MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Symbols and Archetypes in the Work of Iris Murdoch
Diploma Thesis
Brno 2014
Supervisor: Written by: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A. Kristýna Zelková
Declaration
I declare that I worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
Brno, 20 November 2014 Kristýna Zelková
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A. for her kindness, support and the time she devoted to my thesis.
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Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 6
1. Iris Murdoch and the Idea of Good ...... 8
1.1.Iris Murdoch ...... 8
1.2. The Quest for Truth ...... 8
1.3. The Concept of Attention ...... 10
2. Myth as a Narrative of Religious Man ...... 12
2.1. The Fundamental Role of Stories in Human Life ...... 12
2.2. Myth as a Spiritual Guide on the Way of Attention to the World ...... 13
2.3. Eternal Return of Myth ...... 14
3. Myth in the Work of Iris Murdoch ...... 15
3.1. Classical Myth in the Work of Iris Murdoch ...... 15
3.2. Personal Myths in the Work of Iris Murdoch ...... 17
3.3. The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea ...... 19
3.4. The Cave Myth in The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea ...... 21
3.5. Classical Myth in The Sea, the Sea ...... 25
4. Archetypes as Sources of Myths ...... 31
4.1. Collective Unconsciousness and Archetypes ...... 31
4.2. Archetypes as Reccuring Patterns of Collective Unconscious ...... 35
4.3. Individuation – A Spiritual Journey to the Attention to Oneself and Others ...... 38
5. Archetypes in the Work of Iris Murdoch ...... 41
5.1. Individuation in The Sea, the Sea ...... 41
5.1.2. The Symbols of the Beginning of Charles´s Individuation ...... 45
5.2.2. The Symbols of the Beginning of Bill´s Individuation ...... 52
5.3. The Shadow Archetype and the Wise Old Man Archetype in The Sea, the Sea ...... 56
5.4. The Anima Archetype in The Sea, the Sea ...... 62 4
5.5. The Anima Archetype in The Sandcastle ...... 68
Conclusion ...... 71
List of Abbreviations ...... 74
Résumé ...... 75
Resume ...... 75
Bibliography ...... 77
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Introduction
Iris Murdoch employed various literary devices, methods and styles in her novels to create an original and vivid fictional world full of lively characters. Thus it is not possible to place her fiction within one literary movement but rather consider it as a unique “blend of serious moral concerns, palyfulness of form despite her continual commintment to the traditional novel, and exuberant inventiveness” (Human 7), which offers the reader countless number of possibilities for interpretation of her work. However, the insight into literary criticism dealing with Iris Murdoch´s work reveals that one trait has prevailed over other ways of interpretation of the author´s work and that is the one which analyses her fiction in relation to her philosophical writings. According to Graham Martin, “Iris Murdoch comes to literature as a philosopher; her own novels reflect her philosophical interests and her general statements about the novel connect it, not with literary tradition, but with the history of philosophy” (qtd. in Leeson 1). Iris Murdoch indeed integrates notional concepts of literary works to prove some of her philosophical hypothesis as well as she integrates her philosophical ideas into her fictional world. Although she felt “an absolute horror of putting theories or ´philosophical ideas´ as such” into her novels she admitted that she “might put in things about philosophy” because she simply knows about philosophy (EM 19). Thus being both a philosopher of morals and a novelist, she made her fictional world diverse by virtue of implementation of features of mystical experience and moral and religious issues. In my thesis I will analyse two novels of Iris Murdoch from the perspective of archetypal literary criticism. I will explore the categories of symbols and archetypes as they are integral part of mystics and religion and therefore present in Murdoch´s work because, as Murdoch asserts, “Morality has always been connected with religion and religion with mysticism” (SG 74). In the first chapter I will introduce basic facts about Iris Murdoch´s life and some of her philosophical ideas, particularly the idea of Love which is connected with the concept of Attention and which are vital for interpretation of her novels. In the second chapter I will discuss the role of stories in relation to the chosen philosophical ideas. Iris Murdoch considered stories a natural way of reflecting human lives and stressed their presence in everyday communication (EM 6). She claimed that, “We are all symbol-makers, myth- makers, story tellers” (qtd. in Conradi 23) which she manifested in her novels in which the stories are partially based on distorted myths and symbols. A firm bond between myths, symbols and stories in Iris Murdoch´s work forms the basis of my thesis. In the second 6
chapter I will also deal with the stories of myth as such, its significance in the history of mankind and its persistence to the present. In the third chapter I will analyze the conception of myth in Iris Murdoch´s novels and offer two different perspectives of treating the mythological imaginary in her fiction. In the fourth chapter I will provide the reader with the explanation of how and why people resort to myths and introduce the concept of archetypes as the ultimate source of myths according to Jungian analytical psychology. By pointing at recurring patterns in the work of Iris Murdoch I will name the fundamental archetypal images and demonstrate its existence in the fictional world of the author in the last chapter. I will also discuss the role of symbols as manifestations of archetypes in the novels of Iris Murdoch. The device of intertextuality in Murdoch´s work, especially the allusions to the Bible, will also be discussed as the author´s novels often refer to Biblical symbolic images. I have chosen two of Murdoch´s novels as primary sources for my thesis. Those are The Sandcastle (1957) from the 50´s and The Sea, the Sea (1978) from the 70´s. I have chosen these novels because they gained very different criticism, The Sandcastle being considered the least successfull and The Sea, the Sea the most successfull of the whole of Murdoch´s production. Moreover, their main characters contrast each other in many ways. Thus it is a challange to compare the characters as well as the novels as a whole in relation to the topic of symbols and archetypes as they both contain symbolic and archetypal images but each of them treat them in a different way. By analysing the collected materials, I will recognize the symbols and archetypes which are presented in two chosen novels and demonstrate that these are some of the elements which the author employed to search for the essence of life. I will try to illustrate that the deep, profound and complex notion of the world can be traced beyond Iris Murdoch´s seemingly simple stories, plots and characteristics. I will question those authors who found Murdoch´s novels superficial and offer arguments to show that a critical reader may find depth and transcendence in Murdoch´s fictional world.
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1. Iris Murdoch and the Idea of Good
1.1.Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch was one of the most prolific an . She wrote twenty six novels, several plays, poetry and a number of philosophical essays. She won the Booker Prize for the novel The Sea, the Sea in 1978, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the novel The Black Prince (1973) in 1973 and the Golden PEN Award in 1997. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987. Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland in 1919, studied classics and philosophy at Oxford and then worked for HM Treasury and for the UNRRA, partly in a refugee camp in Austria. Then she continued her studies of philosophy at Cambridge and taught philosophy at Oxford from 1948. She married John Bayley, an English writer and literary critic ("Iris Murdoch"). They formed a unique couple of intellectuals who, not having children, studied and wrote continually all life discussing their work and encouraging themselves in it. John Bayley described their loving and mutually beneficial relationship in a highly subjective yet convincing memoir called Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (1998). It deals partly with the end of Iris Murdoch´s life when she developed Alzheimer´s disease and was not able to continue writing. She died in 1999 in Oxford.
1.2. The Quest for Truth
Before publishing her first novel Iris Murdoch´s philosohical study, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953) had already been released. Murdoch´s preoccupation with Sartre and the philosophy of existentialism marks the early period of her work and some philosophical ideas inspired by Sartre can be traced throughout her writings. Although she admired the author she partly objected to his philosophy, mainly to his “existentialist view of freedom and preoccupation with the self, his rejection of religion and bourgeois morality” as Milada Franková points out (Human 9). Rubin Rabinovitz states that Murdoch opposes Sartre´s obsession with the self which leads to a separation of a man from “things outside of himself” and to a “master and slave” view of interpersonal relationships (5). This is a very good point as human relationships play an important role in conveying Murdoch´s philosophical ideas.
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As Milada Franková says, human relationships in Murdoch´s work are “conscious, serious studies in their own right” (Human 7) serving as instruments “in the formulation of some of her [philosophical] concepts” (Human 30). They are best manifestations of the “author´s concept of contingency” (Human 7), which is one of the crucial notions of Murdoch´s philosophy. According to A.S.Byatt the characters in An Unofficial Rose (1962) and The Bell (1958) are ´free´ characters as they are “unpredictable precisely because several outcomes are possible to their dilemmas” (24). This feeling of chance spans throughout the work of Iris Murdoch and makes her fictional world so diverse and realistic. The idea of contingency is closely connected with Murdoch´s assertion of doubt which she regards highly and which is one of the unifying aspects of her philosophy and the philosophy of existentialists. The world is contingent and chance, nothing is certain and thus people are condemned to doubt. In an essay "The Existentialist Hero" Iris Murdoch explains that if men refuse to doubt they may not only “lose their qualities of human generosity and sympathy” but also “their sense of direction” (EM 112-113). The value of doubt lies in the fact that it protects men against dogmatism, makes them tolerant to others and enables them to seek for truth. “Truth-seeking and truth-revealing” are the activities that philosophy and literature share despite their difference according to Murdoch (EM 11). Hence the pursuit of truth penetrates the whole work of Iris Murdoch, the philosopher and the novelist. In The Sovereignty of Good (1970), her second philosophical writing, Iris Murdoch asserts that “to do philosophy is ... to attempt to discover the truth” (SG 46). She as a philosopher of morals who wants philosophy to speak in accessible language not only to experts but also to ordinary people draws a parallel between the concept of truth and the concept of realism. She sees man as an imperfect creature obsessed with the self who should try “to perceive what is true” in order to suppress the self (SG 66) which is the main obstacle in the way to become good. Goodness is the central concept of Murdoch´s philosophy and since it has an “indefinable and non-representable character” (SG 69), the author introduces subordinate moral concepts which enable her to express not what goodness is but how to become good and thus at least approach goodness. These are the concept of truth, the concept of love and the concept of attention. We have to attend to reality which means that we have to look at things and people how they really are and love things and people how they really are. We have to try to escape dream-world, fantasy and illusion in which we are constantly trapped. We have to suppress our ego and try to become humble because only the humble
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man who “sees himself as nothing, can see other things as they are” (SG 103-104). Only after we learn to overcome our self and attend to reality we become free (SG 95).
1.3. The Concept of Attention
According to Milada Franková Iris Murdoch “believes there is truth and good somewhere to be looked for, even if never found” (Human 17). In one statement Milada Franková renders the fundamental idea of Murdoch´s philosophy which is projected in her novels and which is implied in all other central philosophical notions which Murdoch contemplates in her philosophical writings and which are actually only the ways of looking for Truth and Good. In general, Murdoch holds a negative view of human nature claiming that “our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, usually self-preoccupied, often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world” (SG 84) and we live in an “aimless, chancy, and huge world” (SG 100). However, as a philosopher of practical ethics and an advocate of humanity, she believes that there exist reflections of Good which provoke our selfishness and which enable us to free ourselves of the self-assertive ego and become better persons. These reflections are the possibility of unselfish love and the idea of realism which one should seek for through the concept of ´attention´ which Iris Murdoch borrowed from a French philosopher Simone Weil and which she defines as “the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality” (SG 34). Iris Murdoch suggests several ways to attend to reality and thus approach and reflect Goodness. One of them is the ability to look at nature and great art. When we contemplate over nature and great art we free ourselves from the constraints of daily life and see the reality (SG 65). Nature and great art can thereby teach us the way to attend to other people, look at them and their differences, accept them as they are and thus respect them and love them without good cause. According to Roula Ikonomakis it is also Murdoch´s work which “prove that ʻgoodʼ art is always a way to open our eyes and hearts to complexities of individual life, and to universal human truths” (Ikonomakis 22). Iris Murdoch plays a game with her characters and their treatment of each other dependent on communication or lack of it, and with their stories and the unexpected twists and turns drawing similarities as well as differences which reveal to the reader the immense possibilities of human existence based on sharing.
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In general, the characters of Iris Murdoch´s novels are imperfect and vulnerable beings who desperately search for consolation in a chaotic world. They crave for attention while being unable to attend to other people themselves. They undergo a long and painful way full of conflicts, hostility and alienation which stem from the inability to communicate with each other in terms of seeing each other and attending to each other. In The Sovereignty of Good Iris Murdoch claims that, “We can be mistaken about what we think and feel” (22). The fact that we can be mistaken about our state of mind means that we can also be mistaken about the apprehension of the inner worlds of other people. Gabriel Griffin points out that according to Murdoch it is difficult only to describe “mental events ... because of the nature of these events and the nature of language” (15). Griffin hints at Murdoch´s assertion of an incompetency of words which might confuse us or even mislead us and thus prevent us from attending to other people. It can be argued then that, “Central to all human relationships [in the novels of Iris Murdoch] ... is communication,” particularly the “lack of communication which partly stems from a natural secrecy in people, partly from a lack of common context, and partly, and most importantly, from the inadequacy of the means at our disposal – the inadequacy of words” (Human 77) as Milada Franková points out. Murdoch´s view of human character and nature of words seems to be rather pessimistic and yet the reader both of her fiction and of her philosophical writings feels that the way to atonement does exist. Murdoch´s characters wounded deeply seem to be so estranged and yet so close to each other fighting the other´s ego while desperately longing for human love and respect. Each of them is different but they can´t deny that deep inside they are equal – human beings determined both by individual and by collective experience, or as Murdoch has it “mortal and equally at the mercy of necessity and chance,” which makes all men “brothers” (SG 74). The collective experience demonstrated in patterns of behaviour which Murdoch´s characters perform and the context which their share enable them to at least try to communicate and thus attend to each other. And when it happens that they become short of words there is still the universal language of symbols and symbolic activity rooted in archetypal images which comes to light when the unspeakable must be rendered. Thus Love and Goodness, the “universals, which uplifts the best part of the soul and downs its lower part” (Ikonomakis 23) are to be met or at least touched upon both by the characters of Murdoch´s novels and by thoughtful readers and transform their lust for control to the lust for understanding.
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2. Myth as a Narrative of Religious Man
2.1. The Fundamental Role of Stories in Human Life
The desire to understand not only inner lives of other people but the world as a whole has urged mankind to employ various kinds of narrative which is according to a French literary theorist, philosopher and linguist Roland Barthes in its “variety of forms ... present at all times, in all places, in all societies” and starts with “the very history of mankind”. He adds that “stories are enjoyed by men of different and even opposite cultural backgrounds” (237), which points to the fact that stories have their magical ability to connect people and evoke an atmosphere of intense intimacy among people of all ages and all social groups. Such an intimacy might have been felt by little Iris Murdoch when her father read her fairy tales and then “encouraged her to read and to read widely, both children´s books and those for grown- ups” when she was older. So Murdoch´s love for narration began in early childhood (Spear 3) and ranged from simple and popular stories (Bayley 205) to sophisticated philosophical novels by Jean-Paul Sartre which might explain her inconsistent literary style which combines narrow and unoriginal topics of love affairs verging on a genre of a soap opera with highly philosophical ideas. Thus Murdoch´s passion for reading triggered her prolific literary career pregnant with extraordinary stories full of memorable characters. She became obsessed with writing novels and could not imagine living without “having a novel on the go” (Spear 18) and thus telling another story to her readers. Iris Murdoch realized the importance of sharing stories in human lives. In an interview with Bryan Maggee she mentioned a very simple yet interesting and truthful fact that people tell stories all the time, “When we return home and ʻtell our dayʼ, we are artfully shaping material into story form” and thus we “exist in a literary atmosphere, we live and breathe literature, we are all literary artists” wanting to impose a form upon the formlessness (EM 6- 7). She actually expressed the generally accepted idea that people produce stories because they seek for meaning and for order in what they experience in everyday life. Piotr Sadowski gives an interesting account of why such a need for sharing stories appears in human life. He suggests an analogy between “fundamental elements of biological existence” such as “living organisms, populations, environments, and behaviour governed by genetic predispositions” and “the traditional categories of narrative – character, setting, plot” which correspond to the biological elements (Sadowski 278) and he cites Easterline and Turner who propose that narration is an “adaptive tactic” (qtd. in Sadowski 278) which according to Sadowski provides 12
“cognitive order, transcendental meaning, moral guidance, and a partial sense, however illusory, of control over one´s destiny” (278). A French philosopher Simone Weil, widely admired by Iris Murdoch, speaks about “density” of life which we are not able to fathom and thus we fictionalize our lives to be able to comprehend it (qtd. in Griffin 201). She shares the viewpoint with Iris Murdoch asserting that we live in a sort of fiction constantly fictionalizing not only our present but also our past and future (qtd. in Griffin 235). As Marina Warner pointed out we long for explanation of the “pervasive malaise” by sharing our stories (3). Thus the stories represent both the basic form of social interaction and search for order, meaning and control by means of narrative
2.2. Myth as a Spiritual Guide on the Way of Attention to the World
Apart from attributes which are generally ascribed to stories and which I have described above the stories have also a great capacity to bind people and to make them feel mutual understanding. In the far past when there was no writing and reading tradition people used to gather at one place, sang songs and told stories to each other. The fundamental story which connected as well as taught close groups of people was a myth. An influential Czech philosopher Jan Sokol points out that archaic men lived in religious relationship to the world and as they did not possess abstract terms and concepts they used symbolic narration to explain the mysterious world around them (57-58). Mircea Eliade explains that myth represented a true, sacred, exemplary and significant story describing events which happened in primordial mythic times and whose actors were not only human beings but also gods and other supernatural beings (8 – 11). While the word myth is often used in its pejorative sense associating more falsehood than a truthful story nowadays, for archaic men myth was something given and changeless and bestowed patterns for behaviour. Archaic men performed rituals periodically to re-establish the primordial times, to leave the profane space and time and to experience the events with gods and supernatural beings which happened at the beginning of ages (Eliade 20). Myth symbolized a moral concept which archaic men followed and which they did not have to analyse or doubt about. Thus myth provided anchorage and shelter for archaic men who lived in a constant fear for their lives. However, with the development of civilization and the rational approach to life the demythologization started. The ancient Greeks were already sceptical about myths and
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regarded them as fiction. The Greek philosophers were interested in the origin of he world and things in general but their concern was not cosmogenic as that of archaic men but onthological (Eliade 83). The desire for a reasonable account of the world prevailed over the mythological explanation. A British writer Susan Sellers explains that since the myth could not be “empirically tested”, it was not true any longer (23). Thus people started “losing too much while asserting too little” as Iris Murdoch pointed out when reflecting on demythologization (Metaphysics 460) which culminated in Western society with the general loss of faith in Christian God in the 20th century. The reason seemingly won over the magic and people lost their certainties so much needful for healthy development of their psyche.
