Dave's Book Blog: "The Bell" by Iris Murdoch

I read this book many years ago and I had remembered very little.

It is set in a sort of commune of Christians who live in a posh country house in the middle of the countryside (Swindon seems to be the nearest town) and support themselves by running a market garden and are 'attached' to a local convent which contains an enclosed and unviewable order of nuns. They are gearing up for the presentation of a new bell to the convent to replace the one that was lost in the middle ages. The discovery of the old bell, whose tolling is said to portend a death, is the turning point in the centre of the novel.

The story is told (in third person, past tense) from the points of view of Dora (described as a "child-wife"; Ch1: echoes of Dora in David Copperfield?), a flighty young woman who is returning to her husband after leaving him, Toby, a sexually innocent eighteen-year-old who is spending his summer holidays helping out at the community prior to going up to university, and Michael, the leader of the community, a closet homosexual. Other major characters include Paul, Dora's bullying and controlling husband, James, the strait-laced number two in the community, gossipy Mrs Mark, and alcoholic Nick, a figure from Michael's past. Nick's twin sister Catherine plays an important part at the end of the plot which I didn't think was fully justified given her shadowy presence earlier. The mostly off-stage Abbess is a sort of cross between a wise-woman and a witch (specifically from Macbeth, at one stage she quotes the line about "when the hurly-burly's done").

The theme of the novel is the disruption that life, specifically sexual urges, can bring to the religious life; it it the age-old battle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Dora who flip-flops between her husband and a slightly camp but heterosexual journalist is the frame story but the meat of the argument concerns the ins-and-outs of homosexuality.

It was published in 1958 (a year after the Wolfenden report recommended decriminalising homosexuality) and seems extraordinarily dated. There is the use of the phrase "working like a black" (Ch 11). The word 'gay' means happy and care-free. Dora never seriously considers divorce, despite the obvious cruelty of her husband. The music is either jazz or classical. The innocence of eighteen year old Toby is stunning: there may still be eighteen year old male virgins but I can't imagine that anyone nowadays will be so naive about their sexuality. Toby also regrets having been a day pupil at school; it's seen as unusual. The campness of the journalist is because of the way he talks which was probably merely seen as sophisticated in those times; he also knows the Bishop from the Athenaeum.

This datedness shows most in the arguments over homosexuality. Michael was seduced aged fourteen at school and had two "intense" affairs there; subsequently, as a teacher, he is dismissed for his homosexual flirtation with a pupil and the dismissal is covered-up so he can go on to teach elsewhere. Nowadays we wouldn't bat an eye at the homosexuality but there would be shock and horror at what would be regarded as paedophilic child sex abuse. But Murdoch is obviously sincere in trying to 'normalise' homosexual affection despite the condemnation of 'sodomy' by the strait-laced James. But it is clear that homosexuality is regarded as a major perversion, both by Michael, who sees it as a vice or weakness he must suppress, a sin which destroys any chance he has of becoming a priest, something which is incompatible with his religion ("For a creature such as himself the service of God must means a loss of personality ... or the surrender of will in an unquestioing obedience"; Ch 6; "God had created men and women with these tendencies, and made those tendencies to run so deep that they were, in many cases, the very core of the personality. ... God had made him so and he did not think that God had made him a monster."; Ch 16), and by Toby who, following the shocked realisation that Michael fancies him, fears he might be 'like that'. This implied enormity of homosexuality is at odds with any attempt to make it seem like a natural part of life: at the end Michael regrets that Toby has been sent away from the community because it means Toby might make more of what happened than he should: "almost any other way of closing the incident would have been better than this one." (Ch 25)

The weakness of the novel is that the dialogue is rather artificially constructed. It's a bit like listening to the arguments for and against a proposition at a university debating society. This is a novel of ideas and sometimes the ideas intrude. The strength of the novel is the care which Murdoch lavishes on constructing her characters; even the least important have a bit of back-story. These people may seem rather strange - giving up the world for a life of service, subjugating their sexuality to an imported moral code - but they are ordinary (if determinedly upper-middle-class).

It has a good hook The first line is "Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason." The plot is perfectly paced: the first narrative switch, from Dora to Michael, comes around the 25% mark; the bell is found half-way through the novel; the second-half is more action-packed than the first and towards the end the twists come thick and fast.

But how I hate books that use foreign phrases. Is the reader expected to know them? Or is the author showing off?

"une jeune fille un peu folle" = a slightly crazy young girl. Is the English so much less posh? It certainly communicates better to English readers.
"etourderies" = thoughtlessnesses
"fou rire" = crazy laugh
"malgre eux" = despite themselves
"Quarens me, sedisti lassus; Redemisti, Crucem passus; Tantus labor non sit cassus." = Seeking me, you rested, weary; You redeemed [me], having suffered the Cross; do not let such efforts be in vain. It's a quote from the Dies Irae section of the Requiem Mass. Perhaps, in those days, everyone knew their Latin. Nevertheless, even then, a footnote translation might have been in order.

On the other hand I quite enjoyed the fact that Toby repeatedly used his favourite word of the moment (rebarbative) even though I had to look it up. It means unattractive to the point of being objectionable. I don't mind having to look up English words; it seems to me that I ought to know them. But foreignisms? No. (And yes, I know that in my novel Motherdarling Jack who has lived in Paris uses a whole paragraph of untranslated French but I think the reader can guess that he is using a lot of rude words.)

There's a lovely metaphor when the dog is in the punt and literally rocks the boat (Ch 10) ... as if the humans aren't doing that all the time. And there are repeated references to 'bell' (eg "as clear as a bell"; Ch10; "he heard the hand bell ringing the Angelus"; Ch 10)

Selected quotes:

"It seemed to her that Paul was urging her to grow up, and yet had left her no space to grow up into." (Ch 1)
"That was marriage, through Dora; to be enclosed in the aims of another." (Ch 1)
"Youth is a marvellous garment." (Ch 1)
"How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life" (Ch 1)
"It's the curse of modern life that people don't have real trades any more. A man is his work. In the old days we were all butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, weren't we?" (Ch 1)
"The hedges, rotund with dusty foliage, bulged over the edge of the road." (Ch 2)
"She now made out with an unpleasant shock a shapeless pile of squatting black cloth that must be a nun." (Ch 2)
"She had retained her prejudices when she lost her religion." (Ch 2)
"She looked back at him, uneasy, yet admiring the solidity of him, full to the brim with his love and his work and all his certainty about life. She felt flimsy and ephemeral by comparison, as if she were merely a thought in his mind." (Ch 3)
"Ideals are dreams. They come between us and reality." (Ch 9)
"Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgements." (Ch 12)
"Dora disliked any music in which she could not participate herself by singing or dancing." (Ch 15)
"She listened now with distaste to the hard patterns of sound which plucked at her emotions without satisfying them and which demanded in an arrogant way to be contemplated." (Ch 15) The music in question is Bach.
"He envied his medieval prototype who at least did not have to deal with both his lady and the adventure at the same time. For most of the operation Dora was useless." (Ch 17)
"He remembered the souls in Dante who deliberately remained within the purifying fire. Repentance: to think about sin without making the thought into a consolation." (Ch 26)
"There is a God, but I do not believe in him." (Ch 26)