The Bell (1958)

Michael Meade takes up his position as a teacher at a British Public School at the same time as 14-year-old Nick Fawley, ‘a child of considerable beauty’. Meade has to leave when Nick, now 16, tells the Headmaster about the sexual relationship they have had. ( )

Murdoch's power as a writer was evident in the first novel I read in my "Year of Murdoch" ([The Sea, The Sea]) but I was not taken up and absorbed by it, nor did I ever feel more than tepidly empathetic with any of the characters (more like I found them pathetic or annoying mostly), but here I was fully engaged, fully swept up in the setting and the story itself, both for the plot (which comes to a fiendishly chaotic climax) and for the complexities and agonies of the various characters as they get caught up in the drama. Others have outlined the story quite well here, so I won't. Instead I will simply offer up some choice quotes that are either wise or quintessentially Murdochian or both:
- That was marriage, thought Dora; to be enclosed in the aims of another.
-Youth is a marvelous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents.
- ...to know clearly what you surrender what you gain, and to have no regrets; to revisit without envy the scenes of a surrendered oy, and to taste it ephemerally once more, with a delight undimmed by the knowledge that it is momentary, that is happiness, that surely is freedom.
-As Michael contemplated that tiny distance between the thought and the act it was like a narrow crack which even as he watched it was opening into an abyss.
-Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

Such things, as the unintended conequences of insufficiently thought-out impulsive actions are at the core of the novel's heart - with it the big question of why we are so judgemental when we are all so frail. Bravo Iris! ***** ( )

The bell, written by Iris Murdoch in the 1958 is a sad and funny novel about religion sex and the fight between good and evil.

The central question is the replacement of a medieval bell, jealously guarded by the Imber Community because this is a legendary symbol of religion and magic.

The heroine of this novel is Dora Greenfield married to Paul but for the absence of him, (not physical) she decided to put him away from her life.

Paul Greenfield is a posh aristocratic, he is an art historian from an ancient German bankers.

Being an handsome man Dora decided immediately to marry him for a flat in Knightsbridge and also for his integrity, unfortunately for her she discovered his true nature a violent man.

In the middle of this novel precisely at page 34 there is a magical line "The great bell "flew like a bird out of the tower and fell inside the lake"

How is this possible?...

Another interesting point is to discover that this abbey was without a bell.

Personally I think that this is a ploy for a likeable reading. and also the fight between good and evil is represented by the old and new bell, in other words the local community is afraid about its legend, but in the same time they are oriented to a modern religious interpretation, in brief this community is mainly conservative.

"The sound of the bell portends a death" (The Bell Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, Iris Murdoch, page 210) ( )

A long while ago, I read Under the Net and it went completely over my head. Didn’t much enjoy it. One good thing about reading from a list is that you are forced to return to authors you didn’t like initially and then realise are so versatile that you can enjoy them, even if you don’t appreciate every one of their works. That’s exactly what happened with The Bell, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

What starts out as a description of a failed marriage takes a different turn when Dora returns to her husband who is now working at a country house that contains a abbey that contains a bell…. or at least it used to contain a bell. The original bell is rumoured to have been lost in the lake and the plan is to replace it with a modern reproduction.

As the story wends it’s way towards the ceremony of the replacement bell, it heightens to a dramatic climax and, as this happens, the plot thickens incredibly as the characters reveal themselves to be more and more complex. And while everyone else implodes around her, Dora kind of sails through unscathed. Exactly how is a bit of a mystery. I thought she’d be dead long before the end.

The characters really made this story for me. Yes, there was suspense. But it was the effect of the strain on each character that made this a really enjoyable novel. It’s not one of her best, apparently, but it was a lot more accessible to me than Under the Net and so a good starting point for her work, I think. ( )

The Bell is set in the lay community belonging to Imber Abbey, home to an order of sequestered nuns. The Abbey is about to get a new bell, a time-honored symbol of standing witness. At the same time, there’s a legend about the old, medieval bell, which is said to ring when death approaches. Imber Court contains a variety of complicated people: Paul Greenfield, whose wife, Dora, comes back to him after running away; Michael Meade, the head of the community, who has an unpleasant history with Nick Fawley; Nick’s sister Catherine, who is about to enter the religious order, and Toby, a teenage boy who becomes involved with Michael Meade.

Although it’s only February, I can tell that this is going to be one of my top reads for 2012. I loved every bit of this book from start to finish. Although the book is set in a religious, or semi-religious, community, this wasn’t a particularly religious book. Instead, it’s about ethics, love, and sex (about which the author was extremely candid, given that the book was published in the 1950s).

All of the characters are thoroughly messed up: Paul is selfish and thoughtless, Dora is a bit of a wet blanket, Michael continually struggles with an ethical dilemma, Nick struggles with alcoholism and guilt. For a community that’s supposedly so religious, all of these characters have vices and flaws! But that’s what makes them so interesting as characters—one wonders if Dora, for example, will ever grow a backbone. I grew to care about the characters in this novel, even though I despised a few of them. The only one who didn’t completely jump off the page for me was Catherine, who seems to be an afterthought. But Murdoch writes in very clear, descriptive prose, and other than my minor criticism, I thought that this was a fabulous novel. ( )