2.3. Eternal Return of Myth
The modern man living in dramatically different conditions from those of the archaic men can hardly understand their situation, their psyche and their experience of mythos. However, as the myths had had a great influence on our ancestors for thousands of years, they persist in the human psyche and it is probably best manifested in art nowadays. According to Eliade an epic poem and a novel are only a continuation of mythological narration offering a story with various dramatic situations, initiations and tests which the heroes must go through. Just like archaic men longed for mythological narration, people nowadays crave for reading paradigmatic stories which follow a certain pattern (136). They want to leave the profane time and space and immerse themselves in stories which transgress the present. However, the stories no longer represent a model for behaviour for their readers and do not “transport ... [them] beyond confusion of ... [their] lives into a realm where destiny is clear, and where ... [they] benefit by an example” as Susan Sellers puts it (16), but rather serve as an inspiration for reflection and discussion. Writers still employ ancient myths but they deconstruct them, shift them and twist them in order to offer different points of view on human existence. Susan Sellers calls such a treatment of myths “liberatory retellings ... [which] can leave the reader disoriented to the point of paralyses” (14). She even calls for establishing “an alternative to a system driven by punishment and fear” and for inventing new stories around “old forms [which] operate as compas” (22 - 30). The readers as well as writers must indeed deal with the fact that ancient myths are products of masculine psyche reflecting the thinking of patriarchal society with all its
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negative aspects such as the struggle for power, wars and violence as well as the diminishing of the role of women. A British novelist and mythographer Marina Warner shares Seller´s view of the importance of deconstructing myths to “shake off stale prejudices” (xvi) and stresses the significance of context in which the myths are retold (88). According to her “every telling of myth is the part of that myth” (8). The writers change the myths as they tell them as well as people shape the everyday stories which they hear because it is always them, their ego, their consciousness and unconsciousness and their personal history which interpret the story. Hence people live in a constant tension craving for myths and stories which teach them about life while simultaneously adjusting them so that they would suit their psychic needs.
3. Myth in the Work of Iris Murdoch
3.1. Classical Myth in the Work of Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch´s use of classical myths is in a way both liberated and liberating. She liberates the myth when purposfully alluding to Greek and Christian mythology using only their fragments which she mingles with contemporary settings to provoke the reader´s imagination and observation and to call for questions of validity not only of ancient myths but also of readers´ values. A British author and an expert on Murdoch´s work as well as her close friend Peter Conradi points out accurately that, “The myth for Iris Murdoch is Freudian, and the flux is there to contest it and help emancipate us from its power” (81). Iris Murdoch was indeed interested in Freudian psychology. Although she was not a supporter of psychoanalysis in general since the concept of psychoanalysis encourages the deep immersion into one´s own psyche which does not correspond to her philosophy of attention to others which an individual should always prefer to self-absorption, she read Freud and approved of his conception of ego. People are selfish and non-objective creatures who are not able to control their instincts and whose view of the world is veiled by fantasy according to Murdoch´s interpretation of Freud´s concept of human ego (SG 51) which is consistent with her own attitude to the conception of the human psyche. She demands deliverance from their restrictions, better understanding of the function of the human psyche and remedy of the soul by a deliberate manipulation of the Oedipal and other classical myths
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as well as by a contemplation on Freudian interpretation of them. And just like Plato knew as a poet “that human beings were not to be persuaded by rational means alone” Murdoch also adds mythological and allegorical narrative to attract the reader´s attention (Firchow 189). I will now discuss the other way in which Murdoch employs mythical themes which I call the liberating way. The classical myths have always been connected with supernatural forces. Their main characters are both gods and human beings or mythical heroes who struggle with or are helped not only by other human beings and heroes but also by numberless supernatural and antropomorphous creatures. The heroes experience adventures full of magic and mystery which does not seem to be credible for modern men for it is not to be explained by reason. Modern men need facts, hard data and empirical proofs to be willing to regard the issue believable and true. They need to verify by reason and logic to declare the validity. Thus mythical stories containing supernatural elements are generally read as fables nowadays. However, it does not mean that the supernatural would be wiped out of the world. Modern men rather live in a kind of schizophrenia not believing in magic overtly yet not being able to proclaim its non-existence. A famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung whose ideas my diploma thesis is based on, discussed the issue in his essay "On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure". He stresses the paradoxical attitude to religion and myth of the contemporary man and offers an example of people setting up a Christmas-tree without even thinking about the meaning of that custom. Although being highly superstitious they deny believing in supernatural forces and magic because the convention of society does not allow them to ponder it. Thus, “Something in man is profoundly disinclined to give up his beginnings, and something else believes it has long since got beyond all that” (The Archetypes 268-269). Roula Ikonomakis puts it simply and aptly when she says that “we still fear ghosts, even if we do not really believe in them” (288). The modern men find themselves in an unenviable position oscillating between the world of magic which is not lost yet and the world of pure logic and reason which has not the omnipotent power as it could appear at first sight. Iris Murdoch was obviously aware of the scepticism of the man of science towards the issue of myth, magic and transcendence. However, she realized that, “We are men and we are moral agents before we are scientists ...” (SG 34) and that there exists a “psychological power which derives from the mere idea of a transcendent object, and one might say further from a transcendent object which is to some extent myterious” (SG 60). Hence the transcendence, mystery and magic are still part of human existence imbedded deep in the human psyche. Literature should reflect on that fact because when there is no mystery in the fictional world 16
and when it is too intelligible, it will not manage to present “true pictures of the situation of man” (EM 115). No matter how witty, strong and rational man seems to be s/he needs mystery as air and water. Mystery touches his/her birth, his/her life and his/her death. It is his/her primitive, animal and largely unconscious part of psyche which should not be suppressed. The use of magic, myth and the supernatural in Murdoch´s novels is closely connected with her preoccupation with inner lives of characters. According to Milada Franková the author describes symbolical experience of characters verging on supernatural which actually represents psychological forces in the human psyche (BS 146). In The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea the magical and the supernatural usually pictures the very intimate moments which the characters live through. The characters themselves do not realize the importance of those mystical experiences but the reader feels that a significant indirect portrayal of the character´s psyche has been made. Moreover, not only has the character´s soul been analysed but also the reader´s values have been tested. S/he has been invited to hesitate, to contemplate the situations, to ponder the meaning and the purpose of these events, to challenge his/her categorization of the world and as Elizabeth Dipple has it, to disarm and alienate “[him/her] from [his/her] sense of security in the world they perceive in habitual ways” (qtd. in Ikonomakis 280). When contemplating on the role of artists Murdoch asserts that good artists invent “their own relevant tests of truth” asking for refinement and enlargement of “our methods of verification” (Metaphysics 86). Murdoch achieved what she considers to be the criterion of good art and one of her devices for accomplishing it is the employment of magic, myth and supernatural which questions the reader´s ability to perceive and accept the otherness and liberates him/her from his/her accustemed and routine way of life.
3.2. Personal Myths in the Work of Iris Murdoch
Apart from referring to a traditional legendary story the word myth can also be used in a negative sense implying falsehood, fiction, fable, lie and illusion. Iris Murdoch managed to combine both connotations of the word and thus created a unique fusion of a vast cultural heritage of Europe while simultaneously searching for moral remedy of modern man blinded by the veil of illusion and fantasy which s/he lives in. It seems that the former only provided her with motifs and symbols so that she would be able to articulate her moral stance in a
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compelling and truthful manner. Hilda Spear explains that “though the surface level of many of ... [the Murdoch´s novels] appears to have mythological significance, at a deeper level there are real people suffering real human emotions and the apparent superficiality of the plot is subverted by what turns out to be an imaginative presentation of reality” (9). Murdoch´s deliberate concentration indeed seems to lie more on psychological processes of man than on original myths themselves. Thus she borrows motifs and symbols from classical myths as well as from a canon of world literature to depict a fate of the frail and wretched man who has to undergo a painful journey to come out of his/her own mythical fate. The fundamental myth which frames both Murdoch´s fiction and nonfiction is Plato´s famous cave myth. Murdoch was a great admirer of Plato, she was in fact a Platonic philosopher (Bayley 183) and although she disputed some of his philosophical notions Plato, and namely his idea od Good, was a great inspiration for her life and philosophy. Both in her novels and in philosophical writings Murdoch draws parallels between the idea of Good which is the ultimate principle in life for her and the cave myth. In The Sovereignity of Good she explains the issue as follows:
Platonic myth is the idea of the Good as the source of light which reveals to us all things as they really are. All just vision, even in the strictest problems of the intellect, and a fortiori when suffering or wickedness have to be perceived, is a moral matter. The same virtues, in the end the same virtue (love), are required throughout, and fantasy (self) can prevent us from seeing a blade of grass just as it can prevent us from seeing another person. (70)
Thus we as responsible human beings should try to overcome our self-engrossment and self-obsession and come out of the world controlled by fantasy and illusion. We should see the light which will illuminate our world with goodness if we manage to surpass our ego and perceive other people. Only then can we become better persons. Same as “Plato pictures human life as a pilgrimage from appearance to reality” (EM 387), Murdoch depicts her fictional characters undergoing a difficult journey of a slow approach to truth. Murdoch uses the concept of myth in its pejorative sense extensively throughout her work. The main characters of her novels are solipsistic men who do not just live in lie but do not even realize their blindness at all. They “create myths about themselves and are then dominated by the myths. They feel trapped, and they elect other people to play roles in their 18
lives, to be gods or destoryers or something” as Murdoch asserted in an interview with Michael O.Bellamy which continues as follows, “and I think that this mythology is often very deep and very influential and secretive, ...” ("An Interview with Iris Murdoch" 138). However deep the personal mythology might appear to be there is always a chance of redemption because one can “choose not to have a mythical fate” as Murdoch pointed out in an essay "Comic and Tragic" (Metaphysics 136). One can refuse to play a role of a bad character in his/her lifelong show and it then becomes the supreme virtue when the hero finally recognizes the right way which leads to acknowledgement and respect of others.
3.3. The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea
Before interpreting the conception of myth in two chosen works of fiction of Iris Murdoch, namely The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea, I will briefly introduce the novels and familiarize the reader with their contents so that s/he would be able to follow the analysis without unnecessary confusion. The Sandcastle is Iris Murdoch´s third novel. It was first published in 1957 and it is dedicated to the author´s husband John Bayley. It is written in the third person narrative. It is generally regarded as one of the least successful novels of the writer. Rubin Rabinowitz even finds the work not being able to “involve the reader” and ascribes the failure to the “lack of subjective elements” (22). I would rather say that the novel is one of the most traditional, conventional and realistic ones as well as the least imaginative and disturbing. However, it is still very readable and has a great potential to engage the reader through its realistic depiction of characters. It follows a classical love affair of a middle-aged schoolmaster Bill Mor. He lives in an unhappy marriage with his dominating wife Nan in an enclosed university housing estate. They have two children, a fourteen-year-old Felicity and a nearly grown Donald. The inability and impossibility of communication between the wife and husband as well as between the parents and their children seem to be beyond all bearing not only for the characters themselves but also for the reader who is absorbed in the action by means of vivid and natural dialogues and who is forced to feel the tremendous despair and hopelessness of the situation with the main protagonists. In such an atmosphere there arrives a young painter Rain Carter whose father, the most influential person in her life, has just died. She has been invited to paint a portrait of the school´s former headmaster and an alleged tyrant Demoyte. Bill and
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Rain immediately fall in love violently and the following events describe the consequences of their short adventure. Their affair is revealed and at the end of the story Rain leaves the university estate, Nan approves of Bill´s political ambition which she has refused to discuss so far and which might symbolize the final acceptance of Bill´s own personality. There is also a hint of the possibility of restoring the communication between parents and their children. Whereas the novel The Sandcastle is considered to be one of Murdoch´s least favoured works of fiction, the novel The Sea, the Sea has won much praise being awarded the Booker Prize in 1978 when the book was first published. It is written in the first person narrative in the form of a diary mingled with a memoir. Just like the former novel, The Sea, the Sea analyzes one period in life of an elderly man who becomes obsessed by an idea of being in love with a woman. Charles is an over sixty-year-old retired director and play wright who withdraws from his Bohemian London life and decides to buy a house called Shruff End which is situated in seclusion on the cliffs by the seaside. He intends to “repent of a life of egoism” or “something of that sort”. He is going to write his memoir but cannot actually decide if it is going to be a memoir or a diary or a chronicle. He also mentions at the beginning of the novel that he did not inform his friends of the theatre about his intention (The Sea 1). Thus on the very first page the reader is given a picture of an indecisive and immature man who nevertheless presents himself as worldly-wise and confident. Charles´s wish for peace and quiet is not fulfilled as his former lovers and friends visit him unexpectedly and continually at Shruff End from the beginning of his stay. However, the most surprising event is yet to come. One day he encounters his former friend and platonic lover from schooldays Hartley who lives in a nearby village. He immediately finds himself in a dream world of his youth reflecting both on past and present. Although Hartley is married and does not show any signs of having affection for Charles, he becomes obsessed by the idea of fatal love and chases after Hartley in order to rescue her from her allegedly sinister husband and from a dull life which she lives with him. An absurd situation verging on a theatrical scene arises when Charles imprisons Hartley and all his friends including his mysterious cousin James and Hartley´s adoptive son Titus gather at Shruff End. Finally, Charles is persuaded by others to let Hartley go. The release of Hartley is only one impulse among many for Charles to reassess what actually happened in those old days and reconsider his life and his friends in a new light. The reader is left with a feeling that a violent storm has blown over and all the characters are
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going to try to redeem what they managed to damage when being blinded by the veil of selfishness.
3.4. The Cave Myth in The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea
Both novels allude to Platonic philosophy and the cave myth in a direct way. Both Bill and Charles live in a cave in a metaphoric sense and see only shadows of reality and truth. Neither Bill nor Charles are able to move away from an “ordinary human love towards a more universal spiritual love” (Spear 15) and thereby liberate their self-absorbed egos. They are prisoners in their own souls imagining that the new love will free them from their wicked lives instead of trying to see and attend to their close ones. The cave is a place of darkness, dampness and coldness. Such is the house of Charles, a solitary cold lodge where there is no electricity and heating system. Peter Conradi suggests that Murdoch reinterprets Plato in a Freudian manner in which the sun is the equal of Good and fire symbolizes the ego (128). Charles indeed sets fire continually and thus feeds his greedy ego with energy in Conradi´s reading of Murdoch´s employment of the cave myth. What an irony that Charles calls his new house a cave (The Sea 4) and seems to be proud of living in it. Not only is the cave dark, damp and cold but there are no windows and one´s vision is very limited when being inside. One can only imagine what is outside the cave. Both Bill and Charles live (lived in the case of Charles) in an enclosed group of people, Bill among academics and Charles among people of theatre, and they scarcely meet (met) anybody outside the community. The community itself stands for a metaphor of a cave which confines their scope of vision just like living in a cave prevents one from seeing outside. Both Bill and Charles are (were) preoccupied with their jobs to such an extent that there is (was) no place for other concerns left. Murdoch deals with the problem of specialization in an essay "The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts": “At best, as decent persons, we are usually very specialized. We behave well in the areas where this can be done fairly easily and let other areas of possible virtue remain undeveloped” (SG 99). Both Bill and Charles exemplify Murdoch´s theory. They are (were) gifted specialists and hardworking people. Nevertheless, however good they are (were) at what they do (did) their vision of reality and of the world beyond their specialization is very narrow and it again signifies their imprisonment in an allegorical cave. However, when considering Bill´s and
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Charles´s situation it is hard not to consider a possibility that the determined attachment to their professional missions might stem from a desperate endeavour to escape from the real life and to avoid the responsibility for others. Bill who lives in a constant conflict with his wife and who is not able to communicate with his children in a natural way has “authority and prestige in the school” and it pleases him “more than a little for failures in other departments of his life” (The Sandcastle 18). Charles´s “will to power” (The Sea 64) as he himself calls it as well as the influence of his hardworking mother made him work day and night and the theatre became his “home” (The Sea 30). In this way he recovered from a painful and unbearable break up with Hartley, his first love who left him unexpectedly which he could not comprehend and reconcile with. However, he only indulged in another fantasy world of illusion, the world of theatre and the “retreat from truth” as Hilda Spears has it (22). Apart from not being able to look outside the scope of their class Bill and Charles are even not able to respect and appreciate their closest ones. Charles does not have his own family except of his cousin James for whom he has nothing but contempt and offenses which probably stems from jealousy and unwillingness to understand a different life style from his own. His male friend whom he mentions most frequently and who visits Charles at Shruff End is Peregrine whom Charles out of pure “desire for possession” (The Sea 72) stole his wife persuading himself that he actually did Peregrine a favour of releasing him from such a horrible woman. He constantly calls him Perry even though Peregrine detests the nickname. Charles is a director and he directs people not only in the theatre but also in real life. He uses art and power to manipulate people and does not consider consequences of his behaviour. To give an example, he promises to visit his former lover Lizzie who still loves and adores him and his homosexual friend Gilbert who lives with Lizzie. He forgets about the arrangement and spends the whole night drinking with Peregrine. He comments on his failure as follows, “... I have just this moment remembered that last night (when I was with Perry) was the night when I was supposed to be dining with Lizzie and Gilbert, and I forgot to cancel it. They will have spent the whole night cooking for me” (The Sea 154). He says no more and no less about the event. It is just another little episode in his life which concerns other people, those little puppets on his stage, not him. Charles seems to be playing a God-game acting the role of God and deliberately exercising his power and tyranny over people who masochistically love and follow him and thus are responsible for the creation of that myth too. He is one of Murdoch´s “extraordinary psychopomps” and his admirers are “followers and apprehenders” as a famous novelist and 22
literary critic Malcolm Bradbury puts it (232-333). He is also a living symbol of a type of artist whom Murdoch describes as a “dreadful egoist ... [having his] own specialised temptations to egoism and illusions of omnipotence” (Metaphysics 428). Charles´s omnipotence is indeed only illusionary. Milada Franková proves it suggesting that he has only control over theatre people who live in the same fantasy world as he does but he is not able to enthral Hartley who does not share this world (Human 49). Roula Ikonomakis shares Milada Franková´s view and states that, “For Charles, art stands for that ʻfalse consolationʼ ... For his whole life, he has only thought in terms of role playing and directing, The world of fiction suits him best, because in real world, Charles has no genuine role to play” (130). Hence Charles is confined in his own cave of theatrical illusion scheming and playing his little mischievous games with other people. However, outside that cave he seems not to exist. The encounter with reality after being rejected by Hartley is extremely puzzling for him and he gradually realizes that he is an ordinary human being, just like his friends are ordinary human beings who deserve his attention and apprehension. However, the awareness is gained through a huge suffering as whoever is aware of his creativity and enjoys it he will be crucified later for “whoever identifies himself/herself with God s/he will be dismembered” as Jung asserts when contemplating on Nietzsche´s Zarathrusta (qtd. in VD 167, my translation). Bill´s life style appears to be much more conventional than that of Charles´s. He has a steady engagement as a university teacher, has a wife and two children and lives in a house nearby the university campus, in one place permanently. He represents Murdoch´s Ordinary Language Man whom she portrayed in the essay "The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited" and whom she contrasted with the Totalitarian Man. The Ordinary Language Man is subjected to conventions incarnating the “commonest and vaguest network of conventional moral thought” whereas the Totalitarian Man, being sincere, free and courageous is subjected to neurosis and “dramatizes his situation into a myth” regarding other people to be “organised menacing extensions of the consciousness of the subject” (EA 269-270). The Ordinary Language Man opposes the latter just like Bill differs from Charles in many ways. Nevertheless, however different they might appear there is one fundamental characterization they have in common. They are desperately lonely although Charles probably does not realize the fact. He is being visited at Shruff End by old friends and lovers whom he did not call for and who frantically want to see him. He is therefore put into a position of a much admired and desired person or he at least presents himself in this way. However, he
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does not recognize the fact that until he ceases to use people as objects and starts to attend to them they are not his real friends but rather draughtsmen on his chessboard. On the contrary, Bill is aware of his unenviable situation. Although being physically surrounded by close family, friends and fellow teachers he feels lonesome since his family life which should provide him with support and encouragement does not work at all. The communication between him and his wife has reached the freezing point. They talk to each other but they do not listen to each other. They indulge in a mechanical way of communication which follows recurring patterns. Nan regards her husband a social coward and a snob living in a dream world whereas Bill is afraid of his wife and feels terrible boredom at home. Concerning their children the parents are able to exchange only a few words when encountering them. Their meeting is always awkward, uncomfortable, reserved and somehow difficult to conduct. For an illustration, one day Bill spotted Don during a day at school as Don attends the school in which Bill teaches. Both of them pondered the idea of leaving the place so that they would not have to meet. However, they both decided that it would be even more embarrassing than the encounter itself. They confronted each other and after exchanging four replicas when Don called his father sir, Don “half turned, not sure if it was now proper for him to go away. But Mor wanted to keep him there, to keep him until something had been said which would be a real communication between them” (The Sandcastle 43). It is a moment of supreme awkwardness when the language hit the point of paralysis leaving the protagonists in an empty and silent space. The “mutual objects of attention” and the “context of looking” which is according to Iris Murdoch necessary for a successful development of common language (SG 33) is missing in a relationship of a father and son. The words which are the “most subtle symbols which we possess and [on which] our human fabric depends...” (SG 34) disappear in a void “rendering human beings opaque to each other” (Human 14). Hence Bill lives in a cave seeing only shadows of the members of his family since not being able to communicate with them he is forced to imagine what is hidden under their masks. Into such a stiff family atmosphere there comes a young painter Rain Carter and another personal myth is about to start for Bill. I have shown that although being framed by one fundamental myth of Plato the personal myths in the work of Iris Murdoch are numerous and diverse. They concern all the characters who need to undergo a difficult journey to arrive at self-reflection. Sometimes even at the end of the story the reader is not entirely sure whether the hero has succeed in 24
overcoming the fantasy, lie and illusion which controlled his/her life. However, there is always at least a slight hint that a character has been transformed and that s/he is going to live in accordance with a more genuine attention to others.
