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Symbols and Archetypes in the Work of Iris Murdoch

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Symbols and Archetypes in the Work of Iris Murdoch 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 2 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. 3 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 5 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. 7 1. Iris Murdoch and the Idea of Good 1.1.Iris Murdoch Iris Murdoch was one of the most prolific an . She wrote twenty
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