met with these facts, three hairpins, eight mothballs, a comb none too neat, the property of his grandmother, here in her home in Sussex, now in the present tense. That is what Laurence was like” (C 10). At this moment, the readers are acquainted with the narrator’s point of view, i.e. that Lawrence is an extraordinary observant, he gets pleasure from this kind of his ability and that it is what he is like. As for Laurence surroundings, in his mother’s opinion “’It is unhealthy’” (C 10). Laurence himself agrees with the narrator when his answer to her reproach is: “That’s what I’m like.” (C 10), which is exactly what the narrator said earlier. Her mother also expresses why she

finds his son’s ability worrying: “’Well, it’s unnatural. Because sometimes you see things that you shouldn’t.’” (C 10) In response to this Laurence puts forward his own argument saying:

“’It would be wrong for you, but it isn’t for me’”. (C 10) This difference in evaluating

Laurence’s trait implies that there is some difference between mother’s and son’s attitude to the life. And in deed, Lady Manders is a good Catholic woman, who feels embarrassed about some of his son’s findings, Laurence, however, does not see anything alarming about them. He considers this quality to be a part of his self, it seems rather beneficial for him and moreover he is quite proud of it. As he grows older, he realizes, however, that his relatives and acquaintances see it as something unnatural or even weird, and he manages to conceal some results of his observations, but even in his adulthood he sometimes cannot help himself to call attention of others toward it. It happens e.g. in the following extract, when he comments on his attentiveness in the presence of his grandmother’s friends: “‘I notice extraordinary things, ‘ Laurence boasted casually, lolling his brown head along the back of the sofa. ‘Things which people think are concealed. Awful to be like that, isn’t it?’” (C 17) In fact, he does not find it awful, it is a sort of hobby for him. Nevertheless, as it emerges later, it does show up to be awful for Louisa’s friends.

What role does Laurence’s special talent play in the whole narrative? The narrator uses

Laurence’s attentive remarks not only for fun, but also to indicate something, which the readers do not even pay complete attention to, maybe even regard it as a minor and not important thing to notice, but which is much later in the story revealed as a crucial point of the narrative. These findings have a very impressive effect on the readers, they are funny and witty, they show what an outstanding novelist Muriel Spark is and that she is a master of playing with the narration, the plot, the characters and this all in order to play with the readers who are finally the ones who have the biggest joy from this play. Apart from indicating numerous things lately revealed in the plot or coming back to them and developing them more, Laurence’s remarkably

insightfulness also gives rise to one of the level of The Comforters, which can be partly seen as a detective story. His grandmother looks at his special ability positively. When Laurence suggests he can possibly become a detective, she does not think so and she says: “’You have to be cunning to be a detective. The C.I.D. are terribly sly and private detectives will stoop to anything. You aren’t a bit sly, dear.’” (C 17) It is interesting that this positive comment comes from Laurence’s grandmother who will lately have problems partly because of her grandson’s extraordinary abilities thanks to them he reveals that his grandmother Louisa is quite well-off.

And another mysteries emerge such as what the sources of his grandmother’s living are and why she hides diamonds in a loaf of bread, which will be examined in the following chapter.

7.2. The mysterious obsession with faculties in Memento Mori

Similarly to The Comforters, one of the main characters from Memento Mori, Godfrey

Colston, is very particular about his abilities. This time, however, he does not possess any special or mysterious ability. He simply seems to be obsessed with his faculties. He is being described as follows: “He himself was eighty-seven, and in charge of all his faculties” (MM 11).

The fact that he is in good physical as well as mental health condition appears to be extremely important to him. When he almost overlooks the red lights when driving, his sister must assure him: “’You know, Godfrey,‘ she said, ‘you are wonderful for your age” (MM 11). And he replies: “’So everyone says’” (MM 11). Another example of how much he cares about his good condition is the following situation: “He noticed that Lettie’s hand was unsteady as she raised her cup, and the twitch on her large left cheek was pronounced. He thought in how much better form he himself was than his sister, though she was the younger, only seventy-nine” (MM 13).

Godfrey is quite obsessed with his good appearance and health, he tends to compare himself

with others and is interested in other people’s health and faculties, such as when he asks her sister Dame Lettie about Miss Taylor’s, his former servant, conditions: “’Got all her faculties still?’” (MM 19) Moreover, he attempts to assure himself about his good physical condition by challenging other people’s condition as if e.g. his sister’s one when he tells her: “’You look ill,

Lettie’” (MM 19). When he meets Guy Leet, a man who was interested in Godfrey’s wife

Charmian in their youth, and who now can walk only with the aid of two sticks, he comments it like this: “’He can’t be more than seventy-five and just see what he’s come to” (MM 25).