3.5. Classical Myth in The Sea, the Sea
Iris Murdoch studied classics at Oxford. Hence she was well acquainted with classical Greek mythology and used its motifs extensively. She realized that, “We are still the same people whose dilemmas are described in Greek literature and in the Bible...” (Metaphysics 460) and that “myth is not fiction; it consists of facts that are continually repeated and observed over and over again” and that “it is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as Greek heroes do” (Metaphysics 134). However, she did not copy the stories but rather meditated on them borrowing only fragments and blending them with Christian legends as well as with the stories of the canon of world literature. Thus she created an extraordinary synthesis of European cultural heritage and an elaborate study of the human psyche inviting the reader to contemplate not only on who we are but also on who we are not. Among the novels which I have chosen for my analysis The Sea, the Sea is the one which alludes to Greek and Christian mythology overtly. I will therefore identify mythological motifs in this work and suggest the purpose of their employment in the novel. But first let me ponder on Charles´s obsession with theatre and how that fact relates to the issue of myth. Jan Sokol points out that, “The reader of Shakespeare and Dostojevsky finds him/herself in a world of myth, but he is lonely there” (66, my translation). According to Sokol there is only one place where it is possible to experience and share a common myth nowadays. It is the world of theatre (66). Edward F. Edinger points out that ancient Greeks performed the crucial myths in the theatre and the audience identified themselves with the myths which enabled them to release their suppressed emotions and thus it had a psychotherapeutic effect on them. Hence the drama represented and still represents the same for the collective psyche that dreams signify for the individual – the mythical experience and the transformative effect (VD 141). Moreover, the “identification with a group” as Jung describes it in an essay "Concerning Rebirth" plays its significant role in the experience of theatre as it “takes place on a lower level of consicousness” the collective psyche being more
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like the “psyche of an animal” because the “mass is swayed by participation mystique, which is nothing other than an unconscious identity”. Thus in the theatre people experience the “regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness” (The Archetypes 125-126) which allows them to go through a kind of instant transformation of the soul. Charles lives and breathes theatre. He cannot imagine being without theatre. Although being retired he reflects on the world of theatre and alludes to plays he has directed continually. It is his love and it is his hate. It is his destiny. He has been living in a Shakespearean myth since he was a school boy when one of his teachers acquainted him with the famous writer. He immediately became addicted to reading Shakespeare, made him his personal god and became a Shakespearean director. He has lived that myth so ardently that he sometimes forgot what was real and what was a play. This perplexity affected mainly Charles´s lovers whom he compared to Shakespeare heroines and defined in accordance to what role they played. Thus his personal myth blended with that of Shakespearean which had a great influence on Charles´s life. Apart from Shakespearean myth Charles himself alludes to the classical Greek myth about Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus used art and his music gift to charm not only human beings and gods but also nature. Charles also uses art to charm people around him. However, unlike Orpheus he is able to attract only those people who live in the same world of illusion as he does. He is not able to enchant Hartley and her husband Ben as they are “quiet folk” keeping themselves to themselves living in their world and their place as Ben tries to explain to Charles (The Sea 151). They “hardly ever go to the theatre” (The Sea 118), they are not even interested in what Charles does and thus Charles´s artistry has no effect on them. The people outside the theatre seem to have influence rather on him. There is Hartley whose presence in the village drives him almost crazy and there is his cousin James whom Charles seemingly despises from the very beginning but who appears to be the most influential character of the story. Hence Charles is not Orpheus and Hartley is not Eurydice whom he has to rescue from the realm of Hades, nor is Ben a three-headed dog Cerberus who guards the doors of the underworld although Charles would wish him very much to be that. The direct reminiscence of the myth comes when Charles and Hartley meet in the village for the first time. Just like Eurydice followed Orpheus from the realm of Hades Hartley follows Charles to the church where they can be alone and talk without interruption. And just like Orpheus looked back at Eurydice and thus lost her forever Charles also keeps “looking back at her and stumbling” (The Sea 114), which alludes to the classical myth in an ironical way. Another 26
diversion from the original story lies in the fact that Hartley is not happy to go, being rather forced by Charles to follow him, whereas Eurydice followed her lover voluntarily. Hence when Charles hints at the myth, him being a “crazed Orpheus” and Hartley being a “dazed Eurydice” (The Sea 128), he does not realize that they resemble rather the myth of Apollo and Daphne, him being Apollo whom Eros doomed to love Daphne for ridiculing Eros´s duty and Hartley being Daphne who preferred to metamorphose into a tree rather than to become a lover of Apollo. Another mythical love affair which is alluded at in the novel is that of Perseus and Andromeda. During a short stay in London Charles visits a gallery and is stricken by Titian´s picture of Perseus and Andromeda. For a while it seems that the picture has an effect which Murdoch calls for in her philosophical contemplations. Charles is absorbed in the piece of art admiring the beautiful body of the girl and for a moment he forgets to think about himself and thus manages to unself himself. But this moment takes only a little while. All of the sudden he notices a dragon which reminds him of his hallucination which he had at the very beginning of the novel. He is again immersed in a meditation on his own personality as always. However, as he cannot bear looking at the monster he turns round and sees Rembrandt´s picture of his son Titus. Coincidentally, Titus is the name of Hartley and Ben´s adoptive son. “So Titus was here too,” thinks Charles (The Sea 171) and probably hints at the portrayals of women which he saw beforehand and which reminded him of all the women of his life including his mother but excluding the only woman he was looking for, Hartley. Or does it mean that he does not want to see her image among all those portraits of women as he believes firmly that Hartley is exceptional and different and cannot be compared to any other women? Cheryl K.Bove offers another possible interpratation of the appearance of the picture and of the coincidence of the names. He suggests Rembrandt´s painting of his son Titus becoming “the son which Charles could have had with Hartley had they married” (88). Morover, Hartley´s husband suspects Charles of being Titus´s real father and Titus comes to Shruff End to find out if Charles is not his real father which points to Bove´s argumentation. Nevertheless, when we return back to the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, it is obvious enough that Charles is not Perseus and Hartley is not princess Andromeda though he calls Hartley princess when keeping her unvoluntarily in the upper room in Shruff End. He actually calls her sleeping princess” (The Sea 277) which alludes to the famous fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty who pricked her finger on a rose in one of the versions of the story. It is an irony and one of many playful games and twists which Iris Murdoch employs. We are again presented 27
with a myth which is “deliberately incomplete, throw-away, and provinsional” introducing the reader to “Murdoch´s own extra-psychological small and deliberate symmetries” as Peter Conradi points out (250). The only mythical figure which is mentioned in the novel and which Hartley actually symbolizes is phantom Helen. James, who is the only one who is able to think about Charles and his behaviour without projecting his own desires and fears on him and who regards Charles´s situation in a realistic way, warns Charles that he is situating himself into a role of heroes who fight for a phantom Helen at Troy. Hartley whom Charles sees is indeed only a phantom and “what reality she has is elsewhere” (The Sea 353), states James and explains to Charles that she is not his dreamt figure and he has not the power to change it. However god- like image he has about himself this image has no effect on Hartley and she remains the faithful wife just like Helen stayed loyal to her husband Menelaus according to a Greek drama by Euripides. The last but not least myth which appears in the novel and whose story has a connection with the plot of the novel is that of Odysseus. Marina Warner discusses the myth in relation to the theme of home and homing and calls Odysseus the “emblematic figure of the century not only for James Joyce...” (85). She explains what home meant for the earliest voyagers and what it signifies to a current man living in a globalized world. She claims that for Odysseus there was no confusion about the meaning of the word. Home was simply a native land, the place which he owned and where his family lived and waited for him. However, thousands of people nowadays, immigrants and their children in particular, are not certain about their proper place of living, they feel uprooted or their mind is split between two worlds, that of their native land or the native land of their ancestors and that of their country which they emigrated to. Although Charles is not an immigrant he seems to be uprooted to a certain extent too. He has not got his own family and there is no Penelope and Telemachus who would expect him when he comes back from work. He seemingly despises the marital status and calls marriage “a sort of brainwashing which breaks the mind into the acceptance of so many horrors” (The Sea 52). However, deep inside he seems to be missing the steady life and makes excuses for not trying to settle down. He admits that he wanted to marry a girl (Hartley) once and since she refused him he has kept blaming her for his failures and inability to enter into a long term serious relationship. Concerning his family, Charles even does not discuss his close relatives with his friends. He “always pretends to have no family” trying to 28
be secretive as Gilbert, one of Charles´s friends, who visits him at Shruff End, points out in a conversation with Charles´s cousin James (The Sea 322). Not only is Charles uprooted as far as his family and personal relations are concerned he also does not seem to possess a home in terms of dwelling. Since he left his parents´ house he has moved all around the world changing flats just like he was used to changing women. At the time when we meet Charles he has just moved to a new house by the seaside fleeing away from the rush and noise of London. However, he still keeps his London flat. Thus he lives in two different places at the same time travelling between his new house and his London flat. He has two homes and yet he has none. But gradually he becomes attached to his seaside house more and more and one day when he goes back from London to Shruff End he writes in his diary, “This evening I shall take the train back home. (Home? Home.)” (The Sea 153). He himself is stricken by the word he has used and seems to be surprised by such a shift in his thinking. Nevertheless, the reader knows that the bond which he creates between him and his house is fully dependant on his subjection to the figure of Hartley who lives nearby that house, which is proved when he moves back to London after his plan to start a new life with Hartley will have crashed. Thus Charles remains one of the emblematic “wayfarers ... [making his] destinations as [he goes] ...” (Warner 94) not being firmly rooted in the land of his ancestors as Odysseus and other mythical heroes were. A Jungian psychoanalyst Edward F.Edinger makes an interesting comparison of the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey to two different stages of life. He attributes the first stage of life to Iliad whereas Odyssey symbolizes the second part. According to Edinger, man first enters the babel of life realizing his potential and finding out about the possibilities which life offers so that s/he could return back home and recognize his origins in the second stage of his life (VD 119). Charles is really entering a new stage of his personal history at the beginning of the novel. He has retired from his job which he loved, moved far from his friends and colleagues and started to write a diary blended with a memoir looking back on his past, contemplating his whole life and trying to learn about who he really is. And he also has to undergo an adventurous and difficult journey, the same as Odysseus did. However, he is not coming home like Odysseus because he has no home but rather symbolically approaching his better self through his wanderings. Edinger appeals to readers of classical myths not to consider the mythical stories mere narratives which simply happened in the past but to try to interpret them from a psychological point of view and relate them to their own lives (VD 14). This seems to be Murdoch´s 29
intention, too. She uses her mastery to combine Greek myths with the everyday life of characters of her novels. Concerning the Odyssey myth, it is mentioned only a few times in the book. First we read that a director called Fritzie Eitel has not enough money to produce a film called Odyssey. Thus the myth is diminished to a mere commodity which is a great irony when we consider its overall impact it had and the respect and dignity it raised in the ancient world. Secondly, we learn that Rosina, the long-time admirer of Charles who would sacrifice anything to be allowed to live with Charles, was given the role of Calypso in the film. Here Murdoch draws a parallel between the original myth, in which a nymph Calypso kept Odysseus on an island enchanting him with her singing. Rosina also desperately longs for Charles to keep him only for herself detesting her rival Lizzie who loves Charles, too. However, the myth of Calypso breaks down at the end of the story when Rosina reconciles with her former husband Peregrine and decides not to accept the role of the nymph in the film. She seems to overcome her irrational passion for Charles and plans to leave England with Peregrine. She is “giving up the Calypso part” (The Sea 435) both in the film and in her life. Concerning the Christian mythology, there is an only straightforward allusion to the text of the Bible and it concerns the names of Charles´s father and uncle. When introducing his family Charles writes down in his memoir, “My parental grandfather had two sons, Adam and Abel. He never seemed to me to be an imaginative man, but there was some touch of poetry in those names. It was early evident to me that my uncle (Abel) was more loved and more fortunate than my father (Adam)” (The Sea 23). In the Bible Abel is in fact Adam´s son and his brother is Cain who kills Abel from pure jealousy as the Lord has no regard for his offering but for an offering of his younger brother. Concerning Adam he is the first human in the Bible. In a metaphorical sense, for Charles his father Adam also epitomizes the first human as he loves and cherishes his father the most. Although he likes his mother, his aunt and his uncle, Charles´s father is the most beloved for him. He calls him a dear good man and his tender love for him has no limit. However, he is also sorry for him for not being by far as successfull as his brother was. In that sense uncle Abel resembles the biblical figure of Abel who was blessed by the Lord whereas his brother was damned. However, here the analogy ends as uncle´s brother is not jealous, angry and desperate Cain but a calm, peaceful and submissive man called Adam. Murdoch again plays with the original mythical stories, uses only their fragments, twists them and relates them to the characters of the novel. As Peter Conradi points out myth in the work of Iris Murdoch “belongs to the characters” (81), it does not exist on its own any longer but coexists with the protagonists of the novel and thus the 30
mythical fates and lives blend with those of modern men and neither of them can be regarded as real because in Murdoch´s world almost all the characters live in fantasy and illusion.
