The Bell

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Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester Like the great realists Tolstoy, Eliot, and James, Iris Murdoch is preeminently concerned with the problem of how to live ethically in a world of accelerating change and declining faith. She studied and wrote philosophy as well as fiction, and her novels explore the fate of ideas once they are subjected to the exigencies of daily life. Murdoch’s ability to blend social satire with a sharply observant yet compassionate view of her characters is fully displayed in The Bell, often considered her most characteristic and satisfying novel. Michael and Dora continue living together at Imber for some time until Dora decides to rent a flat in Bath with a friend. Dora finally finds her own identity independent of a man’s influence, and Michael leases Imber Court to the Abbey indefinitely before departing for London to tell Catherine about her brother’s demise.

Meaning and purpose aren’t bestowed. They are found. They are the result of hard emotional and intellectual work.

Why does Noel passionately insist that Dora must not let the people at Imber Court give her “a bad conscience” (p. 170)?

James's view is that the study of personality is dangerous to goodness. Even if he cannot see how things will work out, a good person trusts and has faith in God. We should look to God's divine law to tell us what is commanded and what is forbidden. He warns that all the rest is mere vanity, self-deceit and flattery, expostulating, While diving in the lake in which the legendary Gabriel had supposedly landed, Toby thinks he finds the submerged bell. Delighted, Dora insists that Toby conspire with her to secretly retrieve the old bell and situate it in the bell tower instead of the new one. Dora finds the notion romantic. Toby is a young student who is spending the summer in Imber Court before attending his first year in Oxford. He is attracted by the idea of a secluded community. However, Toby is forced to think about himself deeply while at Imber Court. The kiss he shares with Michael pushes him to consider his sexuality, concluding that he is attracted to Dora who he also kisses. Toby emerges from the events of The Bell relatively unscathed compared to other characters, happily going to Oxford.There is a story about the bell ringing sometimes in the bottom of the lake, and how if you hear it it portends a death."

The story primarily follows Dora Greenfield, a young woman caught in a miserable marriage, and Michael Meade, the troubled lay leader of the community. The narrative takes a dramatic turn with the discovery of a centuries-old bell in the lake adjoining Imber Court. Real people are destructive of myth, contingency is destructive of fantasy and opens the way for imagination. Think of the Russians, those great masters of the contingent. Too much contingency, of course, may turn art into journalism. But since reality is incomplete art must not be afraid of incompleteness. Literature must always represent a battle between real people and images; and what it requires now is a much stronger and more complex conception of the former.” Dr Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester, showed us how an author with a reputation for difficulty, thanks to the philosophical ideas underpinning her work, can be perfectly accessible to general readers – although the underlying philosophy is a rewarding study for those who wish to engage with it. Why does James believe that “the study of personality, indeed the whole conception of personality, is . . . dangerous to goodness” (p. 119)? Paul's callousness towards Dora is clear. He is comfortable to announce he does not respect her. Their relationship is unbalanced and unhealthy.

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Why does Dora believe that secretly substituting the old bell for the new one will be “a magical act of shattering significance, a sort of rite of power and liberation” (p. 196)? Miles is teaching a course on Iris Murdoch and London for Literature Cambridge, with 4 x fortnightly sessions, Wednesdays, 6.00 pm: 6 April, 20 April, 4 May, 18 May 2022.

Miles pointed out other examples of transcendent experience, including Dora's interactions with the lost Abbey bell, lying drowned in the lake, also her learning to swim and becoming comfortable in the water after a drowning incident where she is unable to help a struggling swimmer and has to be rescued herself. He said Murdoch uses the question of space and the relationship of earth to water all through the book, and also raised Toby's exploration of the abbey where he climbs over the wall even though the door is open, and is met by a nun. Toby is an innocent character, and it is his innocence that allows him to penetrate the labyrinth with such ease. Here’s a variation on the theme of rising to your highest level of incompetence: “One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles.” These sisters are awaiting a new bell for their tower which, according to a local legend, has been empty since a 12 th-century bell flew out of the tower and into the small lake outside the walls after a nun broke her vows with a lover. The book has a low-key ending where all the ends are tied up. The two main characters Dora and Michael are the only two remaining at Imber, since the community has broken apart. The Staffords have taken Catherine to a psychiatic clinic in London. Although the two get on well, Michael then leaves, making Dora the last person at Imber. Dora decides not to return to Paul, but instead to go and stay with her friend Sally. Thus the reader is left with Dora's experience and feelings in confusion, much as the novel had started,The bell itself is a profound symbol in the novel, representing guilt, the weight of the past, and the possibility of Redemption. The act of raising the bell from the lake signifies the characters' attempts to confront and resolve their individual pasts. The novel offers Kaehele, Sharon; German, Howard (December 1967). "The discovery of reality in Iris Murdoch's The Bell". PMLA. 82 (7): 554–563. doi: 10.2307/461164. Toby and Dora are each innocent, though in different ways. Toby enjoys his blameless, worry-free boyishness until he finds that surface appearances aren’t what they seem. Dora is forever stumbling around emotionally, verbally battered by Paul, unsure of who she is and what she wants to do, but, after a series of calamities for the community, she finds meaning and purpose in her life. Mischief The theme of transcendence occurs in chapter 14 of the novel where, Miles said, Murdoch captures a real moment of Dora responding to more than the material significance of what she encounters: Roberts, Jerry (2009). Encyclopedia of Television Film Directors. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810863781.