Opening lines: Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six month later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absences. Well, colour me intrigued by this passage and thrilled to follow up on the tribulations of this young woman as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and of (possible) liberation from the expectations of conformity to social rules, as set up by her husband and by the lay religious community he lives with currently. Dora is an easy character to root for, an instinctive rebel against oppresive morals and an energetic, impulsive, candid exponent of youthful exuberance. Dora, who had so lately discovered in herself a talent for happiness, was the more dismayed to find that she could be happy neither with her husband nor without him. As she goes back to her husband by train, she easily gets distracted by a passing butterfly, enough to make her forget where she is and what she is supposed to do. This early scene is a great set-up of mood, an early raising of the barricades between Dora and the lay community where she is headed. I knew in advance which side I will root for, but I will confess that I was still pleasantly surprised by the subtlety and the thoroughness of the investigation by Iris Murdoch, of the conflict between living in the world of the senses and the retreat, the isolation promoted by the members of the commune as a path to spiritual enlightenment.As the Abbess of the neighboring enclosed order of nuns that encouraged and supported the establishment of the lay religious community explains: There were many people who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. Work, as it is now, can rarely offer satisfaction to the half-contemplative. Dora's husband Paul is a visitor and not a full member of this community, studying ancient manuscripts at the monastery. He is so full of himself, so conscious of his own intellectual worth that he has little sympathy to spare for the inner turmoil of his wife, dismissing all her feelings as pitiful and misguided. All he wants is an obedient admirer, a pretty doll to show off to his friends, and he is more angry about the social scandal of her departure than of her apparent promiscuous adventures. Paul hopes the rest of the members of the commune will help him bring Dora to order. But, like all men discover sooner or later, women's logic is a lot more convoluted and arbitrary that the reputed straight line train of thought of the male. The past was never real for Dora. The notion that Paul might keep her past alive to torment her with, now occured to her for the first time. This introduction to the struggle for domination in the couple dynamics would have been enough for me to enjoy the novel, but Murdoch has a lot more cooked up in this novel. I like to imagine her as one of the greatest explorers of the twentieth century. Instead of re-discovering America, she goes in deep, like a spelunker with a powerful flashlight, investigating the twisted tunnels and the dark caverns of the soul. Here is Dora, the sinner, ready to love and to enjoy life, held down by a jealous, possesive husband. Here is Michael, a lay preacher, torn apart between his thirst for divine absolution and his earthy attraction to young boys. Here is James Tayler Pace the stern, ascetic, fundamentalist group leader who urges us to discard everything but the teachings of the Holy Book if we want to be saved. Here is the angsty, malicious young man Nick Fawley, who hovers alone at the borders of the commune, both wanting in and despising the conventionality of the others. Here is his beautiful and reserved sister Catherine, who is getting ready to renounce the world and join the convent. And finally, here is the young and innocent Toby, attracted to the lay community by the promise of a spiritual life, enthusiastic like Dora by the fields, the forest, the lake, the mystery of the nuns hiding behind the tall wall of their monastery.We get to spend quality time inside each of these people's minds, unravelling their self-justifications, their self-deceptions and their occasional honest efforts to become better persons. In the age old dialectic between the sacred and the prophane, we might conclude that real life is a muddle, bringing the idealistic dreamers back with their feet on the ground, exposing the lies and the sometimes malicious atitudes of the allegedly pure of heart, yet a wonder to behold to those who are still ready for and accepting of new experiences. I understand from the biographic notes on the author that she greatly admires Shakespeare, and I can easily see why as I think back to all the comedy walking hand in hand with tragedy around the fields of Imber Abbey. A comparison between "A Midsummer Night Dream" and "The Bell" may seem forced, especially since the plots have little in common, but my fancy refuses to listen to my voice of reason. I laughed out loud as Dora and Toby, the two exponents of irrepressible joy in life, set out to rock the peace of the place with a little subversive action (view spoiler)[ by substituding the new bell for the Abbey with a famous old one they find at the bottom of the lake (hide spoiler)]
this book is so good. so so good. it is one of those books of which i ask myself, how did she do it? how did she come up with a story like this? what tremendous formal control does it take to write such a seemingly simple story and pack it with so much stuff?the beginning is a bit Middlemarchian, in that a rather naive girl marries an older man who is passionate about his scholarship (we never learn whether his scholarship is any good) and also tremendously narcissistic, manipulative, and abusive. maybe this is self-conscious because the young woman is called dora (Middlemarch, dorothea) -- but then again dora is such a fraught name in 20th century literature.murdoch wrote this in 1958 but it could well have been written yesterday. scared of her husband, dora leaves. this is the first line of the novel: "Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him." i think it should be among those great beginnings that get listed occasionally in some venue or other. while away from her husband, dora frolics sexually with another guy, a hippy-ish kind of guy who is both a lover and a buddy and asks nothing of dora. which leads dora right back into paul's arm. so here's the first theme of this novel – the grip that narcissistic, manipulative, abusive men have on women. i know a couple of those personally. i testify that it is true. but, and i'm jumping ahead, these narcissistic manipulative abusive men also have the entire world on their side: their wives who don't understand them; they abandon them and hurt them; because they are so nice; so sweet; so defenseless. narcissistic manipulative abusive men have the world wrapped around their fingers, because the world is a constellation of countless planets that rotate around the suns of narcissistic manipulative abusive men.the tentative, delicate, ambivalent evolution of paul and dora's relationship is one of the delights