4. Archetypes as Sources of Myths
4.1. Collective Unconsciousness and Archetypes
Susan Sellers gives a comprehensive account of the theories of myth in her publication Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women´s Fiction which deals with popular women´s rewritings of myths and fairy tales. Following the study, it is beyond all doubt that there is not a single paradigm which would provide us with an easy explanation what the myth signified in its traditional sense. However, there is a prevailing notion of what it actually meant for archaic men according to nineteenth- and early twentieth century mythographers. It was the “means by which so-called ʻprimitiveʼ peoples understood the world” (2). However, alongside the development of psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century the psychoanalytical perspective on myth gained a considerable influence. And it is to the merit of two famous men that a revolutionary view on the issue of myths has been established. Those were an Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud who is considered to be a founding father of psychoanalysis and his follower and a founder of analytical psychology, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung. I am not going to discuss Freud´s treatment of myth here because it is also not relevant to the topic of my thesis. I will only briefly mention that Jung cooperated with Freud for several years, they exchanged dozens of letters which provide “important information about the intellectual development of the theories of both Freud and Jung” as well as “a rich sequence of glimpses into the emotional lives of the two men” (Homans 30) and they had a great influence on each other, especially Freud´s theory of unconsciousness which inspired Jung to create his own original and famous conception of the issue. However, Jung regarded Freud´s theory limited and asserted that unconsciousness cannot be treated merely as “the gathering place of forgotten and repressed contents”. He disapproved of Freud´s approach to unconsciousness which claimed its “exclusively personal nature” and suggested that there is another layer which is deeper and inborn (The Archetypes 3). He called that aspect collective unconscious and its contents archetypes. He proved their existence on the basis of an analysis 31
of countless dreams of his patients as well as by means of an interpretation of some of the pivotal works of the canon of world literature and by means of the extended research on myths and fairy tales from all over the world. Although we must keep in mind that his approach to psychology was an attempt to analyse and comprehend the human psyche in the patriarchal world in the first half of the twentieth century, his theories are still valid which confirms the fact that deep inside, the human psyche has not changed no matter how much the material world has developed since then. Jung started to study myth, folklore and religion after he left Burgholzli where he worked as a psychiatrist and after he moved to a house nearby Lake Zurich (Hoerni 199). After collecting and analysing a huge amount of scholarly texts on myths he realized that man without a myth “is ... uprooted, [and that] he is not in a genuine connection with the past, nor with the life of his ancestors (which is still alive in him), nor with a current human society” (qtd. in Hoerni 199, my translation). At that time he was already disillusioned with the traditional notion of God (he was raised as a protestant) which did not meet his needs of transcendent and mystical experience and he was a dedicated man of science. Thus he developed his own theory of myth regarding it not only an attempt to explain and an endeavour to understand the world, but primarily a symbolic expression of the inner life of archaic man and his psyche. According to Jung man projected his/her unconscious contents upon the outer world and since his consciousness was still wholly attached to nature in those times the natural processes were those which mirrored the unconscious and enabled the wholeness of personality assimilating the unconscious contents into consciousness and constituting a unity of person (The Archetypes 6, 25). Jung developed an exhaustive theory of collective unconsciousness and the notion became a foundation stone which pervades all his work. He differentiated between the personal unconsciousness which he considered to be the repressed and forgotten contents of consciousness and between the collective unconsciousness whose contents he called archetypes. According to Harold Schechter the concept of Jungian archetypes “has been misunderstood by a great many people” since Jung himself made contradictory statements about the term during his lifelong career which stems from the impossibility to articulate what the concept precisely means (Schechter 4). However, there are several characteristics pervading all his work which Jung attributed to collective unconsciousness. In his essay "The Psychology of the Child Archetype" Jung calls the archetype a “psychic organ present in all of us” (The Archetypes 160) suggesting that just like human beings all around the world show 32
the common physical constitution, there is also one part of the psychic structure which is common to all people across nations and cultures. It is the deepest layer of the human psyche, it is unconscious and it is demonstrated in myths, in personal dreams and fantasies, through active imagination which stands for a deliberate concentration generating fantasies, and in art. Jung also emphasizes that archetypes themselves do not have contents but only empty forms and their contents are revealed only after they are manifested in consciousness. And as a concrete manifestation depends on the context there are endless representations of them (AF 123). The archetypes have their form as well as their energy and we are possessed by that energy rather than we have control over it (AF 149, 169). According to Schechter archetypes are “dynamisms which direct our lives in deeply unconscious but purposive ways” (Schechter 10). Thus the fact that they are unconscious does not mean that they have no influence on our existence whatsoever. Quite the opposite, the intensity of their functioning is given by their apparent invisibility and non-existence because if we cannot see them we cannot fight them or at least deal with them and they persist deep inside our psyche. Therefore there is such a huge need of the human soul for a compensation of those alien forces through dreams, fantasies and art in modern men. Jung devoted the whole essay "Psychology and Literature" to the issue of influence of collective unconsciousness on creation of great art, in particular on works of literature such as Goethe´s Faust and Melville´ Moby Dick. He claims that there are two different aptitudes which make the great artist. Those are the personal factors and impersonal forces which are analogous to psychological and visionary modes of artistic creation. The psychological mode comprises everything which concerns consciousness such as emotions, crises, passions, etc., and which ordinary man understands but cannot articulate and thus there is a poet who assimilates all joys and sorrows of life and expresses it in the work of art. On the contrary, the visionary mode encompasses the unconsciousness which fulfils itself through the poet. The poet becomes a prophet possessed by collective unconsciousness and has to sacrifice everything for the sake of vision ("Psychology and Literature" 220, 227). It is obvious that Murdoch did not ponder the concept of the consciousness in relation to the unconsciousness as Jung did. Although she mentioned the possibility of the existence of “unconscious or irresistible forces” which possess people (Metaphysics 137), she considered cosnciousness rather in relation to art, love and attention to others (SG 88). However, her view of the importance of great art complies with that of Jung. In "The Sovereignty of Good 33
Over Other Concepts" she suggests that art “gives a clear sense to many ideas which seem more puzzling when we meet with them elsewhere” (SG 88), which actually corresponds to the notion of a psychological mode of artistic creation which Jung suggested. Murdoch also asserted that great artist´s “reveal the detail of the world. At the same time their greatness is not something peculiar and personal like a proper name. They are great in ways which are to some extent similar, and increased understanding of an art reveals its unity through its excellence” (SG 96). Hence according to Murdoch great art has a collective and transpersonal rather than individual character and the personal elements limit the greatness and perfection which is again in accord with Jung´s understanding of the issue. In her essays Murdoch usually discusses great art in terms of morality. She cherishes great art for having the power to detach man from his/her self-absorption and make him/her perceive genuinely something which stands beyond his/her limited sense of reality. In "The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts" she asserts that:
Good art, unlike bad art, unlike ʻhappeningsʼ, is something pre-eminently outside us and resistant to our consciousness. We surrender ourselves to its authority with a love which is unpossessive and unselfish. Art shows us the only sense in which the permanent and incorruptible is compatible with the transient; and whether representational or not it reveals to us aspects of our world which our ordinary dull dream-consciousness is unable to see. Art pierces the veil and gives sense to the notion of a reality which lies beyond appearance; it exhibits virtue in its true guise in the context of death and chance. (88)
Both Jung and Murdoch contemplated the idea that there exists a phenomenon beyond our consciousness and that this phenomenon has an ability to free our ego from its restraint and that great art is one of the mediators to the way of freedom. For Jung it was unconsciousness whereas for Murdoch it was Goodness via attending to reality and truth. However, when reading the work of Jung and Murdoch carefully one finds out that their theories overlap more than it appears at first sight. Murdoch advises her reader to try to become humble looking at the world around him/her properly and trying to attend to other people by suppressing his/her egoistic and instinctive desires. However, she does not seem to be able to provide the reader with concrete directions how to accomplish the task. Thus she 34
proves to be a theorist rather than an empiricist. Jung also calls for an ability of man to “admit that there are problems which one simply cannot solve on one´s own resources” and to become “honest, truthful, and in accord with reality” (The Archetypes 21). He, as a psychoanalyst, gives concrete advice for a solution of the issue. Unlike Murdoch, he warns against the suppression of one´s own instincts as it can lead to neuroses. He rather proposes to accept one´s own weaknesses and open the door into the realm of unconsciousness and intuition. He introduces a detailed account of how to move in the realm of unconsciousness and what steps to follow precisely (AF 93-95). Seemingly, his approach differs from that of Murdoch´s who emphasizes the attention to others rather than the process of self-engrossment. However, as a Jungian psychoanalyst Verena Kastová points out the immersion into unconsciousness paradoxically leads to an apprehension of others and to a mutual solidarity as the existence of unconsciousness is what connects all people and what they have in common (16). Moreover, in her essays Murdoch does not seem to consider the fact that as long as one is supposed to respect others s/he has to respect her/himself first. Only after one reconciles with one´s dark side and with one´s past one can move on and confront others without one´s own complexes and prejudices. Nevertheless, even though Murdoch opposes the techniques of psychoanalysis and a thorough scrutiny of one´s own psyche, deep down she seems to apprehend the significance of appreciation of one´s own psyche as her characters always undergo a painful journey of gradual awareness of their frailty and only then they come to terms with others. What is striking is the fact that in their spiritual journey they seem to encounter the archetypal figures which Jung described in his work and which reveal the truth.
4.2. Archetypes as Reccuring Patterns of Collective Unconscious
Jung called the archetypes “primordial images” and “patterns of functioning” among many different terms (AF 121). These patterns of functioning appear in myths, in dreams, in fantasy and in art. They also appear in Murdoch´s novels which I will illustrate later in my thesis. However, firstly it is appropriate to mention Murdoch´s approach to the notion of patterns in general as it is something which has been discussed widely and which is relevant to the topic of this chapter. It is a controversial topic as Murdoch herself made contradictory statements about the issue and she was not able to prove in her novels the ideas
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which she asserted in her philosophical writings. She claimed contingency and chance and opposed the possibility of existence of a general pattern or purpose of life calling it “the sort of consolation” which “removes the pain of contingency, which is a shadow of death” and which enables people to “escape both responsibility and subjection to spiteful chance” (Metaphysics 111). Julia Jordan states that Murdoch was the post-war novelist who pondered the idea of contingency and its significance for the form of the novel the most profoundly (115), which shows how deeply Murdoch was interested in the issue and how it influenced her fiction. She tried to demonstrate “the instability of art and the invincible variety, contingency and scarcely communicable frightfulness of life” (Metaphysics 96) but she herself did not manage to resist the employment of recurring patterns in the novels. Moreover, the discrepancy might be found already within her philosophical writings. In an essay "On ʻGodʼ and ʻGoodʼ" she claims that people are separate and different and thus it is not possible to seek for unity and universality. Everything except God is contingent (SG 63). However, in an essay "The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts" she acknowledges that there exist numerous patterns and purposes of life (SG 79). According to Murdoch artists deal with patterns, too as they want to impose form on their work (SG 65). She herself admits that she is concerned about the issue of patterns, too: “I think this is always the temptation that a novelist has (particularly a novelist like myself who is interested in plots and patterns), that he must relate everybody to everybody” (qtd. in Spear 53) and even though she denies their presence in her work the reader will recognize them within each of her novels. The Sandcastle is a good example of Murdoch´s treatment of the issue of patterns. In The Sandcastle the word pattern appears several times and has its deep symbolic significance. Nan and Bill´s coexistence and communication fall into the same recurring pattern which makes Bill dead-beat, bored and hopeless. They talk in set phrases which they repeat over and over again resembling rather a machine than human beings. It is a routine which protects them against the necessity of facing the reality. However, every such dialogue destroys another possibility of becoming honest not only to the partner but also to themselves. On the other hand, Rain is described literally as lacking the motif of the pattern. In this case the word refers to an art technique in which Rain is looking for an appropriate pattern which would fit the background of the picture which she is painting. Hence Nan is characterized as being stuck in the machinery of patterns in terms of communication whereas Rain symbolically seeks for pattern for her work of art and thus at least at the beginning she is freed from the machinery in 36
a symbolic sense. It is an example of a treatment of the very word pattern in one of Murdoch´s novels which is not exactly the aim of my thesis as I will deal with the issue in more general terms. However, it shows how much Murdoch was preoccupied with the topic and how much it influenced her work. Murdoch´s characters and situations in the novels fall into patterns which repeat themselves continually. Her stories are full of siblings and alienation between them, they are filled with mystical figures, power figures who control the submissive ones, mistaken identities, lust for revenge, fatal love, attempts of murder, mystical and gothic places and enchantment and magic. There are many other recurring and typical protagonists and scenes in Murdoch´s fiction but those which I listed seem to me the most frequent. According to Milada Franková the patterns of types and the patterns of behaviour “have acquired the shape of mechanical models which, set in motion, make the machinery of behaviour grind relentlessly on” (Human 78). However, when we consider the real life, does it not acquire the shape of mechanical models, as Milada Franková puts it, too? Do we not copy the habits and behaviour of our parents? Do children not imitate the conduct of adults? Have not the same situations and the same types of characters recurred for thousands of years again and again? It is fairly clear that they have and it does not necessarily mean that people are all the same and experience the situations in the same way. They only share the common framework but deep inside they feel and perceive differently as they are shaped by their personal experience which is always unique and exceptional. One of the critics who blames Murdoch for the employment of patterns is Gabriele Griffin who claims that the use of patterns and myth in Murdoch´s work is an obstacle in the way of creation of “accidental [and] peripheral characters” which Murdoch herself calls for (256). However, I will oppose Griffin at this point and claim that the use of patterns makes the characters even more believable as patterns are the part of everyday life of every individual not only in the world of fiction but also in the real world. Here I will cite A.S.Byatt, a distinguished critic of Murdoch´s work who, on the basis of Malcolm Bradbury´s essay "A House Fit for Free Characters", articulates the issue the most aptly and properly. She states as follows:
She [Murdoch] claims, he [Bradbury] says, that life has finally no pattern, no meaning, that we are ruled by necessity and chance, yet one of the strengths of both her plotting and her symbolism is that it explores fully the sense in which 37
we feel that our lives are gripped by formative forces which function below our conscious knowledge or choice. She describes those aspects of sexual and social behaviour in which men are remarkably similar to each other and meaningful patterns and generalizations can be drawn, whose power can be felt. I refer particularly to the ideas of psychoanalysts and of students of myth, where they are interested not in the individual whole person, but in the machinery of behaviour. (24-25)
It is not despite the use of patterns but thanks to the employment of them that Murdoch is able to apprehend the uniqueness of man and she is able to depict the difference and individuality of characters vividly in her novels. According to Malcolm Bradbury her characters have a “great competence in moral matters” due to the author´s “selfless attention to nature” (239). Gabriele Griffin shares Bradbury´s view and states that Murdoch “tries to indicate the variety of situations, objects, and persons that can act as catalyst for moral change and a move towards greater selflessness” (112). I agree with the authors and argue that the rich pattering in Murdoch´s novels does not prevent her from the goal to depict the immense variety and diversity of individuals. In an interview with Bellamy Murdoch asserts, “Human beings are very odd and different from each other. The novel is a marvellous form in that it attempts to show this. I think it does explain people to themselves in a way. Of course, there aren´t that many really great novelists, but the novel aspires towards that sort of explanation, or at least most novels do” ("An Interview with Iris Murdoch" 137-138). Iris Murdoch was an exceptional novelist who understood the peculiarity and oddity of human beings and who managed to communicate it to her readers and thus “explain people to themselves in a way” as she put it. The use of patterns only reinforced her intention as it reveals the potential of unconsciousness which possesses and affects the lives of people.
4.3. Individuation – A Spiritual Journey to the Attention to Oneself and Others
In my thesis I will discuss the patterns in Murdoch´s work which relate to archetypes and their symbolic representations. Carl Gustav Jung called archetypes many different names and ascribed them a countless number of attributes and characteristics. One of the terms which he used to render the meaning of the word archetype is “patterns of instinctual
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behaviour” in an essay "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" (The Archetypes 44). These patterns of instinctual behaviour correlate with the archetypes of figures, situations, places, ways and means which belong to the deeper layers of the unconscious, to the collective unconscious in particular which functions as an “unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past ... of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods and men” (286-287) and which are projected on the outer world. According to Jung the conscious mind of our archaic ancestors was “far less developed in scope and intensity” which means that they perceived and sensed the thoughts rather than thought intentionally and willingly (33, 153). Archaic man whose state resembles that of a modern man in early childhood experienced the world within the community of his/her family, tribe, or nation solely. He identified himself/herself with the community being wholly possessed by his/her instincts and his/her ego-consciousness was far less shaped than the ego-consciousness of modern man (156,165). His/her psychic processes were rather unconscious and s/he employed myths and symbols to project and express his/her inner life (6). According to Jung this kind of unconscious has been not wiped out of the human mind but it has persisted in phylogenetic substratum called collective unconscious (286). However, as modern man does not possess symbolic life and does not practise rituals on a regular basis s/he suppresses the original mythologems which represent his/her natural needs. In consequence, these repressed mythologems can cause serious health damage or they can emerge unexpectedly when people start to create false myths and project their unconsciousness either on individuals or on social groups (270). Edward F.Edinger explains that if archetypes are not realized in a particular dimension, for example in an established Church, they can be projected in ordinary or wordly things and money, power or politics can gain transcendental value substituting the role of religion and the unconscious projection can lead to fanaticism. Nazism and communism are the extreme examples of such a consequence (Já a archetyp 69 – 72). Thus it is necessary to create a relationship with different kinds of archetypes and try to understand them so that we will not become their victims. It is also important not to identify with them but to perceive them as separate beings as the identification could again lead to psychic disorders. To set an example, in the case of identification with the archetype of Christ one could think that s/he him/herself is the Christ figure and that would cause serious mental disorder.
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Jung offers a particular way to discover and understand the archetypes which reside in us. It is the way of individuation which we can still undergo in a world in which the symbols and rituals are missing, the psychic energy cannot be transformed and released through them and people are psychically disoriented and confused. According to Jung in the process of individuation one should recognize the Self which stands for Jung´s central archetype and represents the wholeness of personality whereas ego is the centre of consciousness. One should achieve a synthesis of consciousness and unconsciousness, reconcile with the shadow archetype which represents the negative aspects of his/her personality and accept himself/herself despite his dark side (The Archetypes 164, 251). One should no longer project the negative things into the environment. One should throw away the persona, “the mask of the actor” as he calls it and become the man that s/he really is (20). A Jungian analyst John Beebe calls the process of individuation the life-task and the moral imperative which one has to accomplish and explains that in the second half of life, which Jung analysed primarily, man losses his/her ego which is “compensated by the emergence of the anima [archetype]” and dives into the world of unconsciousness (AM 26-27). In the world of unconsciousness s/he meets different archetypes which s/he projects on the outer world first so that s/he could realize the unconscious projection, accept the archetypes and thus reconcile with his/her yet unknown side of the psyche later. The process of individuation means nothing else than a life-long journey towards self- knowledge, self-realization and self-acceptance. In general, the journey is a powerful symbol which appears in art continually and which affects all human beings. The symbol of journey often refers to the spiritual path and spiritual growth which everybody undergoes during his/her life more or less successfully. The symbol of spiritual journey also appears in Murdoch´s literary work. Her characters go through a long path and search for the proper place on the earth to live in. They seem to be unsettled and unsure looking for a spiritual guide unconsciously. They aim at better understanding not only of other people but also of themselves searching for the truth, the reality and the goodness which are the crucial concerns in Iris Murdoch´s philosophy. However, it is a long spiritual path and in fact, it can never be fully completed. As Milada Franková puts it, “the moral tasks are truly endless” and “full revelation is never achieved” (Human 42) both in Murdoch´s work and in real life because as Iris Murdoch asserts in an essay "Fact and Value", “much of our life is taken up by truth- seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognize and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and 40
understanding” (Metaphysics 26). According to Murdoch we should continually search for truth and reality, we should continually doubt and never approve of the existence of totality which is only an illusion and “on the road between illusion and reality there are many clues and signals and wayside shrines and places of meditations and refreshment. The pilgrim just has to look about him with a lively eye” (496). Thus we need to open our eyes and look at and attend to reality and morality properly. We need to suppress our ego which produces false fantasies and consolations. We need to stop projecting our failures onto our environment and onto other people. Murdoch claims that the moral imperative and the premise for a good and truthful life is the attention to others and the unselfing of oneself. Jung asserts that the moral task of human beings which leads to better understanding of oneself and a more successful and healthy life is the attention to oneself, integration of consciousness and unconsciousness and an aspiration to undivided self (AF 55). I argue that these two approaches overlap and they in fact cannot be realized on their own. We cannot attend to other people and respect them if we are not reconciled with ourselves and if we are not self-confident enough. At the same time we cannot appreciate ourselves if we are not able to take other people as separate beings and apprehend them as they really are, not as we want them to be. Although Murdoch emphasises the importance of the spiritual journey to other people she cannot deny that her characters have to undergo a sort of individuation first so that they would be able to appreciate their close ones and acknowledge them as free and independent beings. One of the characters who experience the spiritual journey verging on the process of individuation is Bill Mor and Charles Arrowby.