Apparently, he gained satisfaction from his miserable state. It is a kind of mystery, why Godfrey is so obsessed with his faculties. It seems to be his strategy of coping with old age. He tries to persuade his surrounding as well as himself that he is still in good form. Therefore he finds it hard to deal with the anonymous calls and someone saying him to remember he must die. What he did till now, was rather denying death as such. However, it is not the only cause why he is so crazy about his faculties and the mystery of one more reason for that is revealed towards the end of the novel. Godfrey suffers from frustration due to his wife’s lifelong success. He was always only a husband to a celebrated talented writer, her wife Charmian, whose memory is failing now, so finally it is Godfrey who is the more dominant and stronger in the couple and he enjoys it a lot. Therefore, to keep his faculties is extremely important for him. Paradoxically, the death catches him up despite his denial of it and he dies with all his faculties preserved in a car accident.

8. Mystery transformed into a detective story

8.1. Mystery or a crime in The Comforters

As indicated in the previous chapter, Laurence’s extraordinarily well-developed observational talent leads to another mysterious aspect of The Comforters. He uses his ability to investigate the background of his grandmother’s business, acting almost as a detective trying to solve his case. It will be certainly very limited and not accurate to consider The Comforters to be only a detective story. Indeed, it is a novel and thus a more complex genre. On the other hand, it is not quite wrong to regard The Comforters as a detective story and it could be one of the possibilities of its interpretation. As a matter of fact, it finally does turn out that there is a crime going on. This part of the thesis will focus on the mystery which surrounds Laurence’s grandmother Louisa Jepp in more details.

Louisa Jepp is Laurence’s grandmother. The narrator reveals about her that she is half- gipsy, at the age of 78, she makes football pools and she has a passion for pickling and preserving. None of these characteristics seems to be anyhow important, but surprisingly enough it is her passion for pickling and preserving, a minor detail at the first sight, which lately proves to be crucial for the whole plot. She lives in a rented cottage called Smugglers Retreat.

Although she does not even own her own place to live in, she manages well, can afford expensive Bulgarian cigarettes and does not seem to have financial problems which is a kind of a mystery. To use the words from the novel, she was “surrounded by her sufficiency, always behind which hovered a suspicion of restrained luxury” (C 16). On the basis of this remark of the narrator it seems as if the narrator desires someone notices this restrained luxury and starts to investigate it. And who would be more suitable for it than the attentive observant Laurence?

Here the beginnings of Muriel Spark’s deliberate, very well inter-connected construction of the novel can be identified.

When Laurence is staying at his grandmother’s place for his holiday he meets with her companions, three men. Then he finds a diamond in a loaf of bread and gets the impression that his grandmother along with her three friends form a gang and his intuition says to him that it is her grandma who runs this gang of an unknown kind. He writes about it to Caroline but she does not receive the letter. Mrs Hogg reads it even though it is addressed to Caroline and what is more, she brings it to Laurence’s mother Helena. Thus, Mrs Hogg as well as his mother,

Helena Manders, know that Laurence’s grandmother is being involved in some sort of crime.

But when Mrs Hogg later learns that her husband and her son are involved in the diamond smuggling, she comes to Mrs Manders to apologize for her suspicions, she says she was wrong and she gives Laurence’s letter to his mother who throws it into the fire.

From Laurence’s attitude to the mystery it is apparent that he wants to solve it a lot, he wants to keep his reputation of an exceptional observant. “That was what he mostly desired, and not content merely to put an end to her activities, Laurence wanted to know them” (C 168).

It is worth noticing that there is a similarity between Laurence’s approach to his grandma’s affair and Caroline’s approach to her own mystery of hearing voices. Laurence do not desire to stop his grandma’s activities and Caroline does not want to stop the voices either. It appears as if these were the questions they are most interested in and that is why they long for grasping them. In other words, Louisa Jepp’s issue is more important to Laurence that Caroline’s troubles and it indicates his self-centredness. What is more, he devotes more efforts to ascertain the truth about his grandmother in order to satisfy his craving for the truth and his curiosity than to help

Caroline.

When Laurence and Caroline are staying in a hospital at Laurence’s grandmother town to recover from their injuries after a car accident, Mrs Hogg visits Louisa Jepp at her cottage

because she has a message for Laurence that she will not take any legal actions against him, it means against his grandmother. But surprisingly, Laurence’s grandmother simply confess to

Mrs Hogg that she is involved in smuggling diamonds from abroad. Later the whole process of it is also revealed to the readers when one of the participants of the smuggling business, Mr

Webster, visits the Baron in his bookstore in London. They turn out to be the acquaintances and the Baron turns out to the person known as “Mrs Jepp’s London connexion” (C 126), which has been already indicated in the story and attentive readers have already found out. The Baron gives three bundles of notes and three cheques dated at three-weekly intervals to Mr Webster.

Louisa’s daughter Helena Manders does not want to believe her mother could be involved in a crime, thus she claims her son must have been mistaken when suspecting her.

What is more, she does not confront her mother with what she knows and similarly, her mother does not reveal anything to her in spite of the fact that that she knows that her daughter is familiar with Laurence’s suspicions. I believe Helena does not ask her mother about her activities directly because she does not want to cope with the fact her mother being a criminal.

It is clearly evident from the passage when she is reading her son’s notes about his investigations concerning this mystery: “She kept turning the pages, hoping for some small absurdity to prove the whole notion absurd that her aged mother should be involved in organised crime. She had a strong impulse to tear up the book” (C 120).

