Iris Murdoch Biography and List of Works

British writer and university lecturer, a prolific and highly professional novelist. Murdoch has dealt in her works with everyday ethical or moral issues, the question of good and bad, and has explored the function of myth in the process of making sense of one's life. As a writer Murdoch was a perfectionist, and she did not let editors change her text.

"An author's irony often conceals his glee. This concealment is possibly the chief function of irony."
(from Sacred and Profane Love Machine, 1974)

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin. Her mother was Irish and her father was an English civil servant who served as a cavalry officer in the World War I. The family moved to London in her childhood and she grew up in the western suburbs of Hammersmith and Chiswich.

Murdoch studied classics, ancient history and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. During World War II she was an active member of the Communist Party, but soon became disappointed with its ideology and resigned. From 1938 to 1942 she worked at the Treasury as an assistant principal, and then for the United Nations relief organization UNNRA (1944-46) in Austria and Belgium. After a year without employment in London, Murdoch took up a postgraduate studentship in philosophy under Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1948 she was elected a fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford, working there as a tutor until 1963. Since then Murdoch devoted herself entirely to writing. Between the years 1963 and 1967 she also lectured at the Royal College of Art.

Murdoch's first published work was a critical study, SARTRE, ROMANTIC RATIONALIST, which appeared in 1953. She had met Sartre in the 1940s, becoming interested in existentialism. In 1956 Murdoch married John Baley, a professor of English at Oxford, who has also published fiction. They lived many years at Steeple Ashton, and then moved into the academic suburb of North Oxford. Murdoch never took any interest in children, but the marriage was happy, a union of two scholars.

In 1954 Murdoch made her debut as novelist with UNDER THE NET, which has as its protagonist the Sartrean hero Jack Donague. The book criticizes Sartre's concern with essences rather than materiality. A SEVERED HEAD (1961) exploited Jungian theories of archetypes. It has been criticized for the weighting of its theoretical template over a concern with characterization. The novel was turned into a play with the help of J.B. Priestley. A Severed Head analyses through Freud's theories about male sexuality and desire, and particularly the fear of castration.

THE BELL (1958) is among Murdoch's most successful novels, depicting an Anglican religious community in Gloucestershire. They have joined forces to create a new and better life, but the old conflict between sex and religion again undermines the pious foundations of the community. The novel presents a series of events, which focus on the replacement bell to be hung in an abbey tower. The difficulty of spiritual life finally culminates in an effort to move the bell along a causeway to the gates of the nunnery - the bell suddenly falls into the water and sinks without a trace. The story was later televised.

"'It's as good as the real thing! cried Dora.
   'Nothing's as good as the real thing,' said Peter. 'It's odd that even a perfect imitation, as soon as you know it's an imitation, gives much less pleasure. I remember Kant says how disappointed your guests are when they discover that the after dinner nightingale is a small boy posted in the grove.'
   'A case of the natural attractiveness of truth,' said Michael."
(from The Bell, 1958)

Murdoch has published over twenty novels. In her early works, such as THE SANDCASTLE (1957), the style is polished, and the books are generally short. Her later works are large, over 500 pages in length. In THE RED AND THE GREEN (1965) Murdoch took her subject from history, and set the story on the eve of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin, in the midst of World War I.

"Christopher had always played the cynic in political discussions. But in fact, though this would not have led him to lift a finger himself, he felt a strong romantic sympathy with the whole tradition of rebellion in Ireland and with the Sinn Feiners as the present representatives of that tradition... Like many scholars who ostentatiously eschew the field of action, he had a strongly developed sense of the heroic. While with the sensibility of an artist he apprehended an epic splendour always latent in the tragedy of Ireland."
(from The Red and the Green)

Often Murdoch employed fantasy and gothic elements to create a twilight-of-the gods atmosphere in which characters are trying to find meaning in their lives. The novels combine realistic characters with extraordinary situations, and many of them have a religious or philosophical theme. In THE TIME OF THE ANGELS (1965) the protagonist is an atheist priest in an inner-city parish who goes in for devil worship. In THE UNICORN (1963) characters from the world of convention enter into a medieval world of contingency.

In the experimental novel THE BLACK PRINCE (1973) the narrator is a self-conscious writer who creates art only after passionate love awakens his dark Eros. THE GOOD APPRENTICE (1985) was an allegory of the battle between good and evil, focusing on the protagonist's suffering. Stuart Cuno has decided to become good, and his methods include celibacy, chastity and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Stuart's stepbrother Edward Baltram is tormented by guilt because he has, he believes, killed his best friend. Stuart goes to rescue Edward from his 'journey to the underworld' and causes a final catastrophic clash of forces.

"I'm so alone, he thought, no one helps me, no one can help me, I don't even want anyone's help. But what is to become of me, would I not be better dead? I am simply cumbering and fouling the earth. I am the walking dead, people must see that, why don't they run away? The do run away, everyone shuns me. No voice can reach me. I won't be able to think again, I won't be able to work again, I am permanently damaged. I have no freethinking mind any more; my mind is totally poisoned, clogged up with black poison. I am a little machine, no longer a human soul, my soul is dead, my poor soul is dead."
(from The Good Apprentice, 1985)

Murdoch's major work is considered THE SEA, THE SEA, which won the Booker Prize in 1978. Among her other publications are plays and philosophical and critical studies, including METAPHYSICS AS A GUIDE TO MORALS (1992). She was made a dame in 1987. From the mid-1990s Murdoch suffered from Alzheimer disease. She died in Oxford on February 8, 1999. In his memoir Elegy for Iris Bayley gives an account of his wife's disappearance into Alzheimer's disease with happier memories of their long, comfortable life together.

For further reading: Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch by A.S. Byatt (1966); The Disciplined Heart by P. Wolfe (1966); Iris Murdoch: The Shakesperian Interest by R. Todd (1980); Iris Murdoch: Work for the Spirit by E. Dipple (1982); Iris Murdoch's Comic Vision by A. Hague (1983); The Influence of the Writings of Simone Weil on the Fiction of Iris Murdoch by Gabriele Griffin (1993); Iris Murdoch's Fables of Unselfing by D.J. Gordon (1995); Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness, eds. M. Antonacci and W. Schwelker (1966); Elegy for Iris by John Bayley (1998); Iris and Her Friends by John Bayley (1999); Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction by Bran Nicol (1999)

SARTRE, (1953)