5. Archetypes in the Work of Iris Murdoch
5.1. Individuation in The Sea, the Sea
In a very inspiring essay "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" Jung asserts that it is the middle life which is the crucial period in one´s life as enormous changes in psychological processes are happening in this stage. He states that in this life period:
Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can 41
no longer be held in check ... evening is born ... The wine has fragmented and begins to settle and clear. Conservative tendencies develop if all goes well; instead of looking forward one looks backward ... The critical survey of himself and his fate enables a man to recognize his peculiarities. But these insights ... are gained only through the severest shocks. (AF 51-52)
Bill Mor and Charles Arrowby are also going through this phase of life. Bill is in his middle age and Charles is over sixty but he looks and feels much younger. He still has the “joie de vivre of a young man” as Peregrine points out in one of the conversations with Charles (The Sea 166). Both Bill and Charles are not content with the direction of their lives. Apart from his miserable family life, Bill aspires to a candidate for the Labour Party and he also wants to write a book but he is not able to accomplish either of it while secretly blaming other people for his misfortunes and failures. In this respect, Charles is much more determined because he has no family to be dependent on and to support and he is less conservative than Bill. Thus he decides to try to destroy the old world so that he would find his new self. Mircea Eliade discusses the issue of the destruction of the old world for the sake of the new beginning and claims that modern artists are those who are brave enough to abolish the established order in favour of the new one. Hence they are not insane neurotics as somebody could think when judging their innovative and venturing approaches to art. They are rather prophets who anticipate what will happen in the future (56-57). Charles is an artist, too and he is also brave as he decides to leave his old world in his late sixties in order to find his real self. Even though the reader does not know much about his artistic practices and cannot say if Charles was transforming the world through art during his career, s/he knows that now Charles wants to change his personal life entirely abolishing the old one in favour of the new one. Charles moves from London into the seclusion and he starts to write his diary/memoir purposefully to find out who he really is. In Jung´s words he looks backward and critically surveys himself and that is the beginning of his spiritual journey which he has intentionally chosen. His exile from London and “his writing is the initiatory path whereby he gradually conquers his inner demons, ...” as Roula Ikonomakis defines it (45). He starts to “walk the path of retreat, where ... [his old self] symbolically die[s], to finally return to the world - ... London” (37). But at first he must destroy his old life so that he would be able to begin the new one. It is not an accident that Charles enters the path of self-revelation through the 42
writing of a diary/memoir. Iris Murdoch was concerned about the issue of writing and about the ability of a written text to render the truth and reality. In an essay "Conception of Unity. Art" she ponders the role of art and the role of words and language in general pointing to the discrepancy between the illusion and reality and to the difficulty to recognize the boundaries between these two. She is particularly concerned about the written media in the following way, “Bad art damages us in obvious ways by prompting false egoistic fantasy. But even serious art is dangerous ..., because it resembles the good, it is a spurious short-cut to ʻinstant wisdomʼ. The written text seems to ʻdo it for usʼ, and need not be diligently assimilated or transformed into our own personal understanding and practice. It represents something which we deeply (unconsciously) want to be the case” (Metaphysics 19). Then she warns against the subjectivity of the written text asserting that, “the problem about writing is a problem about ʻlive remembranceʼ” (23), which is exactly the issue of Charles and his diary/memoir. Gabriele Griffin discusses the issue in The Black Prince (1973) when one of the characters writes a sort of memoir to recall what happened. Griffin asks herself how he can “remember what he was like at the time, ... not let ... a "re-reading" of the earlier events, ... ensure that his present perception of his past self is not a distortion of that past (self)?” (234). These are all poignant questions which one has to take into account when reading Charles´s diary/memoir, too. Charles is a highly unreliable narrator also in different ways which is proved at the very end of the book when he reconstructs and redefines his apprehension of other people. He acknowledges that he misunderstood many of his friends and in particular, his cousin James and he re-evaluates his previous experience. Another indication of his unreliability is the vocabulary which Charles employs. He constantly uses the evaluative adjectives to describe other people. He does not doubt his judgement about the qualities and characteristics of others. It shows how deceptive his narration is as one cannot be as assured as Charles is. One cannot see through the lives of other people as Charles thinks he does. Thus the style of the narration actually forms the plot partially because it gradually reveals the main character´s personality. Hilda Spears points to another layer of the issue and that is the deliberate use of tenses in the narration of The Sea, the Sea. She emphasizes the fact that the book is written in three different tenses. The Prehistory section which reveals Charles´s past is written in the present tense, the section of History about the present and recent past is written in the past tense and the Postscript section is written in the present continuous tense. Spears asserts the use of tenses being a narrative device as the tenses indicate Charles´s own inability to 43
recognize the past and the present which are somehow blurred in Charles´s perception of time (92-93). It again points to the unreliability of the narrator as well as to the inability of language to render the truth. The language itself is an “artifice; it can be used to display or conceal”, it does not have to represent the speaker´s real thoughts and it can be interpreted in different ways by different listeners as Hilda Spears has it (23). Thus “ʻrealityʼ as such is never arrived at in the books, any more than it is in life” (qtd.in Conradi 32) claims Murdoch and proves it in her fiction in an intelligent manner. A diary and a memoir are ideal literary forms for a demonstration of insecurity, subjectivity and unreliability of a narrator. However, they are also good means how to express oneself, how to reflect on one´s behaviour and feelings and how to realize what would otherwise remain hidden in subconscious and unconscious. The diary and memoir can function as a kind of a psychological therapy in a way. For Charles, it definitely does. He is obsessed with writing, he is immersed in it, his diary/memoir provides a shelter for him in solitude and in hard times. Although he discusses his problems with other people, it is his diary/memoir which he really trusts to and relies on. Thus he holds a genuine discussion only with himself through the writing of a diary/a memoir which corresponds to his solipsistic manners which he has possessed all his life. Gabriele Griffin ponders the relationship of Charles to his diary/memoir claiming that Charles is the “author/creator/father to text/creature/child” (109). It again points to the solipsism as well as to Charles´s violent urge to possess and to control. However, Griffin also stresses that Charles calls his writing “my own dream text” (The Sea 499) and thus links it to his unconsciousness directly (Griffin 109). I do not agree with Griffin in the point that the expression itself which Charles uses to describe his diary/memoir implies that the text mirrors his unconsciousness. It rather points to the world of fantasy in which Charles has lived so far the word dream signifying illusion and untruth rather than unconsciousness. However, I agree that the text relates to Charles´s unconsciousness gradually revealing him the depths of his soul. Although Charles wants to retain his persona of an omnipotent director of souls and his mask of Don Juan he gradually realizes that it has not been the right way to manipulate other people and to play at God for “under no circumstances will the unconscious tolerate this shifting of the centre of gravity” as Jung points out when considering the issue of persona (AF 92). Jung explains that the persona is a kind of a mask which forms the relations between the real self, “the true nature of the individual” and the society and what they expect from the individual (91). Jung warns against the possibility of identification with the persona to such 44
an extent that one could start to believe in his/her social role being his/her real self which might lead to a completely artificial personality suffering from neuroses as unconscious will always work its way (93). For a healthy development of an individual, it is utmost important to differentiate between what one really is and how s/he appears to others (94), between his/her real self and his/her persona. That seems to be a difficult task for Charles. He desires to feel “triumphant and delighted” (The Sea 97) which is one of many boasting expressions he uses thorough the story the word ´triumphant´ being the attribute which characterizes him very well. He wants to triumph over other people at any costs directing not only their roles in the theatre but also their fates in personal life. His professional life and his personal life blur and he is not able to distinguish where his social role ends. Thus he harms people around him without realizing it properly. Fortunately, during the story he undergoes a journey of individuation and changes his apprehension of other people with the help of his cousin James as well as in consequence of some crucial events which happen during his adventure.
5.1.2. The Symbols of the Beginning of Charles´s Individuation
There are several possibilities of what part of the story can be regarded as the beginning of Charles´s journey. Roula Ikonomakis argues for Charles´s idea to write a diary or a memoir which has already been discussed. The other alternative is a move from London into the wilderness. Charles is aware of the fact that without the physical exile from London he would not be able to transform his soul. Edward F.Edinger explains that the exile and wanderings form an essential part of the process of individuation as one can never meet his/her real Self unless s/he leaves the comfortable pillars and supports from outside. He sets the examples of Biblical Kain, of the Eternal Jew as well as of Oedipus who had to undergo a pilgrimage in order to experience a transformation (VD 149). It makes sense as when one moves outside his/her established position s/he has a potential to see himself/herself and the world which surrounded him/her with an open mind and one has time and space to ponder the previous experience. Another layer of this issue is the very place which Charles chooses for his retreat. He calls his new home the “seaside paradise” (The Sea 12). According to Edinger and his psychoanalytical explanation of the Christian mythology, Paradise as it is described in the Bible symbolizes the unconsciousness, the animal state without any conflicts of the mind and the unity of the Self. On the other hand, the fruit from Paradise epitomizes the
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consciousness when Adam and Eve´s consumption of the fruit stands for the withdrawal from the safe world of unconsciousness into the world of opposites, duality, conflicts and uncertainty, the world of consciousness, the world of the knowledge of good and evil. Moreover, they eat the fruit and realize their nakedness which signifies their sudden awareness of their sexuality the instincts becoming the taboo and the object of bashfulness (Já a archetyp 27-28). Thus Charles´s deliberate decision to take refuge in the wilderness which he calls the paradise might symbolize the initiation of his journey into the darkness of unconsciousness and into the primitive state of mind ruled by the instincts which reveals to him many truths about himself. The third possibility of what can be regarded as the birth of Charles´s descent into the underworld is his vision of the sea monster at the beginning of the story. It has been discussed a lot as it is a supernatural phenomenon which stands for a powerful symbol and symbols can always be interpreted from different points of view. Peter Struck points out that they can open up a “realm of beyond rational experience [and convey] ... a unique density of meaning” (Birth of the Symbol 2). The sea serpent also opens up a realm beyond reason as its appearance is not explained by logic until the end of the story although it emerges at the very beginning of the novel. Peter Conradi is one of the critics who offer a possible reading of the symbol. He points to Charles´s own words as Charles speaks about “the sea-serpent of jealousy” (The Sea 492) when he reflects on events which happened at Shruff End. In this connection, Conradi recalls several situations in which Charles imagined the sea serpent at the very time when either he or his close friend was jealous. Thus in Conradi´s interpretation of the sea serpent symbol the monster stands for Charles´s own tremendous jealousy which is the main theme of the novel as the sea serpent is present from the very beginning to the very end of the story when it disappears (244-245). Roula Ikonomakis also mentions the symbolic role of the serpent regarding it the metaphor of Charles´s egoism (268). Julia Jordan asserts the sea monster to symbolize Charles´s neuroses as well as the tremendous power of the sea because he cannot fully comprehend either of them (142). I argue that the symbol of a sea serpent might signify the beginning of Charles´s path into unconsciousness which I will demonstrate pointing to the circumstances which suggest this possibility. However, whatever the sea serpent represents for readers of the novel, they are consistent in the fact that it is not a mere literary device of a fantastic motif to disturb the realistic stance of the story, but it epitomizes the psychic reality of the main character of the book because, “Fantasy, it has to be remembered, is associated for Murdoch with the self...” as Gabriele Griffin has it (43). 46
The sea monster appears when Charles is sitting by the seaside tranquilly and contemplates the landscape and his own person as usual when he notices a little sea-worm in a rock pool. Shortly after that he sees a monster which rises from the sea. He describes the monster vividly and the reader has no doubt that Charles really spots the animal, “At first it looked like a black snake, then a long thickening body with a ridgy spiny back followed the elongated neck ... I could also see the head with a remarkable clarity, a kind of crested snake´s head, green-eyed, the mouth opening to show teeth and pink interior” (The Sea 19). First Charles is panic-stricken. When he calms down he starts to think about the rational explanation for his vision. According to Charles, “Something had happened and happenings have explanations” (The Sea 20). Finally, after a deep scrutiny of his mind, he concludes that what he saw was a hallucination caused by his usage of LSD several years ago. In this sense, Charles is one of the modern men of science who believe only those things which can be proved by facts and sheer reason. He does not realize that there do exist phenomena beyond our consciousness which bear both individual and collective significance and thus they can be explained only partly. As Jung points out, “One may lament this incapacity on the part of science, but that does not enable it to jump over its own shadow” (The Archetypes 208). One of these phenomena which should not be suppressed is the projection of archetypes into the consciousness. Jung discussed the issue of projection throughout his work as it represents one of the foundation stones of his theory and it is essential for comprehending his crucial ideas. From ancient times, man has had a natural need to project the inner life into an outer environment (The Archetypes 6). In an essay "Commentary on ʻthe Secret of the Golden Flowerʼ" Jung explains that, “Activated unconscious contents always appear at first as projections upon the outside world, but in the course of mental development they are gradually assimilated by consciousness and reshape into conscious ideas that then forfeit their originally autonomous and personal character” (AS 35). That means that if one is not aware of his/her psychic actuality it will probably be projected elsewhere (237). Thus the unconscious projection has always been a sort of defensive, explanatory and healing mechanism of the psyche and has functioned as compensation to the inability to understand one´s own soul. However, when one realizes what is happening inside one´s psyche, when one understands one´s unconsciousness, one will no longer project it into one´s environment and free oneself from its power. The projections need to be realized, understood and dealt with by the individual so that one can find one´s real Self and gain the “psychological knowledge” (89) about oneself which can be utmost difficult as although being creatures of 47
imaginations projections are always perceived as realities and thus need to be taken seriously and need to be subjected to scientific research as Jung stresses in an essay "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (159). Jung describes various forms of projections which they can take such as projections upon people and upon objective, abstract symbols such as animals (snake, dragon) and flowers (lotus and rose) (The Archetypes 187) or hallucinations and visions (AS 286). Charles experiences all of them. The first projection takes a form of a hallucination of a sea-serpent which is a powerful mythological symbol. When discussing the myth of Odysseus Joseph Campbell recalls Scylla and Charybdis and calls them she-monsters of the sea which implies their female nature. He proposes the monsters to stand for complexes which are obstacles and complications in daily life of people and which need to be overcome just like heroes and heroines must defeat the creatures ("The Hero with a Thousand Faces"). Marina Warner also discusses the motif of a serpent and claims a serpentine to be a metaphor “of the monstrous female” (16) reminding the reader of ancient Hydra and Medusa as well as of the well-known Chimera monster which she calls “the ultimate monster of monsters” (19- 21). Warner explains the role of monsters in ancient mythology in a psychoanalytical way asserting that being the creatures of imagination they reveal the deep psychic level of the psyche showing the desires and fears of man. She stresses their double face and explains that they are “emanations of ourselves ... [as well as] perceived as alien, abominable and separate so that we can deny them” (21). Harold Schechter speaks about she-creatures, half a woman and half a monster, lovely water spirits such as the Rusalka, the Lorelei, the nixies and the sirens whose singing has power to cause death of a man (95). He discusses the issue in connection with the projection of the archetype of the anima into feminine creatures and claims the beings to “embody man´s primitive fear of the feminine” (94). Thus he suggests that the she-creatures of the sea are projections of inner life of man upon his/her environment which complies with the view of Campbell, Warner as well as with Jung´s theory. According to Jung the vision of chthonic animals such as crocodiles, monkeys, dragons, or serpents might symbolize the beginning of one´s individuation (The Archetypes 159). He argues that the dragon, or serpent “represents the initial state of unconsciousness, for this animal loves, as the alchemists say, to dwell “in caverns and dark places”...” and recalls the “universal struggle of the hero with the dragon” the dragon standing for the beginning of the immersion into the world of unconsciousness (AS 89). According to Roula Ikonomakis the comparison of the sea monster, which Charles sees, with Jung´s dragon is the only possible 48