Laurence, on the other hand, is finally able to hold an open conversation with his grandmother when he gives a direct name to her activities and asks her if she has given up smuggling diamonds through the customs. In returns, she reveals to him that the Baron was also a part of her activities, which he was not aware of at all, and describes the whole process to her grandson because she knows he is eager to know it. Mervyn Hogarth with his paralysed son

Andrew always pretended to be pilgrims travelling abroad because of a cure, Andrew holding rosary with diamonds in the beads or inside small statutes of saints. Thus, this mystery is solved,

but surprisingly, another mystery connected with the process of smuggling diamonds happens, which will be described in chapter nine.

8.2. Mystery or a crime in Memento Mori

Similarly to The Comforters, the whole novel Memento Mori can look like a detective story. Dame Lettie Colston, who is the first to be receiving the anonymous calls, reports to the police that she is being disturbed by an unknown anonymous caller always saying the same thing: ”Remember you must die” (MM 10). It seems that the police do not take it seriously at first or think that Dame Lettie might be making it up. Finally, Dame Lettie decides to turn to

Chief Inspector Mortimer, who is now retired, but who was always a big fan of Lettie’s sister in law Charmian and therefore he could be the one who will act privately and take the case seriously. Dame Lettie and her brother Godfrey think her lines are crossed with someone else’s, the Exchange claims, however, they are perfectly in order. Even when other characters from the novel start receiving the call too, the police are not able to trace any of the calls. The capture of the culprit is complicated by the fact that it is received by various people living in various places and in addition, the descriptions of the caller vary a lot. The case occurs even in the newspapers but the information in the article are slightly altered because in the article there is written: “The voice invariably warns the victim, ‘You will die tonight’” (MM 141). Obviously, these are not the true words that the speaker uses.

Henry Mortimer, the former Chief Inspector, whom Dame Lettie hired to investigate the case privately, does not believe the police will ever get the culprit. He confides the reason for being convinced about it to his wife when he says: “’in my opinion the offender is Death himself’” (MM 142). And although the narrator does not say directly, whether death is the caller,

it is the most probable option and thus Mr Mortimer actually solved the whole mysterious case successfully.

Mr Mortimer invites all the people who received the call to his place to discuss it together and he announces them, especially to Dame Lettie’s and Godfrey’s disappointment, that he did not catch the culprit. Moreover, he expresses his conclusion that the aim of the caller is only to persuade them about the importance of the remembrance of death. And he recommends: “’I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life’” (MM 150). I consider these words he pronounced to be a key message not only of the caller but of the whole novel itself. This kind of solution Mr Mortimer offered was sufficient for some of the characters, one woman regards his words “’most uplifting and consoling’” (MM 151). Besides, one more character from the novel also identifies the anonymous speaker to be death himself. It is Miss Taylor who tells so to Dame Lettie and she also explains her opinion as follows: “’If you don’t remember Death, Death remind you to do so”’ (MM 175). Nevertheless, Dame Lettie refuses to accept this suggestion at all.

As the police is not able to track the culprit by any means, they finally conclude that all the old people suffered from hallucinations. And just in order to satisfy the public, for several reports about the call appeared in the newspapers, they claim they will investigate possible connections between the murder of Dame Lettie and the anonymous calls.

9. Supernatural mysteries

9.1. Diabolism in The Comforters

In The Comforters not only Caroline has to fight with mysterious events. Her old friend

The Baron confides to her that he had his ex-girlfriend former lover Mr Hogarth watched because he is convinced that he is a diabolist. He believes that Mervyn Hogarth carries out diabolic practices such as breaking statuettes of the saints. The Baron claims, however, that his own interest in diabolism is entirely intellectual. He describes an event to her when it happened to him that he met Mervyn Hogarth transformed into a form of a dog. “’The dog was Mervyn

Hogarth. Magically transformed, of course’” (C 165). He did not actually see the act of transforming, he is only strongly convinced that a dog he saw was Mervyn Hogarth. Finally, the Baron is having a treatment in a private mental home, so this situation is solved quite rationally, no mystery and transforming of people into animals is going on, but all turns out to be Mr Hogarth’s mental indisposition.

9.2. A miracle in The Comforters

Mervyn Hogarth with his paralysed son Andrew played an important part in smuggling the diamonds in The Comforters. Moreover, in Mr Webster’s opinion, Andrew found in their business a new mission for his life. “‘Evading the customs has made a great difference to young

Andrew Hogarth. It has given him confidence’’’ (C 129). Mrs Jepp herself also admits to her grandson Laurence that she was aware that the trips would have a positive psychological effect on Andrew because they gave him the sense of importance. He with his father always pretended

to be pilgrims travelling abroad because of a cure, Andrew holding rosary with diamonds in the beads or inside small statutes of saints. But now in fact, a kind of miracle happened to Andrew when he started to be able to move with limbs after such a trip. It is not specified in more details in the novel but it is considered to be a miracle. The Baron however, believes Mr Hogarth to be a diabolist who carries out diabolic practices such as breaking statuettes of the saints. Thus, he believes that Mr Hogarth unbewitched his son and that is why his health conditions improved.

