IRIS MURDOCH
Beckett`s
fiction and Sartre`s philosophy find a positive reception with post-war writers
like Iris Murdoch. Born in
Her philosophical formation reflects in her work, which attempts to merge philosophy, and art, therefore intellectual interest derived from a well-told story, leads to a serious and difficult novelist. She also published philosophical essays collected in 1971 in the Sovereignty of God and articles on the techniques of fiction, like Against Dryness(1961).
Her literary articles written during 1950`s and 1960`s remain unpublished. They show a certain similarity with George Eliot and Henry James.
The Black Prince ( 1973 ) is considered Murdoch`s most experimental novel. Bradley Pearson who is the main character states that " art is the telling of truth , and it is the only available method for telling certain truths. Yet how almost impossibly difficult it is not to let the marvels of the instrument itself interfere with the task to which it is dedicated ". In this fragment Murdoch refers to the impersonal aspect of the process of creation and its telling of the " only truth that matters "; art becomes instrument and aim.
Because
of Murdoch`s technique which supposes a lot of detailes and characters her
novels are long and sometimes " insufficiently nuanced ". It seems that her
best work is her earliest, shorter novels whose relation with philosophy is
more evident. Cantu considers Murdoch`s first novel Under the Net as " a gay, fast moving, sometimes humorous,
sometimes touching, episodic story of surprise, fantasy and adventure, with
vignettes of very funny narrative and brilliant description of
Wrongly identified as an " angry " novel when it first appeared, Under the Net deals with a few weeks in the life of its main character and narrator Jake Donaghue, a bachelor living a bohemian life in his search for somewhere to live. In spite of the disorderly succession of complicated episodes and strange coincidences, the novel`s unity and cohesion find their support in Jake, an innovation of Iris Murdoch`s. Jake Donaghue is at the same time narrator, central actor and theme of the book.
The novel is related in the first person which means that all the events are presented through Jake`s eyes, therefore there is only one point of view, and a limited vision imposed by Jake`s character. But it is important to notice that Jake is the narrator without being the author and the novel is not an autobiographical one, Jake is also a fictional creation being a male " I ".
" I had begun to feel that this way my home. Sometimes Magdalen ( Madge ) had boy friends. I didn`t mind and I didn`t enquire. I preferred it when she had, as then I had more time for work, or rather for the short of dreamy unlucrative reflection which is what I enjoy more than anything in the world. We had lived there as snug as a pair of walnuts in their shells. We had also lived there practically rent-free, which was another point. There`s nothing that irritates me so much as paying rent."-Yolande Cantu.
This fragment is an example of characterful narrative. It refers to the moment when Jake and Finn had to leave Madge`s flat, a difficult moment for Jake who started to look for another flat. The tone is relatively neutral, Jake remembers the good aspects: freedom and no rent. He expresses the regret of leaving the flat in an easy colloquial one which characterises Jake as "a dry, amused, lazy self-tolerant " person. The sentences are very short which annihilates the idea of melancholy and can suggest an inner anger. The word "irritates" brings to the surface his mood and shows that he does not have too much money. From this point of view it is a circular novel since at the end Jake is "materially back where he started" but "a philosophically wiser man".- Yolande Cantu.
One of Jake`s important statements is "I hate contingency, I want everything in my life to have sufficient reason". With Murdoch "contigency" means the accidental, the particular, and the individual. This is a key statement for an artist`s life since "contingency / the accidental is the most important event that generally gives him an opportunity to create or to change something in his life. Most artists try to find a method to provoke these moments. Jake is looking for order and form and as a result he tries to adjust, to arrange, to give pattern to his life action that estranges him from reality; he even creates artificial universes that become again "a mess".
Under the Net allows a reference to the article Against Dryness: "Reality is not a given whole". The fact that the contingent changes personalities and relationships astonishes Jake, he is puzzled when he realises that he himself refuses Madge`s offer.
Another shock for Jake is when Finn goes back to Irland; Jake could never imagine universe without Finn, and he never realises that Finn could have his own universe: "I count Finn as an inhabitant of my universe, and cannot conceive that he has one containing me". Jake realises that he does not know anything about his friends, that he lives enclosed in his fantasy and all the surprises are results of his blindness. Jake Donaghue is a kind of "anti-hero" similar to the characters created by the "angry young men" of the 1959`s.
The title of the novel can be connected with the patterns created by Jake that reduce the perception of reality; "Jake Donaghue, the male narrator of Under the Net, both resists and creates theoretical patterns with words which, like nets, entrap and constrain perceptions of a larger and expanding reality.
Against Dryness - an article in which she presents her philosophical and literary point of view - invites the reader deeper reading of her work revealing the "marriage" of emotion and events. It expresses an attitude against "a scientific and anti-metaphysical age" that is neglectful of human personality.
Against Dryness tries to stop a dangerous evolution of the modern writing which makes for "dry", "crystalline" or "journalistic" works, simplified and unreal versions of life.
The Bell is a novel that suggests the necessity of a change, as the relationship between the characters must be reordered. Is at the same time comic and romantic and deals with an Anglican lay community set near to a convent of enclosed nuns. The novel populated with frivolous wife, homosexuals, Catherine who is on the point of becoming a nun but attempts suicide, explores "the emotional, sexual, and moral tensions, which force community itself to break up and re-form". The convent bell, which bears a strange inscription "Vox ego sum Amoris", gives the title of the novel - " I am the voice of Love". According to Sanders it is "at once aesthetic focus and a disturbing catalyst, an ideal and a breaker of ideals".
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