of this novel. the story takes place in a lay religious community attached to a nuns' monastery (anglican benedictine) where paul goes to do research on ancient manuscripts. the nuns are cloistered but one can ask for audiences and mass is said every day at the monastery that outsiders can attend, though the design of the chapel is such that the nuns are invisible to the outsiders. dora, imprisoned in her own dreadful marriage, is horrified by the nuns' self-imposed exile and fails to see, at least at first, that they are in fact quite free and fulfilled. the lay community is a thing of beauty. it is led by a most captivating character, a gay man with a mixed past in which sexual trouble and a strong vocation to the priesthood battle each other. the community is situated in a large country mansion, run down but still beautiful, architecturally connected to the monastery, and edged by a lake. there are bridges and boats and one cannot really get out of there without using one or the other. there is also a small town one can reach on foot. the small lay community is only one year old and populated by a motley crew of idiosyncratic folks, about 10 in all. there are two leaders: michael, the real leader – a reluctant one – and james, his second in command, a man less sympathetic than our friend michael. james is a man of certainties. michael is anything but. but james means well and they all mean well and they are trying hard and deeply believe in what they are doing. they work the earth, grow their own food, have meetings, pray, share meals in silence, and enjoy the quiet and comtemplativity of their lives. the crux of the novel, it seems to me, is that religious afflatus is inevitably erotic, and this eroticism needs to go somewhere. people who are celibate by religious choice work on it all of their lives and when they work on it well (the nuns in the novel are a really good example here) they get to be lovely human beings with a purity, simplicity, youthfulness and joy that is quite beguiling. i do not actually believe that all of this comes from chastity itself. lots of married folks with the same qualities. i believe it comes to the giving of one’s life, freely, to the spirit, radically, in a way that isn’t driven by neurosis or bitterness or repression but true calling) the negotiation of the cravings of the body and the cravings of the soul in the name of love can mold people into a sort of perennial youthfulness. i love the way in which murdoch delves deeply inside the members of the lay community’s fumblings with their exalted religiosity and their inevitably exalted eroticism (don't take my word for it; read the writings of the saints). male homosexuality is front and center here, and murdoch deals with it in a way that i found very modern. there is some inner torture in the characters, but none of it is endorsed by the author and the most balanced among them are really quite fine. in other words, this is not Giovanni's Room, which was published only two years earlier (this may have something to do with the fact that murdoch was not a gay man, though she certainly was a woman-loving woman). towards the end things move fast and there is also a great deal of set-piece comedy, until the comedy goes away and things go back to being serious. but the book never stops being warm, and affirming, and hopeful, and if you are a religious person, or a person interested in religion, and maybe also a queer person, you will find murdoch's dealing with all this simply mind-blowing.
What do You think about The Bell (2001)?
I read four or five Iris Murdoch novels in my 20's and always loved her as I loved a great swath of British literature, based upon realism, well-made scenes, emotionally complete characters and compelling stories....with a modern, and fiercely intellectual twist. So it's possible I read THE BELL back then, but I don't think so. Pity, because it's a feast. Murdoch writes a beautiful sentence, and her characters' flaws and special peculiarities are so, well, human, driving the twists and turns of plot in thoroughly believable ways. Add to that her critical, indeed satirical eye, applied with no mercy to topics like religion & sex (including, significantly, extensive homosexual situations). The setting was fascinating to me, as well -- an intentional community of Anglicans living adjacent to a nunnery. Silly me, I had no idea that there were Anglican nuns. Having been to many new age retreat centers in my life, the mixed-bag of motivations among the devotees here feels completely authentic. Most attractively, THE BELL weaves one of those old fashioned narrative webs that trapped me, made it literally impossible to put down the book, starting chapter after chapter until sleep finally won out over my desire to find out what was happening to these fascinating characters. This propulsive quality is aided by shifting focus on the third-person narration, moving back and forth between the key characters of Michael, Toby and Dora. This is a book club choice for which I'm quite grateful.
—Nick
I loved the opening chapters, ending with the butterfly.I didn't like Imber Court much. The geography was incredibly tiresome, with almost constant references to where we are in relation to the house, the lake, the abbey. It was like listening to someone giving you complicated directions and you turn off and think "Gosh I wish I had a map" the whole time. On the story, everything became Michael's exposition until everybody else seemed to be just fulfilling a role.And to make matters worse, someone insisted Toby buy a pair of swimming trunks! The various characters stumbling across his naked sunbathing had become the only highlight.I'm starting to think that I might only love Iris Murdoch when she's writing about London. My least favourites all seem to be set in the country.
—David
A classic piece of literature. It's almost 5 stars but I think it will take a re-reading to get to 5-start status. Iris Murdoch had me at hello. The book starts with these lines:"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 story is set in 1950's England but could have happened today. The Bell about a group of dysfunctional people (which means they are just like you and me) who live together in a small community near an abbey, each of whom are on a journey to figure out who they are. Murdoch paints characters that you swear you know or are. She captures the true emotions and honest wrestlings of identity and calling. Murdoch raises questions about religion, morality, idolatry, and humanity within the relationships of her characters. I got a lot more out of this one after discussion and some online reviews/commentaries. There is a lot more to this book than just a good story. Murdoch pieces the characters and the place together in brilliant ways. I did however, find it a bit tough to read sometimes - I'm not sure if it was her prose or just the classic style I had to get used to. Murdoch's writing is rich with symbolism, hard questions, and raw emotion. I look forward to reading more of her work.
—Juli