Helena Manders welcomes Andrew’s recovery heartily even though she does not know him and she even does not have an idea that he is Mrs Hogg’s son. Having learn about the improvement of Andrew Hogarth’s health after returning from one of the pilgrims where he was because of the smuggling, Helena creates a new theory about her mother’s motives of her participation in the diamond affairs. “’I am sure she involved herself in all that unpleasantness, whatever it was, simply to help the young man” (C 176). She believes it and it is easy for her because she wants to believe that her mother’s intention were only good. When Helena Manders tells about the miracle to Mrs Hogg (it is actually her son who has been cured), she does not consider it to be a real miracle because Andrew did not became a Catholic.

9.3. Disappearing of a character in The Comforters

One very mysterious event happens towards the end of The Comforters. When Caroline and Laurence decide to have a riverside picnic Helena is invited to join them too. She brings the Baron and Mrs Hogg with her, however, and on their way to the picnic something really mysterious takes place. It happened that Georgina Hogg was sitting at the back of the car sleeping but then suddenly disappeared. “’She simply wasn’t there,’ Helena declared. ‘I said to

Willi, “Heavens, where’s Georgina?” and Willi said, ‘My God! She’s gone!’” (C 185) Helena

admits that she thought at first that she had only imagined the situation but the Baron saw it too.

His reaction was as following: “’Where have you been, Mrs Hogg? You vanished, didn’t you?’” (C 185) As the incident was experienced by two people, Helena Manders as well as the

Baron, it cannot be doubted that it really happened. In Baron Stock’s opinion, the explanation of the incident resides in the fact that she is a witch. Caroline suggests it might have been a shared telepathic illusion. And she also adds: “’Maybe when she goes to sleep she disappears as a matter of course’” (C 185). And her another idea is also very interesting, when she says:

“’Maybe she has no private life whatsoever’” (C 186). When saying so, Caroline is already thinking about Mrs Hogg as about a character from a novel. It appears that Mrs Hogg is the kind of a character that can disappear from the novel when she is not important for the story, e.g. when she is sleeping. Her disappearance for a while is another proof that she is not a real person and that Caroline’s theory is right.

Besides, shortly after this incident Mrs Hogg is to vanish forever. Since a storm is coming, Caroline borrows a boat and rows the Baron who was on a walk on the other bank of the river so that he does not have to walk to the bridge which would take him a long time. It all takes place without any problems. Later, Helena Manders asks Caroline to fetch also Georgina

Hogg. Mrs Hogg slips on the muddy bank, however, and falls into the water together with

Caroline who was holding her hand to help her into the boat. Mrs Hogg, who can’t swim, holds

Caroline around her neck. Caroline does not manage to free herself from Mrs Hogg until they are both drawn under the water and Caroline, only thanks to her practising of underwater swimming, manages to hold the breath for a longer time that Mrs Hogg. This saves her life because Mrs Hogg finally slackens her grip and Caroline can take a breath above the water.

“Mrs Hogg subsided away. God knows where she went.” (C 197) Mrs Hogg’s body was never recovered. She simply disappeared as if she had never existed.

10. Mysteries of everyday life

10.1. The mystery of an old lady as a leader of a gang in The Comforters

One of the lines of the plot in The Comforters is Mrs Jepp’s business, i.e. smuggling diamonds. There is stated several times by more than one character that the leader of the smuggling gang is Louisa Jepp and that it was her idea to start this kind of activity. One of the occasion is e.g. the dialogue between Mr Webster and the Baron where Mrs Jepp is stated the leader of the gang: “‘This diamond trading was Mrs Jepp’s idea, wasn’t it?’ ‘Oh yes. Oh, and she enjoys it, Mrs Jepp would be the last to deny it’“ (C 129). The Baron also recalls how Mrs

Jepp suggested him to be a part of her business.

The readers are bound to question all these utterances, however, because of Mervyn

Hogarth’s view on the issue of leadership. He offers a view on Louisa Jepp’s involvement in the diamond smuggling from a different perspective when he says to his wife Mrs Hogg: “‘The old women takes a very minor part in our scheme. Do you suppose we put ourselves in the hands of that senile hag?’” (C 148) It cannot be said with certainty, however, whether his claim can be considered plausible or not because it might be only an attempt to mislead Mrs Hogg.

As the question of the leader of the gang is presented only through the view of the characters and the narrator does not state directly whose role is the biggest one, it is up to the readers to make their own opinion on this mystery. Based on the description of the whole process of smuggling I dare say that Mrs Jepp is the brain of the whole action but she does not develop the biggest effort. Another fact that supports the theory that it is Louisa Jepp who is the leader of the gang is that not all participants of the business know each other. Neither Mervyn Hogarth, nor his son Andrew knows the identity of the Baron. He is familiar to them only as Mrs Jepp’s

London connexion. Thus, Laurence’s instinct that his grandmother leads the gang was probably

right. But in fact she did the business mainly for herself and not only for the financial side of it.

“‘I shall miss it, dear, it was sport.’“ (C 176) she formulates her reasons why she took part in business like this. It simply enlivened the old lady’s life up.