explanation of the vision. She mentions the Biblical sea monster Leviathan and suggests that the “symbolic value of the monster ... also relates to Charles´s psyche” standing for an archetypal dragon which symbolizes the beginning of the individuation (56). What is interesting is the fact that even though Charles thinks about the serpent in a highly rational way, at one moment when he again watches the sea and imagines that a monster could rise from the depths of water he remembers that the local people mentioned that a ʻwormʼ is the old expression for dragon. Thus for a moment he relates the monster to a mythological figure, too. Although he dismisses the association as “a too little picturesque” (The Sea 76), he admits to be restless after the realization. He probably feels that there is something of the truth at what these “yokels” (76) as Charles calls the ordinary folks living in the village said. Charles stands such a dubious stance towards the creature for the whole story. It seems that he is only partly prepared for the transformation of the self. He constantly looks for the serpent expecting it to rise from the water while denying its existence by any possible explanations because the serpent is not only an emblem of the birth of the journey into the unconsciousness but also Charles´s shadow and dark side. He compares the monster to a snake which is an emblematic animal which symbolizes the evil since prehistoric times. Jung explains that the “snake, like the devil in Christian theology, represents the shadow, ... , the principle of evil” (The Archetypes 322). In Jung´s viewpoint the snake is also “an excellent symbol for the two aspects of the unconscious: its cold and ruthless instinctuality, and ... natural wisdom” because it is an “alien creature that arouses ... [man´s] fear and also fascinates him” but it is the “most spiritual” animal according to a Hellenistic philosopher Philo at the same time (AS 333). Thus the snake represents both the evil and the unconsciousness, namely the instinctual, animistic side as well as the other aspect, the wisdom of the unconscious which accompanies man on his journey of individuation. Although Charles claims not to believe the existence of the monster he fears it. He fears the realm of unconsciousness because it is an unexplored realm of his being and he fears his shadow as he is not able to accept the negative side of his personality, the evil in him. Thus he projects his fear and his negative sides into the environment and he tries to fight the realm of unconscious. One of the ways in which he copes with the sudden change of his personality is an attempt to ʻcolonizeʼ the new place of his stay by obsessive cleaning of the house and by making his own garden. He has intentionally chosen wilderness, the deserted and isolated place for his new home which as “the region of the unknown holds out the promise of 49
spiritual wholeness”, as Harold Schechter has it. He sets an example of the canon of world literature and recalls the narrator of Moby-Dick who had to leave the city and “travel into the mystic ocean” (qtd.in Schechter 52) to “cure his spiritual sickness” (52). Charles also has to approach the mystic ocean and the wilderness which represent the instinctual part of the psyche in order to discover his real self. However, for a long time he tries to prevent the natural and instinctual side of his psyche from assimilating into his consciousness for the conscious mind has “a natural resistance to entering the realm of the irrational” as Schechter puts it (53). For Charles, one of the ways to resist the realm of the spontaneous, sensual and unconscious is to make order and comfort in a place which is not suitable for it by adjusting and cleaning the house property and by making his own garden. Roula Ikonomakis explains that Charles wants to grow a garden and thus “discipline nature” and gain the power and control over it (248) just like he wants to direct people around himself. However, he does not realize that there exist phenomena beyond one´s ego and consciousness which one cannot control by will. It is the unconsciousness which always finds its way. In the case of Charles, it has appeared in the form of the sea monster whose existence Charles tries to deny or at least explain in a rational way and thus resist the unconscious side of his psyche. However, the sea monster accompanies him during the whole story standing for the unconscious which opens a realm of the archetypes which Charles´s soul meets on the journey of self-realization as well as of apprehension of others. The last possibility which might symbolize the initiation of Charles´s journey into the unconsciousness is the first encounter with Hartley. One morning after Charles has seen Hartley for the first time he wakes up and feels “an instant sense of a changed world ... as if ... [he] had been changed in the night into a beneficent being powerful for good ... [having] a power to transform, to raise up, to heal, to bring undreamt-of happiness and joy” (The Sea 113). The reader knows that these are only more of Charles´s fantasies which he projects into another person. He has not changed over night and there is a long way for him to go to meet his new self because in Murdoch´s novels “the idea-play promotes a slow unselfing; the action warns against fast unselfing” as Peter Conradi explains (268). However, there is a significant shift in Charles´s apprehension of reality because the day after seeing Hartley he starts to pray which he has not been doing since he was a child. Iris Murdoch discussed the issue of prayer in several essays. She as the advocate of a religion of good rather than a religion of God asserted that God is a source of energy which is often positive. Prayer is then a form of attention to this positive and transcendental energy which moves man beyond the 50
limitations of his/her personality (SG 55-56). It has a potential to “induce a better quality of consciousness and provide energy for good action which would not otherwise be available” (EM 368). However, in an essay "On ʻGodʼ and ʻGoodʼ" Murdoch asked a relevant question what becomes of a prayer in the world without God? (SG 55). The answer might be found in modern psychology, namely in Jung´s psychological explanation of religious experience. Charles claims that he does not believe in God. He is one of the men who put the insecurity of knowledge in the place of security of faith as Jung defines it when discussing the issue of science versus religion (Symbol a libido 95). However, whatever Charles claims about his belief he is definitely not detached from the religious experience entirely which becomes clear when he starts to pray. Moreover, living in an isolated place in an immediate proximity of nature he often meditates upon the omnipotence of nature and seems to feel its divine and transcendental power which affects his being and which he could not experience if he stayed in the city. Thus the spiritual side of his soul is slowly awakening and when the crisis, which is the encounter with Hartley in Charles´s case, comes he starts to pray. Jung explains that the prayer is one of the means how to cope with the pressure because one turns to introversion and approaches the unconsciousness in which one subconsciously seeks the answer to the problem for the situation which one has to deal with has repeated in mankind innumerable times and thus the introversion and the prayer serves as a spiritual preparation for dealing with the situation (Hrdina a archetyp matky 185). Hence one of the possible explanations of the reason why Charles prays even though he claims not to believe in God is that he unwillingly and automatically approaches the unconscious side of his psyche in order to seek for help and revelation and thus the way of individuation and the process of transformation starts. There is also a question why Charles takes Hartley into the church in order to start their first conversation after so many years when they saw each other for the last time. He probably wants quiet and peace to be able to concentrate and talk to Hartley. However, considering Murdoch´s employment of symbolism through all her novels there arises a question of a possibility of the church being a symbol of inner lives of characters who decide to visit the sacred building. A cautious reader notices the difference between the places in which Charles takes Lizzie and Hartley to talk to them for the first time in the story. After meeting Lizzie he automatically starts to walk towards the tower which is a part of his new property whereas when he encounters Hartley he persuades her to come to the church. Gabriele Griffin points to the recurring images in Murdoch´s work from which the symbol of 51
a tower is one of the most frequent ones as it appears in each of her novels (277). According to Jung the tower is a powerful phallic symbol (AF 25) and in this sense, it can be read in The Sea, the Sea. The tower symbolizes Charles´s masculinity, his perception of reality which is based on the patriarchal structure of society, his “wicked possessive urge” (The Sea) to own and manipulate women and his feeling of supremacy over Lizzie who is entirely devoted to him. The church in which Charles talks to Hartley for the first time contrasts the tower strongly as it represents the spiritual rather than the physical power, the purity and the transcendental mode of being which symbolizes the beginning of Charles´s spiritual transformation. Furthermore, Lizzie is intentionally and voluntarily following Charles whereas Charles has to pull at Hartley´s sleeve in order to make her come to the church. Hence the action also stands for the inner lives of characters as Lizzie is subjected to Charles whereas Charles is dependent on Hartley. Charles experiences a lot of shocks and suffers enormously during the quest in which he realizes his dependence on Hartley. During the journey the archetypes are coming to light while he projects his failures on the members of his family or on the woman whom he loves selfishly. However, all that misery and pain are only means to discover his real character, to purify his soul and to start leading an authentic life of Charles Arrowby, not the life of a director who manipulates people as puppets.
5.2.2. The Symbols of the Beginning of Bill´s Individuation
Bill Mor also has to follow a path into his unconsciousness and meet the archetype which shows him the real values in his life. Seemingly, he lives an orderly family life with his wife and two children. However, in reality he is suffocating as he is not able to communicate with his family and he does not know how to get out of the desperate situation. His journey into unconsciousness starts after he meets Rain. There are two situations in the story which I consider to be the possibilities of the beginning of his spiritual path. Both relate to nature which “acts as a metonymy of the characters´ behaviour and inner state” as Roula Ikonomkis has it (53). Nature not only stands for the inner life of characters but it has also a great impact on what the characters are going through. Bill meets Rain at Demoyte´s, the former headmaster´s, house for the first time. After a short conversation among him, Rain and Demoyte, Nan arrives to join them. She dislikes
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Demoyte for some reasons and she feels rather anxious and nervous at the house. Thus she asks Bill to leave the house after rather a short time. Demoyte wants his servant to cut some flowers in the garden for her when she and her husband are leaving. However, the servant refuses to go as it is already dark and damp outside. What a surprise for everybody when Rain herself offers to go and cut the roses for Nan. Demoyte is excited at the situation and asks Bill to go with Rain. It is an irony because in fact the roses are for Bill as he admired them several days ago. Moreover, Nan does not like flowers and considers them “messy and insanitary” (The Sandcastle 33). However, she does not express her opinion publicly and thus Rain and Bill leave the house to fetch the flowers. Immediately, they find themselves in another realm, the realm of nature and mystery. They can smell “an intense perfume of damp earth and darkened flowers [which] quenched the noises of the world outside” (The Sandcastle 34) and Bill feels that something very intensive is happening inside him. However, he is not able to say what it is. He does not realize that he has been touched by the numinous energy of nature and that from now on Rain is no longer a strange painter who visited the school but that she has become his anima, one of the archetypes which he meets during his path into unconsciousness. The night only emphasizes the transformation as the night and darkness belongs to the unconsciousness which Jung repeats in many of his essays (AM 104). Gabriele Griffin also stresses the importance of the dark settings as in the night “the whole of ordinary reality is literally "blacked out", thus allowing total concentration on the inner experience ... [It is] the process by which complete inward attention can be achieved” (210). Thus Bill experiences a sort of mystical moments without being fully aware of the magic because it is only the beginning of his path. The surroundings of a dark garden is a perfect place for a manifestation of a difference between Bill´s and Rain´s nature. Rain feels very confident in the garden. She can see in the dark and she is laying “her feet very softly to the earth ... [making] no sound at all as she ... [walks]” (The Sandcastle 34). She in fact resembles the cat because of her movement as well as because of the fact that she can see in the dark. According to Gabriele Griffin cats are “associated with the spiritual, also satanic, and are symbols of liberty, unrestraint, ...” (210) and that is exactly what fascinates Bill about Rain. She is an artist who is unrestraint and liberal, open-minded and tolerant. She is willing to talk to anybody and seems to enjoy it as she perceives other people as individual beings and does not judge them, which contrasts the attitude of Bill and his wife Nan who tend to criticize those who do not fit their living style. 53
On the other hand, Bill is very clumsy and unsure in the garden. He even stumbles and almost falls down. After that Rain takes his hand to help him. At this very moment the moon comes out of the clouds and “the sky ... [is] seen in motion” (The Sandcastle 35) which might also represent the beginning of Bill´s journey into his unconsciousness for the moon is understood as a symbol of unconsciousness in astrology and deep psychology as Udo Becker explains in the dictionary of symbols (Becker 171). Edward F.Edinger points to the fact that the moon is an ancient symbol which represents the transition between the ego and the transpersonal psyche as it is the way between the Earth and heaven (VD 159). Thus when the moon appears Bill feels awe, surprise as well as shock not only because Rain took his hand but mainly because he experiences new and mystical feelings which anticipate his journey which will be sad and painful but which will reveal many truths about himself and people around him to him. The other situation which takes Bill into another realm of being occurs several days after the first meeting when Rain offers him a lift as she has got a car whereas Bill always rides a bike. Rain is cross with Bledyard, one of the local teachers, and suggests driving a bit further so that she can talk to Bill about her quarrel with Bledyard. They get into the countryside after a while. Then they come to the forest and literally enter “another world” in which “the spirit of the wood” presses upon them (The Sandcastle 88). It is the realm of divine nature in which one forgets about one´s problems and daily duties and immerses into the exclusivity and intimacy of his/her being which harmonizes with the environment. The spontaneity and instincts are awakened and deep inside one´s psyche, one returns to “an age when dawning human consciousness was still wholly bound to nature ... [and when] there were spirits of forest, field and stream long before the question of moral conscience ever existed” (The Archetypes 25). This is the world in which Bill suddenly appears and which is so fascinating and yet so scaring for him. And Rain is the part of that world. She is spontaneous and she follows her instincts. When she spots the pool she does not hesitate and decides to swim immediately. Murdoch herself loved swimming and the immersion into the water. This is probably the reason why swimming is a recurring motif which she employed thorough her novels. As Peter Conradi points out, “There are few novels in which no one swims, and drowning is the commonest death ...” (109). It is again a symbol which stands for different ideas for different interpreters which is a natural property of a symbol in general. Julia Jordan who discusses the motif in The Sea, the Sea claims swimming being “an expression of Charles´ individuality, and of his individual exercise of power, which he 54
imposes on the sea”. She connects the motif with the sense of will and purpose which is imposed on chaotic waters of the sea (142). Peter Conradi analyses the issue in the novel The Bell and asserts that learning to swim represents growing up. He also suggests swimming standing for a “counter-image of a healing surrender to the mysterious ... properties of the world” (109). In The Sandcastle the motif of immersion into the water and the motif of swimming is, among many, a means to show the vast difference between the nature of Rain´s and Bill´s characters. Rain´s sudden idea to swim naked in the pool and her spontaneity contrasts sharply Bill´s continuous attempts to repress his instinctive nature. His life is based on the artificial need for respectability, rationality and good manners which do not allow him to act according to his nature. He is not able to suppress his persona of a strict and respected teacher and it is utmost difficult for him to let his feelings out. He is afraid of spontaneity, he is scared of the unknown and he fears the mystery which the world under the water represents. In that sense, he differs not only from Rain but also from Charles who loves swimming in the sea. He loves to immerse into the depths of water and he always describes the action in detail. According to Jung water is “the commonest symbol for the unconscious” (The Archetypes 18). It is the darkness of unconsciousness from which consciousness emerged (147) and by immersion into the water of life one comes to life and one is reborn (139). Udo Becker explains that above all, the water symbolizes the unconsciousness as it springs from the vast depths and he also stresses its ability to purify one´s body and soul (Becker 325). Hence from the perspective of depth psychology and in a metaphoric sense considering what the symbol of water means for Jung and other Jungian psychoanalysts it might be argued that Charles is much more open to dark, mysterious and unconscious side of his psyche whereas Bill is still frightened at the mere idea of immersion into the water. One might oppose that Charles appears to be in a very different position from that of Bill and this is the reason why Bill is not willing to swim in the pool and why he even warns Rain to be careful in it whereas Charles is alone at the coast and there is nobody to see him when he swims naked in the sea. However, when one switches the positions of Charles and Bill and imagines Charles being in the place of Bill and vice versa the behaviour and feelings of these men will not change. Bill will not spontaneously jump into the depths of the sea and Charles will probably use the opportunity to swim naked with a beautiful woman in the abandoned pool in the country side. It is because “individual images ... need a context” for an analysis of one´s psyche as Jung asserts in Aspects of the Feminine (172). However, even 55
when one knows about the context of one´s psyche one is not able to grasp the human soul completely which is the opinion which Jung shares with Murdoch and which is the core of her philosophy. And this might be the reason why it is so amusing and interesting to try to solve the mysteries of human souls. Edward F. Edinger asserts that the critical situations and accidents arise nearby the waterways often as the waterways symbolize the dangerous transitional stage (VD 82). Bill has definitely experienced a sort of critical situation and the accident also happened as the car got stuck in the river. At the beginning he literally entered “a white gate” with Rain and they found themselves in the mysterious realm of nature full of “brown light” where “the ferns and wild flowers” grow (The Sandcastle 88). The situation in the garden was only a precursor of what happened by the river and by the pool. Here Bill has definitely begun his journey in which he will have to confront his shadow and fight the anima archetype which is represented by Rain. Thus when he asks himself what world he had entered by the river (The Sandcastle 100) which is so confusing, fascinating and yet frightening for him, the answer might be that he has touched the world of feelings and the world of unconscious which has not had space in his life so far. Without being fully aware of it he has stepped into another realm of existence and another stage of his life. From now on he, just like Charles, will have to cope with mysterious forces which spring from the depths of his soul.
