Book cover of Iris Murdoch: A guide to the novels, by Peter Whitfield
Iris Murdoch: A guide to the novels, by Peter Whitfield
Review by Jonathan Wooding
The difference between a religious and a non-religious person is not a question of what one believes, where one belongs, or how well one behaves, but whether one prays. Here’s Iris Murdoch talking about Immanuel Kant: ‘Surely, prayer (or something like it) is as essential as duty; and is indeed a vital mediating concept, enabling the liberating discovery of the divine in one’s own soul’. The characters in Murdoch’s novels are fascinated by these ideas, and Murdoch, it seems, remained fascinated by prayer. In this scientific age, ‘we may be in danger of losing too much while asserting too little. The loss of the Book of Common Prayer… is symptomatic of this failure of nerve.’
In this captivating and comprehensive guide, in which I confess I am thanked, Peter Whitfield stresses that Iris Murdoch’s novels are evidence of a ‘spiritual quest’. ‘Her work feels very much like some form of coded autobiography, and her personal experiences clearly reflected the restless spirit of the age.’ He sees Murdoch as a figure who became ‘a poet of humility and reconciliation, a seeker after moral truth and spiritual peace’. There is every indication that the Quaker tradition provided her with a source of interest and inspiration.
Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919, and numerous members of the extended family were Quakers. Peter Conradi, Murdoch’s biographer, has pointed out that ‘Quakerism frequently turns up in Iris’s fiction. Murdoch was touched by its emphasis on integrity, quietness and peace, and the belief that all are capable of growing in wisdom and understanding.’ Later, the head at Murdoch’s school in Bristol was ‘the redoubtable Miss Beatrice May Baker… a pioneering and dedicated educationalist of great moral courage and probity… and a fellow-travelling Quaker.… If Iris was herself touched by Quakerism’s emphasis on integrity, quietness and peace, its belief in the availability of Inner Light to all, that all are capable of growing in wisdom and understanding, it is as likely to be from her headmistress at Badminton School as from her Irish relations.’
At the school, Murdoch ‘tried Quaker Meeting’. Much later she published a poem for Baker, in which we find a suggestion that ‘belief in God’ is not entirely necessary when it comes to praying: ‘But did you really believe in God, Quakerish lady? The question is absurd.’
Whitfield leads a serious and sprightly dance through Murdoch’s novels and, crucially, sets them in the context of her philosophical works, with their focus on the ‘necessary non-existence of God’. Half a dozen of the novels contain obvious references to Quakerism but newcomers might start with The Philosopher’s Pupil. This includes a saintly figure, William Eastcote, who stands to minister at a Meeting: ‘My dear friends, we live in an age of marvels’. Whitfield indicates this novel to be ‘central to an understanding of Murdoch’s intentions and her achievement as a novel-writer’. A Quakerish novelist?
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By Jonathan Wooding on 12th December 2020 - 11:26
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