10.2. Mysterious coincidence in The Comforters

In The Comforters mysterious coincidences happen. Some of them seems to be only accidental and even funny, others emerge to be important for the next development of the plot.

“Come immediately, something mysterious going on”. (C 59) This is how two different wires that Laurence and Caroline sent to each other read, both of them saying the same but referring to different issues. While Caroline means by the mystery the voices she started hearing,

Laurence refers to his suspicion that his grandma runs a gang. It is quite a funny situation but a greater importance might be attached to it because I see here the first indication of later bigger interests of Laurence as well as Caroline in their own mysteries. Caroline is later more engaged in her own mystery, i.e. hearing voices, than in helping Laurence to solve his grandma’s issue and similarly, Laurence devotes later most of his attention to finding out how Louisa’s business works than to helping Caroline with her troubles.

Another coincidence that appears in The Comforters is the one that Laurence notices but he does not really make use of it and does not discover all the consequences that arise from it.

He notices that the crest of Eleanor’s cigarette case is the same as the one on Mrs Hogg‘s possession. He does not reveal, however, that it is so because Mrs Hogg is a wife of Mr Hogarth who is now married to Eleanor. Moreover, Caroline tries to convince him that this coincidence is not plausible and that it is as if invented for a situation in a novel. All in all, he does not further investigate it, but Caroline meant it rather in a different way, as a support for her theory

that they are all characters from a novel and what happens to them are also situations from a novel.

10.3. Mysteries in relationships in Memento Mori

One of the mysteries in Memento Mori is why Lisa Brooke, Godfrey’s former lover, when she died, bequeathed most of her fortune to her housekeeper Mrs Pettigrew. Lisa’s family wants to contest Lisa’s will on the basis of Lisa’s not right mind when writing it. In her will she wishes to leave all the fortune “to my husband if he survives me and thereafter to my housekeeper Mabel Pettigrew” (MM 34). Nevertheless, what is even a bigger mystery than the reason why she would like to leave her property to Mrs Pettigrew, is the note about her husband, who is dead already and was dead even long before the will was written. It turns out later that

Lisa Brooke got married for the second time to Guy Leet who appears after her death to claim his rights. In fact, Guy Leet was once a lover of Godfrey’s wife Charmian and the reason why this mysterious marriage took place was only his desire to save Charmian from threat of Lisa and also a scandal.

As a result, Mrs Pettigrew is not going to get any money and thus she has to invent another way of gaining some. And it again involves mysterious love affairs and blackmailing.

Mrs Pettigrew starts to blackmail Godfrey because she discovered his secrets from the past such as his affair with Lisa Brooke, the correspondence of which she keeps, or a money scandal at the Colston Breweries. Godfrey wants to avoid the disclosure of his affair to his wife so strongly that in his will he is willing to bequeath most of his wealth to Mrs Pettigrew. The reason for doing so, however, does not lie in his love to his wife Charmian or his need to protect her.

Actually, he suffers from frustration due to his wife’s lifelong success and he just wants to keep

his pride and status before Charmian. The truth is, however, that Charmian knows everything both about his husband’s business and love affairs. She pretends not doing so because she knows her husband wants to keep some reputation in front of her. Luckily for him, Colston’s former housekeeper Miss Taylor figures out that Godfrey is probably being blackmailed by Mrs

Pettigrew and that he is too proud to risk the disclosure of his affair to Charmian. Thus she sends a message to him consisting of information that Charmian was unfaithful to him repeatedly. For Alec Warner, who delivers this message to Godfrey, Miss Taylor’s betrayal of

Charmian is a mystery, but Miss Taylor does it with the best intentions. It partly brakes

Charmian’s perfect moral reputation in Godfrey’s eyes and knowing also about her infidelities, he feels she had now no right to be too righteous comparing to him, he is no more afraid of his affairs to be revealed and more importantly, he can stop to fear Mrs Pettigrew. Finally, he visits his wife in the nursing home where she decided to live and they reveal to each other that they are familiar with their love affairs. Moreover, Godfrey’s son learns about his bather being blackmailed and he wants to help him. The reason why he wants to do so, however, is that he does not like his intention to bequeath a large part of money he himself was supposed to leave to Mrs Pettigrew. Therefore, his motivation to help is very selfish.

“’Look for one thing and you find another’” (MM 206). This profound statement of Mr

Mortimer leads the attention back to the person of Lisa Brooke who was mentioned at the very beginning of this subchapter. When Dame Lettie’s death is being investigated, twenty-two will of hers are found. In one of them she bequests something to Lisa O’Brien. It is revealed that before the marriage with Guy Leet Lisa was already married to Matthew O’Brien who turns out to be still alive, although living in a mental home convinced he is God and being bedridden.

Therefore, Lisa’s fortune belongs to him and not to Guy Leet. As Matthew O’Brien dies after some time, however, it is finally Mrs Pettigrew who does inherit the money of Lisa Brooke. To sum it up, numerous mysteries in the form of secrets, infidelities or blackmailing occurs in

relationships among the characters as a part of their life. As these mysteries are not anyhow supernatural, they are all solved and their background is revealed, sometimes being really surprising.