5.3. The Shadow Archetype and the Wise Old Man Archetype in The Sea, the Sea
The initial phase of the process of individuation involves the confrontation of man with his/her own shadow. This is the archetype which Jung claims to be easily comprehensible as there are other people who remind us of our shadow whereas concerning other archetypes there is “no moral education” (AF 199). The shadow is also the “figure [standing]... nearest ... [one´s] consciousness” (The Archetypes 271). Harold Schechter explains that the shadow archetype has been called many different names such as “the stranger, the other, the alien, the alter-ego, ...” but it has always carried the same psychological meaning. The shadow represents the dark side of our psyche which we are shameful of and which threatens us to such an extent that we are usually not able to admit its existence even to ourselves (31). Jung explains the issue from a logical point of view. He believes that for the achievement of the wholeness of personality one has to accept one´s
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negative sides as no one has only the positive qualities, for example the strong man must somehow be weak (AF 95-99). In that aspect Jung´s opinions differ from Murdoch´s philosophy. Both were interested in the concept of evil and in the way of fighting with evil. Murdoch claimed that, “Good novels concern the fight between good and evil, ...” (Metaphysics 97) and demonstrated her assertion in her novels successfully. She was assured that evil and good are distant entities and asserted them being “irreconcilable enemies, and condemned to everlasting war” with no possibility of pact between these two (Metaphysics 506). In an essay "Comic and Tragic" she opposed Jung´s theory of relativism of good and evil and explained that it “cannot be taken as a plausible account of morality” as it prevents “the struggle with an alien reality” (Metaphysics 135). It is obvious that Murdoch could not agree with Jung´s relativistic stance as for her, Good was the utmost important and transcendental value which cannot be identified with evil in any way. On the contrary, Jung was an advocate of “the freedom from opposites, ... [and] Eastern relativity of good and evil” which reconciles these two in the wholeness (The Archetypes 36). In this context, the shadow archetype symbolizing the dark and evil side of the soul represents only one part of man´s personality which should not be suppressed but rather accepted because there is no good without the evil. This is the reality and one should be in accord with reality. However, it does not mean that the negative side of one´s personality should be accepted in a passive way. It should rather be subjected to conscious criticism (The Archetypes 265). Nevertheless, for most people it is very difficult merely to acknowledge its existence and thus they will not make a critical survey of their behaviour and their psyche. Charles and Bill belong to those people who are blind to see their shadow. They are not able to realize that when there is a problem or a conflict in their life they are part of it, they are always at least partly responsible for it and they should think about the ways to solve it and try to look for not only other people´s mistakes but mainly their own. Charles is an exemplum of such a man who refuses to take any responsibility for his misfortunes and needs to be guided by another man to be able to accept his failures and acknowledge his mistakes finally. His “cynicism and materialism and dolce vita, ..., fear, misery, deprivation and loss of concepts” are only some of the factors which prevent him from authentic, spiritual and virtuous life (Murdoch listed those factors as an occlusion of “a positive conception of virtue” in an essay "Morality and Religion") (Metaphysics 481). He wants to have everything under control and thus it is difficult for him to accept the possibility of unconscious personality. He is one of the modern men who “in the realm of consciousness 57
... are ... [their] own masters.” However, when they “step through the door of the shadow ... [they] discover with terror that ... [they] are the objects of unseen factors” (The Archetypes 23). The safest and the most convenient way to deal with the situation then is to project one´s bad qualities into people around him/her to protect oneself and to “maintain the illusion of his[/her] moral perfection” which enables him/her to despise and condemn his/her shadow safely as Harold Schechter explains (32). Charles projects his failures and misfortunes into other people constantly. He despises other people and there is nobody around him whom he is content with. James, Charles´s cousin, is the very person whom Charles projects his misfortunes into the most. However, James is also the very person who has the greatest influence on Charles and who in fact persuades Charles to think about himself and to re- evaluate his own existence. Thus he becomes not only a target of Charles´s shadow but also the wise old man archetype who has a magic ability to guide people on their way and to transform them in a peaceful manner. James has a magic ability not only in a metaphoric sense but in real life, too. He is able to perform magic tricks, which has been discussed by critics widely as it is one of the elements which divert the novel from its realistic mode. The tricks are only alluded to and it is never literally stated that James really did it. However, it is the most probable explanation for the strange events which happen in the story and which Hilda Spears calls “mystic events” which “at times appear to be miracles” or at least have “miraculous connotations” (91). These events include the miraculous rescue of drowning Charles by James from the sea and the use of James´s will in order to impose death upon himself which complies with the Buddhist belief that death destructs ego and thus one refuses the power when willingly dying, according to Milada Franková (BS 156). James himself explains the issue to Charles in one of their conversations when trying to persuade Charles to leave the attachment to Hartley who refuses his offers to live together. He states that at the moment of death one leaves the “the Wheel, yes, of attachments, cravings, desires, what chains us to an unreal world” (The Sea 385) and finally, he decides to render his theory in practice. Thus in many aspect James can be regarded as a saint figure whereas Charles is an artist figure which Murdoch liked to contrast not only in her novels but also in her philosophical writings. Roula Ikonomakis points to the frequent occurrence of such antagonistic pairs in Murdoch´s work. However, she claims that Charles and James could also be perceived as “antithetical brothers” (125). In this respect, she approaches the viewpoint of Milada Franková who asserts that Charles´s and James´s “relationship does not derive from the artist-saint contrast but from a curious blend of 58
old childhood and family rivalries in a half-conscious inner world of a boy´s allegiances, jealousies and longings”. She also states that his feelings to James are formed on the basis of his “jealousy and despising in defence of his rather ordinary and dull parents” because James´s parents had always been much more interesting and successful than his parents (Human 37). It is no surprise that Charles´s bitterness which he feels towards James torments him in adulthood as they have not seen each other often since being children and Charles still carries the distorted picture of James which was formed long ago. He partly realizes it as he states at the beginning of the story that always when he meets James they “tread upon a ground which is deep and old” (The Sea 57) and stresses the common experience and memories which he shares with James and nobody else. He even acknowledges that he envied James in childhood and that rivalry brought about his will to power and will to be better than James was. However, he does not realize that the rivalry did not probably affect James and that it was only the chimera in Charles´s mind which he projected into their relationship as James´s family was more successful than that of Charles which was very difficult for Charles to cope with. However, despite all the contempt and jealousy that he feels for James he cannot deny that he likes him, too. He probably likes him much more than he admits to himself. It becomes evident when he encounters James for the first time in the story in a London gallery. James asks him to come to his London flat and Charles accepts the offer. During the conversation Charles mentions to the reader that when he was a child he “used to worry ... about whether I bored James!” (The Sea 174) which stands for evidence that he was actually interested in James and he wished James to accept him as a peer. In the present it is also clear that Charles approves of James as he trusts him with the affair of Hartley whom he met in the village and whom he has loved since his childhood. He tells James about his intimate feelings and he is willing to listen to James´s answer. However, at this stage he does not take James´s advice seriously yet and he secretly blames James for the unwillingness to discuss anything concerning marriage which has actually been Charles´s device so far. He, not James, has been threatened by a mere idea of marriage. But as time goes by and unexpected and extreme situations arise, which include the involuntary imprisonment of Hartley in Charles´s house Charles begins to reconsider James´s approach to the issue and begins to “agree to things which had by now begun to seem inevitable” (The Sea 337). The first of these things is the letter which he writes to Hartley´s husband Ben on James´s advice in which he tries to explain 59
why his wife is locked in his house. After writing the letter there is still a long way for him to go to realize the significance of all the conversations which he held with James and to apprehend James´s words. Sadly, it is not until James´s death when he understands the importance of this figure in his life, “Without James I was at last alone. How very much I had somehow relied upon his presence in the world, almost as if he had been my twin brother and not my cousin (The Sea 473). There is a question why James is the very figure which plays the crucial role in Charles´s life. The first answer is the simple fact that James is his only close relative who is alive and he is the only man who shares his experience from childhood. Murdoch was interested in the issue of siblings because she did not have any and it somehow fascinated her, “I am an only child, and this may affect my interest in brothers and sisters; and I notice that Sartre, ..., says the same thing. He says that he ... has also had this great fascination with twins – the lost, other person whom one is looking for” (qtd. in Griffin 33). It is clear that Murdoch attached great importance to the roles of brothers and sisters in one´s life and she attached such importance to the role of James in the story, too, as he was more like a twin to Charles which he realized after James´s death. The other thing which fascinates Charles about James concerns his own nature and character. James is a very charismatic person. It is evident from many allusions in the book. When describing their common childhood Charles mentions that James “had a sort of uncanny instincts about things and places” (The Sea 63). When Charles mentions James´s name to Hartley she remembers him although she had not seen him or heard about him for dozens of years which makes Charles jealous again and which points at James´s exceptionality. When James arrives at Shruff End Charles is cross and wants him to leave stating that, “His presence in the house would change everything, even the kettle” (The Sea 321) which is true as later on James seems “to be the centre of magnetic attraction to” other people in the house (The Sea 328). Hilda Spears stresses the significant role of James in all the crucial situations which happen at Shruff End. They include Hartley´s return to her husband, Charles´s near drowning in the sea and Titus´s drowning which he does not survive. James masterminded the plan to release Hartley, he saved Charles miraculously and he failed to save Titus from drowning. Moreover, “the whole atmosphere [at Shruff End] changes” after James´s arrival as Hartley decides to demand her release and everybody is attracted by James (98). These are only some of the characteristics which point to James´s “Christ-like qualities” as Spears calls it (96). James is not a Christ figure but he definitely has some of his 60
qualities being one of Murdoch´s “prototypes of the selfless man”, as Gabriele Griffin defines it, who resembles Murdoch´s mystical hero (111) with all his humility, discipline and belief in goodness. Roula Ikonomakis also points to James´s mystical qualities which allude to the figure of Christ or Gandhi and stresses that his “selflessness derives from his conversion to Buddhism” (49). She asserts that the conflict between Charles and James stems from their different stances “one opposing western capitalism to eastern esotericism, the material-earthly to the immaterial-spiritual” (60). Charles is highly materialistic, he cherishes the things and he does not accept others as separate beings whereas James is highly spiritual, he cherishes all the living beings, he does not judge people and he does not intrude into affairs of others if it is not necessary. In this respect, he resembles the wise old man which is one of the Jungian archetypes and which is generally known from fairy tales. According to Jung the wise old man represents “the spiritual factor” (The Archetypes 215) and “apart from his cleverness, wisdom, and insight, the old man ... is also notable for his moral qualities” his moral superiority and helpfulness calling for connection with God (225). He guides people on their way and the “resultant enlightenment ... often has something positively magical about it” (220). James possesses all these qualities listed by Jung which define the wise old man. As he is the closest relative whom Charles has always secretly admired, he has a magical power to transform the reality. He appears in the story at very crucial moments and he finally manages to enlighten Charles which means that he “slowly brings ... [him to] see the Good, that is,” the light in Murdoch philosophy (Ikonomakis 47). He becomes the carrier of meaning, the enlightener and the revealer which are all counterparts of the wise old man archetype (The Archetypes 37). Thus with the help of James, the revealer of truth, Charles decided to release himself from the earthly attachment to Hartley finally. Even though he had to accuse Hartley of being “poor hysterical shrew” in order to be able to get rid of his dependence on her (The Sea 499) it was a great success that he broke the relation to her. It was already a great achievement that he realized that he was pretending something. Moreover, the fact that the man whom Charles criticized and blamed the most - his shadow, became his teacher – his wise old man at the end of the story only proves how deep Charles´s transformation must have been.
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5.4. The Anima Archetype in The Sea, the Sea
To realize the negative aspects of one´s personality, to acknowledge their existence and to accept them is only one part of the way to individuation, the process of self-realization which according to Jung happens in the middle period of life (AF 51). At this stage one´s ego recedes and loses its power which is compensated not only by the emergence of one´s shadow but also by “the emergence of the anima archetype” as John Beebe explains (AM 26) which one has to integrate into one´s personality in order to achieve the wholeness. It is not easy to understand what the concept of the anima means because there is no moral education from other people as it is in the case of the shadow archetype and it is not possible to fully comprehend it without one´s own experience of it. However, there are certain traits of the anima archetype which might be described theoretically. The anima has its counterpart in the animus - the anima is the archetype which men experience whereas women experience the archetype of the animus for they are the contrasexual factors in one´s psyche as Harold Schechter explains on the basis of Jung´s definition of the archetype (87). I will deal with the anima archetype solely as the characters who undergo the individuation in the stories which I analyse in my thesis are both men. Jung defines the anima as “an inherited collective image of woman” (AF 89) as well as “the repression of feminine traits” which accumulate in the unconsciousness of a man who chooses the woman on the basis of repressed and unconscious femininity which he projects into his chosen partner of opposite sex (87). Hence the archetype seems to possess both the collective and personal significance. On the personal level, just like the shadow archetype, the anima archetype has to be “withdrawn from projection” and only then can its contents be integrated into one´s personality (202) which is the utmost difficult task for an individual because he himself needs to realize its existence or at least the existence of its contents. Both Bill and Charles meet their anima in the form of women who unexpectedly emerge in their lives and whom they fall in love with when projecting their own psyche and feelings into their figures. With the help of James, Charles manages to realize the projections on Hartley. Bill is less successful than Charles and even though the relationship with Rain breaks he seems to remain stuck in his fantasies at the end of the novel. Edward F.Edinger states that when one meets the anima archetype it throws him into life but it also causes “difficult, complicated and ambiguous situations” in his life which he 62
has to deal with (VD 111, my translation). Charles´s and Bill´s encounter with Hartley and Rain definitely thrusts them into a new phase of life and they both have to cope with very difficult situations which distort their routine lives. After meeting Hartley for the first time after dozens of years Charles feels “an instant sense of a changed world” (The Sea 112). He constantly repeats that now he is able to be good which indicates that he is actually aware of his manners to people around him although he does not admit it to the reader and even to himself. Although he does not become good over night as he thinks his world has really changed because by meeting Hartley he starts the path which leads to his new and more authentic self. Let us see what Hartley actually means for Charles. When he introduces her to the reader, he calls her his “great light”, his “end and ... beginning, ... alpha and omega” (78), “the only true light, ... that reveals the truth” (79). Here Murdoch alludes to her philosophy based on Plato in which the Good is the source of light which reveals the truth (SG 70). Charles considers Hartley to be his light, the only truth in his life and his Good. However, he does not realize that it is only one of the false suns in which he gazes as “human love is normally too profoundly possessive and also too ʻmechanicalʼ to be a place of vision” (75). However important Hartley is for Charles the reader gradually discovers that he is not by far so important for Hartley. Thus the question arises – who is Hartley in reality? As we have only the information provided by Charles it is rather difficult to form an authentic picture of Hartley. However, from the allusions and events both from Charles´s childhood and from Shruff End it is evident that she is not the one whom Charles considers or rather wants her to be. Charles claims that when young they “were each other” (The Sea 78) and depicts their relationship as something beautiful, passionate as well as innocent, ideal, and almost transcendental. However, when being still young Hartley decided to leave him because she did not think that he would be faithful to her in the future (82). This is the first indication that they did not share the same feelings in their relationship. Hartley did not believe him and thus she did not consider their relationship worth continuing. After the break up Charles was puzzled and his life was wrecked. He even admitted that in a way he would be happy if she was dead (86). Unfortunately, it did not come to his mind to survey his manners and to try to find what he did wrong that Hartley decided to leave him. The only way he coped with the situation was the projection of his failures into Hartley. From now on he has blamed her for his frivolous life claiming that she “destroyed ... [his] innocence, she and the demon of jealousy” made him faithless (84) and threw away his happiness (85). However, in reality, he had not been happy long before he met Hartley. He, his mother and his father “were poorish 63
and lonely and awkward together” (24), he suffered from envy of his cousin James and it was the theatre which became his home, not his family (30). He has loved and hated the theatre at the same time as in the theatre “one soon learns the narrow limitations of the human soul” considering the “unemployment, poverty, disappointment, ...” (34) and he started to have short and shallow affairs with women for which he accused Hartley´s decision to leave him. Although Hartley vanished from his life the picture of her has not disappeared from his mind and haunted him all his life. Thus Hartley has become “a figure that has detached itself from the object and become the personification of a purely psychological factor, or rather, of those unconscious contents whose personification” is called the anima as Jung explains (AF 4). She has become an object of Charles´s projections which was the way in which the unconscious contents have come to his consciouness indirectly and the way in which he has dealt with his problems and shortcomings. He has “lost the vision of a reality separate from ... [himself]” (SG 47) and built up “convincingly coherent but false pictures of the world” (37) as Murdoch defines it based on constant projecting of his failures upon people around him. Hartley comes into his distorted picture of the world for the second time after dozens of years since they saw each other last. She happens to live in the village nearby Shruff End and thus it is only the question of time when Charles meets her. After spotting her for the first time he says that, “it was the end of the world” (The Sea 111) which signifies how tremendous the shock must have been for him. And it is really the end of his old world and the beginning of the way to his new self as at that moment his “inner world, the world of fantasies and inner projections, remains [still] unweeded and undisciplined” (Conradi 245) but from now on he will overcome many difficult obstacles in order to realize his projections and find his real self. When seeing Hartley, Charles also states that it did not occur to him “to call out her name, that would have been impossible” (111). One of Murdoch´s literary devices is the employment of carefully chosen names for her characters as well as of places which usually carry a symbolical meaning. Roula Ikonomakis analyses the issue of naming in The Sea, the Sea in several passages of her study. She asserts that the name of Shruff End might signify either the badness of the main character as “shruff” allegedly means “black” or it might “symbolically imply that Charles is standing on the brink of his life or on the verge of some turning point” for “shruff” might be connected with the German “schroff” which means “steep”. Both explanations fit into the character of the story (42-43). Considering the proper names Ikonomakis suggests the names of Charles and James standing for the allusion to two kings who both possess a certain amount of power. On the 64
other hand, Hartley is “split into a fictive and a real character, both indentified by two names” (101), Hartley and Mary which is actually her full name – Mary Hartley Smith. However, she is called Hartley by Charles and Mary by her husband as well by her adoptive son Titus. It is very unusual if one is called both by the first name and by the middle name by different people. We do not know if it was only Charles who called Hartley by her middle name when they were children. However, we do know that she is no longer called Hartley as her husband and her son use her first name. Thus Murdoch employs a name-game in which it is not so important what the actual name signifies but which of the two names the characters choose to call the woman. Hartley has decided to be called by a different name from the one from her childhood or at least from the one by which Charles called her. In an essay "Concerning Rebirth" Jung explains that one of the ways of transformation in magical procedures and rites is new naming of a man who is “given another name and thereby another soul, and then the demons no longer recognize him” (The Archetypes 129). Harold Schechter also points to the rituals of primitive tribes in which a man receives a new name which symbolizes the rebirth (26). Although Hartley hardly underwent a ritual of initiation she, in a way, has acquired a new name which might represent a new phase of her life and rebirth in a metaphoric sense. It is highly probable that she wanted to drive out the demons of the figure of Charles and become a new Hartley and a choice of a different name was one of the ways to accomplish it. Because, “A name is a road” as Charles states (The Sea 471). Thus Hartley the girl, whom Charles knew when being young, no longer exists. However, he is not able to admit the reality and keeps calling her Hartley because, “To name the world is to try to compel it” as Conradi explains (237) and Charles wants to compel Hartley to leave her husband and stay with him. Moreover, the use of a particular name is another indicator of Charles´s inability to distinguish between past and present. For him, Hartley is the very young girl whom he knew in childhood and he desperately longs for her to stay the same girl. Thus the name has a great significance for Charles and always when he pronounces it he tries to “command its field of meaning” as Warner defines it when dealing with the issue of pronouncing a name (11). He wants Mary to stay his old Hartley. Roula Ikonomakis describes Charles as a hermit in a cave living in solitude and constantly searching for illusion (198). He is not able to understand that there is an outside world which differs from his fantasies. Jung explains that it is the elementary fact that “a person always thinks another´s psychology is identical with his own” (AF 66) which Charles 65
is the perfect example of. However, according to Murdoch man, however selfish s/he is, should learn to take other people as separate being and not to impose his/her approach to life upon them. And this is what Charles fails to do. He is not able to see that Hartley is not the young girl who might have loved him in her childhood and that she does not share his feelings and wishes. She is a woman married to a jealous husband and a mother of an adoptive grown up son named Titus who is lost at the moment of Charles´s first meeting with Hartley. She seems to be a mentally unstable and hysterical person who is subdued to the power of a man with whom she lives, the “female victim of a male-dominated society” (Ikonomakis 115). Hilda Spears explains that Murdoch did not have any feminist aspirations during her career. However, in her novels she portrayed the patriarchal society in which the “unfairness of a world” to women is clearly expressed (2-3). Gabriele Griffin shares Spear´s perception of the issue and asserts that “on the whole Murdoch´s characters tend to be cast in the conventional moulds of femininity familiar in this culture as helpless, dependent, sexy mistress, boring, podgy housewife, mother figure, or virginal, unattached female” (7). Thus Hartley is one of the whole number of Murdoch´s female characters who experience the power of men´s influence on them. She is controlled by her husband and by the love for her son Titus and when Charles appears in her life she becomes controlled by him, too. At the moment when she encounters Charles she is desperate as she misses her son enormously. When Titus appears at Shruff End to find out if Charles is not his real father for many things indicate it, she finally agrees to come to Shruff End, too. From now on, Charles starts to realise his mad plan to make him, Hartley and Titus a happy family by means of controlling Hartley´s life. He literally imprisons her in the upper room of his house persuading her and all other people who come to the house that it is the best option for her. He does not realize that it is the best option only for him. Hence Hartley becomes one of Murdoch´s characters whom Griffin describes as “externalizations of male needs” (8), more specifically Charles´s need not only for ownership and power but also for true love and friendship. Unfortunately, she is passive and unable to resist Charles´s obsession as she keeps “her ego and her will in the background” and thus she allows Charles to project his feelings into her person and to “realize his ends” as Jung defines it (AF 66-67). Hence The Sea, the Sea becomes one of the novels which “explore ... the subtler effects of men building fantasies around women who are turned into objects for man´s ... projections” (Cohan and Goshgarian qtd. in Griffin 8).