10.4. Mysterious research in Memento Mori

Alec Warner is one of the characters from Memento Mori. Being a sociologist by his profession, he conducts a very unusual research. The study he has been carrying out for ten years is called Old Age and he has been working on it since he turned seventy. He is a gerontologist and the subject of his research are his friends, acquaintances and also the elderly patients from St Aubrey’s Home for mental cases, all of the participants being over seventy.

The objective of his research is to create some case-histories. Alec keeps plenty of notes, simply describing old people’s lives and records everything into a diary which is to be destroyed after his death. “The diary would go into the fire, but his every morning’s work was to analyse and abstract from it the data for his case-histories, entering them in the various methodical notebooks. There Charmian would become an impersonal, almost homeless ‘Gladys’, Mabel

Pettigrew ‘Joan’, and he himself ‘George” (MM 61). In a way, he appears to be also a kind of writer, describing other peoples’ lives as if in a novel. The purpose of the case-histories is pretty mysterious, but for Alec they are most valuable. Firstly, he is very much afraid of the day when he can possibly starts losing his memory and cannot remember who is who. In order to prevent this, he creates a card with information about every participant of the research and also details of his relationship to them. All of the cards were to be destroyed at his death as well as all documents referring to real names. The information about the real people serves as “aid to memory” (MM 59). Thus, one of the reasons why Alec carries his study is to keep himself

active, practising his memory and mental skills. He is a bit obsessed with his work, observing people even when having ordinary conversation with them, trying to identify any interesting information or reaction that could be used for the purposes of his research. His extreme enthusiasm for it is apparent from his own comment on the anonymous calls: “’I hope the police don’t catch the fellow too soon. One might get some interesting reactions’” (MM 73).

Alec Warner frequently visits a young woman Olive who helps him with his study. Her task is to observe the people he included in his study and she also comes into the contact with.

After every meeting with them, she gives him as many pieces of information about their behaviour as she can. Alec knows that people who are familiar with his profession sometimes feel they are being watched in his presence, so they do not behave quite naturally. Olive can provide him with another view on his acquaintances. He explains to her how to proceed: “’You must watch, my dear, and pray. It is the only way to be a scholar, to watch and to pray’” (MM 94). When she mentions the detective Mortimer, however, Alec wonders when exactly he will be seventy. As his study concerns only people above seventy years old, he is not interested in him so far.

Unfortunately, no one will never learn what conclusions can be deduced from Alec

Warner’s research and it stays a mystery as well as the cause of the fire in which all his documents are destroyed. Paradoxically, when Alec planned the information about the real people to be burnt in fire, he did not know that it will be actually all of his work that will once end in the fire. The he importance of his study is shown when he tries to enter the building on fire under the pretext of rescuing a cat and dog from his flat, although no pets are actually allowed in the house. Unfortunately, he loses his entire records, i.e. ten years of work, in the fire.

11. The mystery of Muriel Spark as the goddess of the novel

The title of this chapter refers to how many critics tend to call Muriel Spark, i.e. a godlike novelist. Sawada Chikako claims about them: “They have become stuck in the static myth of Spark as a ‘godlike novelist’, with her omniscience, her supreme knowledge of an ending, her Catholic faith” (4). The mysteries, the whole thesis deals with, occur not only in

Spark’s novels, but her narrative technique is also a sort of mysterious. Therefore, the attention now will be devoted to the issue of Muriel Spark’s godlikeness and it will be clarify whether, in terms of the analysed novels, The Comforters and Memento Mori, she can be considered a godlike novelist or not.

11.1. Omniscience in The Comforters

As far as omniscience is concerned, the narrator Spark uses in The Comforters is omniscient. Lodge speaks about Spark’s narrative as about a narrative which is “managed and commented on by an impersonal but intrusive narrator”. The narrator truly is intrusive because it provokes the readers and also makes them keep attention because small hints usually turn out to be crucial much later in the story. From time to time the narrator plays also with switching tenses. There is a situation happening in The Comforters, for example, whole written in the past tense. Then the narrator slows down the plot, however, by a digression written in a present tense when Louisa’s appearance is described. This shift from the past to the present tense may be interpreted as an effort to emphasize certain pieces of information and make the impression on the readers as if they are involved in the story that it is happening right now, even though it already happened in the past because the whole narration is otherwise written in the past.

Another possibility may be, however, that the author wants to show that the narrator knows about the characters more than just their story than happened to them in the past. It is shown when direct note about Louisa’s present conditions is made: “She is still alive, not much changed from that day when Laurence came down to breakfast.” (C 12) After making this statement, the narrator smoothly switches into the past tense again and continues depicting

Louisa’s appearance by describing her clothes and then the readers are back in the situation that was in progress before the digression. This is a convincing evidence that the narrator knows more about the characters than only their story which happened to them in the past.

Another evidence of the presence of the omniscient narrator occurs in the novel in a form of an explanatory, or specifying note in the brackets when Louisa Jepp is asking her grandson whether he tasted some of her figs in syrup she had sent to his parents: “’Not actually.

But I know they were most enjoyable, Mother said’ (which Helena had not said)” (C 15). The note in the brackets proves that the narrator knows also about other actions than only about those happening in the storyline right now. Another example might be: “Mr Webster thought,

Ah, to do with the woman, Hogarth’s former wife, but he was wrong” (C 127). Here is describes what a particular character thinks and then stated that this idea is not correct. The narrator comments on certain assumptions of a character and shows them to be wrong also the following extract: “It is very much to be doubted if Mervyn Hogarth had ever in his life given more than a passing thought to any black art or occult science. Certainly he was innocent of prolonged interest in, let alone any practice of, diabolism, witchcraft, demonism or such cult. Nevertheless

Baron Stock believed otherwise” (C 157).

As stated earlier, the narrator in The Comforters has been found omniscient. However, the narrator in general is only a speaker. It is a part of the narrative, situated within it, but not the creator of it. The creator is the author. Thus, a question emerges whether the omniscience of the narrator implies also the omniscience of the author. It is the author who creates the book

from its beginning to its end, it is the author who invents the narrator, the characters and the plot. Thus, the author is in a way always omniscient because he or she does everything with a certain purpose, writes about topics he or she wants to and how they want to. On the other hand, the omniscience of Muriel Spark as an author here is meant to be something slightly different.

The issue is whether she is a novelist who controls her narrative, knows the only possible ending of it and does not give much space to her readers to interpret things in their own way.

As for the two examined novels, Spark does try to create the impression that it is she who controls the whole narrative and one of her means to do so is the use of omniscient narrator.

Moreover, the narrator has a direct influence on the story which is visible for example in the following remark about unprintable facts in The Comforters: “It gave a tiny whirr, then came the boom of Laurence’s voice. ‘Caroline, darling, …’ followed by the funny, unprintable suggestion” (C 78). According to the narrator, something is unprintable, so it is not included in the story, it remains hidden to the readers. In addition, Spark demonstrates her control over the novel and its characters through the narrator’s description of the process of thinking of some characters which is in case of the following extract presented as a stream of thoughts, a list of items appearing in someone’s head and it does resemble the way people think. This process which takes almost no time in the character’s head is introduced to the readers in details.

…but Mervyn Hogarth did a little exercise in his head which took no time at all, but

which, had it been laboured out, would have gone like this:

Fares 13s. but had to come to London anyway, dreariness of food, but it was free;

disappointment at subject of discussion (Ernest had invited him to discuss ‘matters of

interest to you’) but satisfaction about Eleanor’s break with Stock and consequent

money difficulties; annoyance at being touched for money but satisfaction in refusing;

waste of time but now Manders wants to say something further, which might possibly

redeem the meeting or on the other hand confirm it as a dead loss. (C 132)

There is one very special moment in the book which reads as following: “However, as soon as Mrs Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy” (C 156), According to this extract it might seem that the narrator is not omniscient. He does not know everything. It might mean that Mrs Hogg’s privacy is not important for the story and thus it is not necessary to be commented on. But in this case, the author would just omit mentioning it completely. But here is stated that one of the character disappeared and it proves how powerful author Muriel Spark is when she can make a character disappear and she does show it in The Comforters.

11.2. Omniscience in Memento Mori

In Memento Mori Muriel Spark also uses the omniscient narrator. In comparison with

The Comforters, however, the narrator reveals more things to the readers, he speaks more directly, characterize the characters more exactly. In the following extract for example the narrator explains the causes of quite a strange and ambivalent relationship between two characters from the novel. “It was the old enmity about Miss Taylor’s love affair in 1907 which in fact Dame Lettie had forgotten – had dangerously forgotten; so that she retrained in her mind a vague fascinating enmity for Jean Taylor without any salutary definition” (MM 40). In this very short passage the narrator shows quite a lot of things. Firstly, the narrator reveals some love affair from the past, secondly he describes one of the character’s (Dame Lettie’s) attitude

to it in the present time and also the consequences of it for the present days, i.e. enmity. Here the narrator shows his omniscience, power and control over the narrative.

In Memento Mori, similarly as in The Comforters, there is also a touch of the issue of something being unprintable: “He sat back to observe, with his two-fanged gloat, the effect of this question, which he next answered unprintable terms, causing Mrs Pettigrew to say

‘Gracious!’” (MM 28) It proves that the narrator controls the narrative because he considers something the characters said to be unprintable and thus decides to omit it from the narrative.