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Charles keeps Hartley in his house although people around him try to persuade him about his mistake. He does not listen to them and indulges himself in a lie that he must rescue Hartley from her horrible husband. He pretends to be a hero saving a princess from a dragon. Charles´s story actually resembles the conventional story of a fairytale which Jung describes in one of his essays to demonstrate the issue of the anima archetype. In such a fairytale the hero has to climb up to his princess in order to find out that “his high and mighty anima, the Princess Soul, is bewitched up there and no freer than a bird in a golden cage”. However, when he reaches her she “tries to stop ... [him] from discovering the secret of her imprisonment...” because she “wants and does not want to be rescued” (The Archetypes 239- 240). Finally, the princess descents to earth and becomes approachable. Hartley lives upon the hill (The Sea 122) and Charles calls her his “sleeping princess” (277) who needs to be rescued. There is a mystery which surrounds Hartley, her marriage to her husband Ben and their relationship to their adoptive son Titus as Ben is alleged to be a jealous tyrant and Titus had fled from their house. Finally, Hartley also wants and does not want to be rescued. She admits that she loves Charles (The Sea 279) which seems to be articulated under Charles´s pressure, she is not able to leave Charles´s house but she also claims that she cannot leave her husband and finally comes back to him. Thus in many aspects, the story resembles a traditional fairy tale in which the hero saves the princess. And even though in The Sea, the Sea Hartley does not leave the evil spirit which is personified by Ben and she does not live with Charles happily ever after she unknowingly helps Charles to approach his unconsciousness and to realize who he actually is. Throughout the story Hartley is the “source of energy” for Charles (SG 55) which according to Roula Ikonomakis confers “a sense of wholeness” (184). Charles desperately longs for her to love him and to live with him. He becomes obsessed with the idea of him, Hartley and Titus being a family. He wants Hartley to fill the empty space in his life and to make him whole. However, he does not realize until the end of the story that it is only him who can become whole and that in order to attain wholeness he must integrate the unconscious elements into his consciousness by assimilating the ego and the archetypes. At the end of the story he manages to acknowledge that many of his ideas were just “consolation fantasies” (The Sea 490), “blasphemies” (491), his great ʻilluminationʼ “a kind of nonsense” (492) and he realizes his projections upon other people. Thus because “hazard puts Hartley and James on Charles´s way ... [he] finally becomes aware of his delusions and can start living a more essential life” (Ikonomakis 180). 67
5.5. The Anima Archetype in The Sandcastle
Bill also meets his anima in the form of a woman whom he falls in love with and upon whom he projects his desires and longings which he is not able to fulfil himself. Jung asserts that, “Archetypes are complexes of experience that come upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. The anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be, as an intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that the gods have claimed another victim” (The Archetypes 30). This scenario resembles Bill´s story in many ways. Bill is much older than Rain. She looks like “a very short youthful girl, with boyish cut dark hair, and darkly rosy cheeks...” and Bill thinks “how very small she is, and how like a child” (The Sandcastle 27). On the other hand, Rain sees “a tall middle-aged schoolmaster, with a twisted face and the grey coming in his hair” (27). Considering the age Rain could actually be Bill´s child. Bill is a highly esteemed schoolmaster and although Rain is not a red-headed actress, compared to Bill she is, as an artist, very eccentric. Why is she so attractive for Bill then? Harold Schechter explains that “the strong, though often dimly defined, urge for change and renewal which so many men experience during their middle years is frequently embodied in a bewitching young woman, who rouses them from the deadening routines of their lives. In psychological terms, ..., [it] is the phenomenon known as “anima-projection” (92). Bill lives a life which is based on a recurring pattern, on quarrels with his wife and on non-communication with his children. Each of his days is filled up with daily routines and duties from the morning to the very evening and there is no space for spirituality in his life. He is resigned and he does not expect anything unusual to happen to him. Thus it is really like fate which came upon him when Rain appears in his life. She fascinates him from the very beginning and he feels that he likes her from the first moment of their encounter. However, he is not able to admit it as he has not possessed such feelings for dozens of years. Thus he experiences a “curious feeling of shock which ... he found hard to interpret” (The Sandcastle 37). After the first meeting of Bill with Rain the narrative follows a conventional story of a love affair of a middle-aged man and a young woman which in its consequences almost ruins the man´s marriage. At first, Bill tries to resist his feelings and pretends that nothing has happened. He is still afraid of Nan and the possibility of a love affair with another woman is
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unimaginable for him. During the event in the countryside in which Rain swims in a pool Bill thinks, “if he should tell Nan about Miss Carter´s bathing. Probably he ought to have told miss Carter not to bathe. Yet somehow that would have been cruel. He had better tell everything ...” (The Sandcastle 93). At this stage he knows deep inside that something tremendous has happened but he is not able to name it or even accept it yet. He only feels “a black veil of sadness falling between him and the warm late afternoon” (93) when he realizes that he might not see Miss Carter again. After the episode he decides to write a letter to Rain to apologize for his behaviour as well as to ask her not to tell anyone about the affair in the countryside. However, he spends two hours rewriting the letter (113) which signifies how much he wishes to make a good impression on Rain. But the next day he wakes up and feels “regret and distress at finding that not only had he decided to deceive Nan but he had even made complicated arrangements to do so” (113) which again points to his ambivalent feelings for he thinks about Rain constantly but he is not able to imagine betraying his wife. Thus after meeting Rain he finds himself in the realm of chaos because the anima archetype causes chaos for it emerges in one´s life unexpectedly as Jung explains. However, it “is just the most unexpected, the most terrifying chaotic things which reveal a deeper meaning” (The Archetypes 31). As the time passes Bill starts to feel that he loves Rain and he decides to leave his family and live with Rain. Coincidentally, Nan finds out about their affair and she makes her own plan to destroy the relationship. Before Bill accomplishes his plan to move away with Rain she announces at dinner which both Rain and Bill join that Bill is going to stand for a Member of Parliament and implies that she is going to support him (The Sandcastle 298). Rain is shocked as she did not know about his political ambitions and acknowledges that his place is with his family whereas she should leave and not interfere into their lives. Bill tries to persuade her about the opposite but deep inside he does not want to leave his wife and children as, “A lifetime of conformity was too much for him” (299). It is a question if it is real love that Bill feels towards Rain. It is evident that Rain fascinates him. She embodies everything which he misses in his boring and routine life. She knows what she wants and she tries hard to accomplish it. At the time when she meets Bill it is the picture of Demoyte which she wants to paint and make it as much real as she can. When she is painting she is “completely absorbed in what she ... [is] doing” (103). She loves painting and she is even able to forget about Bill when working. Jung asserts that, “those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, 69
because this does not really agree with their nature” (AF 68). I intentionally recall one of Jung´s statements which might sound controversial or even ridiculous nowadays but which were accepted in the time of Jung´s life and work. The Sandcastle was first published in 1957, four years before Jung´s death. Although many women worked at that time the society still believed that women should fit the traditional role of a housewife whose only pleasure is to look after their family and take care of the house. The Sandcastle definitely shows such a notion of the role of a woman. Bill is the one who works and earns money for the family. The only thing in which Nan fulfils herself is the attendance of Women´s Institute in which the women are dealing with a problem, “how to get the women to come along other than by dances and film shows” (The Sandcastle 110). The society is male-dominated, men are those who work in high positions and aspire to a political career which is proved by Nan´s speech which she gives at one of the public dinners, “The windows of St Bride´s have never, as we know, been closed upon the world of commerce and of politics. Enriched by contacts with the School, many have gone out, boys and masters alike, into the world beyond the classroom and the library” (297). In such a society in which the men are those who make successful careers there appears an eccentric woman who is good at what she does, who knows what she wants and who is able to discuss themes which are usually attributed to men. It is no wonder that she attracts men and Bill becomes one of them. She is the anima-type full of promises which provide men with the illusion of a possibility of new life which might have “destructive consequences” as Jung defines it in one of his essays (AF 57-59). Verena Kastova explains that the archetype is manifested in strong emotions, in utopian ideas and fantasies which possess man and in the feeling that something like fate has come into his/her way and in the fact that it comes to life through the relationship to other people (100 - 105). Bill falls in love with Rain violently and all of a sudden he wants “to be the new person that she made of him, the free and creative and joyful and loving person that she had conjured up, striking this miraculous thing out of his dullness” (The Sandcastle 240). He does not realize that these are only illusions and fantasies which comfort him in his dull life. Rain cannot make him a new person as it is only him and nobody else who can change his way of life. Gabriele Griffin points out that, “Murdoch´s novels frequently portray obsessional relationships in which one person´s love for another is simply expressive of a specific need rather than a sense of the reality of the other”, and gives an example of Bill´s and Rain´s affair (101). Bill might love Rain but he loves her not because of her individuality 70
but because of his desire to change himself and his life. Thus he only projects his unconscious personality upon Rain who becomes his “guiding star” (AF 147) not to a new life with a new woman in a new place as he thinks but to his unconsciousness which might reveal to him many truths about himself if he is able to perceive them. During the story Bill does not recognize that he is only projecting his desires and his needs upon Rain. It is Rain who acknowledges the impossibility of their relationship to continue and leaves the school. But it is highly probable that Bill will understand the real values in his life after Rain has left which is alluded to at the end of the book when he actually starts to communicate with his daughter and listen to her and his son´s wishes. We do not know if he recognizes the unreality and inauthenticity of his feelings to Rain and if he acknowledges that in order to attain the wholeness it is necessary for him to apprehend the unconsciousness which cannot be projected on other people but rather assimilated into consciousness. But we know that he is on the right way as he has already met his anima and overcome many obstacles which lead him to a new Self.
Conclusion
The aim of my thesis was to show that the archetypes and symbols which are some of the manifestations of archetypes appear in the fictional work of Iris Murdoch. I have chosen two Murdoch´s novels, The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea to demonstrate the assertion. First, I have dealt with the issue of myths which provide a rich source of manifestations of symbols and archetypes and showed that Murdoch employed myth both in a traditional and positive sense of the word using the fragments of classical myths in her novels and in its negative connotation pointing to the illusion and fantasy in which people live in. In the following chapters based on the reading of Carl Gustav Jung, several Jungian psychoanalysts and their approach to the issue of archetypes I have found out that both novels, The Sandcastle and The Sea, the Sea contain symbolical and archetypal images. Iris Murdoch was very sceptical about Jung´s theories. She did not approve of a deep analysis of one´s psyche as it might lead to a preoccupation with oneself which did not correspond to her philosophy of attention to others. In her novels she portrayed the characters who concentrated mainly on themselves and she tried to show that it is not the right way to go. She claimed that people should aspire to goodness by detachment from the self and by 71
genuine attention to people around them and to things which are valuable. However, her novels show that to be able to apprehend others and appreciate important things in one´s life one has to undergo a difficult spiritual journey in which s/he is entirely absorbed in himself/herself. This journey is called individuation in analytical psychology. I have illustrated that Murdoch´s characters experience the process of individuation in which they more or less assimilate the personal and collective images of unconsciousness, the archetypes, into their consciousness and thus they develop more mature, more authentic and more integrated personality. Only after they understand their negative side of personality and the projections which they impose upon other people they can look at them and actually see them as they are, not as they want them to be. First I have analysed the process of individuation in which the hero is subjected to number of obstacles which s/he needs to overcome in order to attain the wholeness of personality by assimilating the unconscious part of personality into the consciousness. I laid special emphasis on the moment of a possible beginning of characters´ journey into unconscious and its symbolical manifestations. In Charles´s case it seems to be the encounter with the sea monster which triggers his spiritual path as the vision of such an animal symbolizes the initial state of unconsciousness in Jungian psychology and the sea monster is also the most powerful symbol which appears throughout the whole story. In The Sandcastle the initiation is connected with the nature and its mystery, more specifically with the night garden and the wild countryside which Bill enters with Rain and which takes him into the realm of irrational and unconscious. Afterwards I have described the anima archetype which appears in both novels very distinctly. Both Charles and Bill meet the archetype of the anima in the form of a beloved woman whom they project their unconscious side of personality upon. It is the crucial archetype on their spiritual journey for by recognizing it they would be able to withdraw their projections and begin to live a more genuine and real life. However, only Charles succeeds in understanding his projections whereas in Bill´s story it is only hinted at his possible acknowledgment of his mistakes. One of the reasons might be that on his spiritual journey, Charles meets also the wise old man archetype who is represented by his cousin James and who helps him to overcome not only the anima archetype in him but also the shadow archetype which he paradoxically projects upon James. Thus James represents a highly significant figure in Charles´s life as he is one of the main persons whom he projects the unconscious upon but who is also a psychopomp who accompanies and guides him in his 72
spiritual journey. In Bill´s surrounding there is not such a person whom he would listen to and whom he would follow and thus it is highly difficult for him to recognize his unconscious projections. Iris Murdoch would probably oppose the idea of the presence of archetypes and their symbolical manifestations in her work as she claimed the philosophy of contingency and chance whereas archetypes fall into the patterns which she denied using. However, many critics pointed to the presence of recurring types of characters and plots in her novels which create a rich pattering throughout her whole literary production. Some of these patterns relate to the manifestation of archetypes which Murdoch employed unconsciously and which show how deep and complicated the human psyche is. Although Murdoch tried to resist the usage of patterns, the forces which work beyond our consciousness made her describe people and situations similar to each other because there is a layer of the human psyche which is deep and old and which is shared by people all over the world. It is called collective unconsciousness that is manifested in archetypes which I have demonstrated to be present in both analysed novels of Iris Murdoch.
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List of Abbreviations
AF Aspects of the Feminine AM Aspects of the Masculine
AS Alchemical Studies
Birth of the Symbol Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts
BS Britské spisovatelky na konci tisíciletí
EM Existentialists and Mystics
Human Human Relationships in the Novels of Iris Murdoch
Já a archetyp Já a archetyp: Individuace a náboženská funkce psýché
Metaphysics Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
SG The Sovereignty of Good
The Archetypes The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
The Sea The Sea, the Sea
VD Věčná dramata
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Résumé
The thesis deals with the issue of symbols and archetypes as they are present in two novels of Iris Murdoch, particularly in The Sandcastle and in The Sea, the Sea. Is it divided into an introduction which is followed by five chapters and a conclusion. In the introduction I discuss Murdoch´s own and unique philosophy which is based on the concept of attention to others. In the following chapters I try to show that to be able to apprehend others one has to analyse his/her own psyche first. Only after a deep scrutiny of and reconciliation with the negative side of one´s own soul one can concentrate on other people and perceive them as separate beings. The encounter with archetypes is one of the ways of immersion into one´s own psyche. The substantial part of my thesis is based on the discussion of the issue of stories and myths as they represent a rich source of rendering the archetypes and their symbolical manifestations. I also deal with the myth in its negative sense of the word, more specifically with myths as illusions in which people live because Murdoch was concerned about the issue particularly in this sense. The main body of my thesis is based on the approach of a Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung and other Jungian psychoanalysts towards the issue of the archetypes. I analyse the main characters of two Murdoch´s novels, Bill from The Sandcastle and Charles from The Sea, the Sea and the archetypes which they meet on their way to new self which only Charles seems to achieve. I discuss the symbol of a spiritual journey which is closely related to the process of individuation in Jung´s teaching, the shadow archetype, the wise old man archetype and the anima archetype. Based on reading of Carl Gustav Jung, of other psychoanalysts as well as of critics of Murdoch´s work I show that the archetypes and their symbolical manifestations are present in the work of Iris Murdoch.
Resume
Tato diplomová práce se zabývá tématem symbolů a archetypů tak, jak jsou vyobrazeny v románech Iris Murdochové, konkrétně v románu Hrad z písku (The Sandcastle) a Moře, moře (The Sea, the Sea). Práce je rozdělena na úvod, po kterém následuje pět kapitol a závěr. V úvodu nastiňuji filosofii Iris Murdochové, jejímž centrálním pojmem je pozornost
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k druhým (attention to others). V následujících kapitolách se snažím ukázat, že k tomu, aby byl člověk schopný vnímat lidi okolo sebe, musí se nejdříve zaměřit na analýzu vlastní psychiky. Možnost úplného soustředění na druhé a schopnost vnímat tyto lidi jako samostatné bytosti přichází až po hlubokém přezkoumání vlastní duše a smíření se s její negativní stránkou. Podstatná část mé práce je založena na rozboru tématu příběhů a mýtů, protože právě příběhy a mýty představují bohatý zdroj vyobrazení archetypů a jejich symbolických manifestací. Zabývám se také mýtem v jeho negativním slova smyslu, konkrétně mýtem jako iluzí, ve které lidé žijí, protože Iris Murdochová zdůrazňovala ve své práci právě tento aspekt slova mýtus. Hlavní část mé práce je založena na pojetí archetypů švýcarským psychoanalytikem Carlem Gustavem Jungem a dalšími jungiánskými psychoanalytiky. Analyzuji hlavní postavy dvou románů Iris Murdochové, Billa z románu Hrad z písku a Charlese z románu Moře, moře a archetypy, se kterými se hlavní hrdinové setkají na jejich cestě k novému já, kterého dosáhne během příběhu pouze Charles. Rozebírám symbol cesty, který je úzce spojený s pojmem individuace v Jungově učení, archetyp stínu, archetyp moudrého starce a archetyp animy. Na základě díla Carla Gustava Junga, dalších psychoanalytiků a v neposlední řadě kritiků díla Iris Murdochové ukazuji, že archetypy a jejich symbolická vyobrazení jsou součástí díla Iris Murdochové.
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