The following lines from the novel demonstrate that the narrator has more reliability than the characters and thus bigger authority in the novel. “Mrs Anthony knew instinctively that

Mrs Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong” (MM 53). It is obvious that the narrator it the one to be trusted, not judgement of the characters. Moreover, the narrator reveals

Mrs Pettigrew’s lie. She claims she is sixty-nine, but the narrator corrects her statement: “In fact, Mrs Pettigrew was seventy-three, but she did not at all look the age under her make- up” (MM 55). A clarification of a character’s idea is introduced by the narrator when Charmian thinks Mrs Pettigrew blackmailed her in the past. The narrator corrects her that in reality it was

Lisa Brooke who knew that Charmian had have a lover. Similar case appears in the novel when

Olive and her grandfather Percy Mannering are discussing the revival of interest in Charmian’s novels. She thinks, only few old people know Charmian, he, on the other hand, that she is still famous. The narrator then explains what the cause of Percy’s disagreement with her granddaughter is and why they do not understand each other in the question of Charmian’s work and fame: “Then she gave him three pounds to make up for her cruelty, which in fact he had not noticed; he simply did not acknowledge the idea of revival in either case, since he did not recognize the interim death” (MM 97). Moreover, the narrator also reveals to the readers some traits and activities of the characters they would never admit even to themselves. It is the case

of Mrs Pettigrew who had undergone a face lifting operation eighteen years ago, but personally would have denied it and she herself would believe the denial.

To sum it up, there is a great author’s authority shown in both examined novels. It is also true, however, that many things are at first only gently indicated in the text itself, and then they continue growing, extending and they are becoming ripe in readers’ minds. Spark plays her own game not only with the fictional characters, but also with her readers. She disturbs them, provoke them and does everything consciously and is sure about where she wants to lead her readers. Thus, the statement that she is an omniscient novelist is a valid one. On the other hand, what Spark needs, so that her novels work as she intends them to work, is a perceptive, cooperating reader who is willing to be a part of her game and create it together with her.

According to Stout, “Spark brought the same intense authority to each of her successive novels“. As a conclusion of the this chapter I presume to put this statement the other way round and claim that it is thanks to Spark’s intense authority which is apparent in her novels as it has been just proved that their works are so special, recognizable and appreciated.

12. Conclusion

The diploma thesis dealt with the role of mysterious elements is two selected novels by

Muriel Spark. Various kinds of mysteries that occur both in The Comforters and Memento Mori were introduced and analysed deeply. The aim of the thesis was to prove that what the thesis refers to as mysterious elements has a huge impact not only on the content of the novels, but also on their form and thus the mysterious elements serve as a specific narratological device.

Firstly, the mystery of another voice was identified in The Comforters as well as in

Memento Mori. Its analysis showed that Muriel Spark uses it not only as a mysterious motive which moves the plot ahead, but also as an additional voice of her narration apart from the narrator’s and the characters’ ones. Through this additional voice she depicts the characters because their different perceiving and reactions either to the sound of a typewriter or to the anonymous call reveal or strengthen some personal traits of theirs.

Secondly, the thesis focused on the mystery of free will. In The Comforters the free will and independency of literary characters were questioned, dealing also with the formal aspect of creating a novel as such. It was concluded that it is the author who owns the control over the narrative, with Caroline being the exception of it, because she has a prominent position within the book, being both its creator and a character of it. In Memento Mori the free will of people was challenged through the anonymous call which makes them do things they would not do by their own choice. The most prominent example of the impact of the call on its receiver’s independency and free will is Dame Lettie who becomes paranoid due to it and her efforts to protect herself basically lead to her death.

Thirdly, the mysterious emphasis on abilities of some characters was discussed. It was found out that Laurence’s extraordinary observational talent serves as a special device to entertain the readers, to highlight his desire to reveal all mysteries and to provide the readers

with numerous hints that turn out to be important later in the plot, thus this unusual characteristic of Laurence serves as a formal device of building the narrative. Godfrey’s abilities in Memento

Mori are not of an exceptional character at all, what is exceptional, however, is the emphasis he puts on them. His obsession with his faculties reveals his fear of the old age and of the death.

Next, one common feature of both The Comforters and Memento Mori was underlined, i.e. the possibility to interpret both of them as detective stories. One of the storyline in The

Comforters is the investigation of the mysterious business of Mrs Manders, which is in fact a criminal act. In Memento Mori, the identity of the culprit of the anonymous call is discussed throughout the whole story and moreover, in both of the novels analysed, deaths under stranger circumstance occur too. Thus, in both novels crimes and mysteries overlap.

Subsequently, the use of several other mysteries in the novels, whether supernatural, or those that appear in everyday life, was analysed. As for The Comforters, supernatural occasions, namely interest in diabolism, a miracle and disappearing of one character were investigated. It was emphasised that the last one questions the role of characters and author in the creation of a novel, thus touches the formal aspect of writing again. Memento Mori, on the other hand, deals especially with the mysteries of everyday life, such as secrets in relationships.

Finally, as various mysteries Muriel Sparks includes in her novels were analysed in the thesis, the attention was drawn to one more mystery, this time concerning Spark herself, more specifically her control over the narrative. Spark’s strong authority was identified in both of the selected novels. It was pointed out, however, that she needs a perceptive reader, who is able to play her game with her and reveal all the levels of her works, too.

In conclusion, it was found out that Muriel Spark uses mysterious elements as an indispensable part of her narrative technique. In addition, the thesis highlights that in Muriel

Spark’s weakness for mystery, there lies her strength and it is an essential component of her art of writing and constructing and/or deconstructing the narrative.

13. Works cited

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Spark, Muriel. The Comforters. Penguin books, 1963.

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