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The Iris Trilogy #3
Widower's House: A Study in Bereavement, or How Margot and Mella Forced Me to Flee My Home
Little did retired professor John Bayley realize when he lost Iris Murdoch, his beloved wife of forty-four years, that life would never be the same again. First came thousands of sympathy notes from lovers of Murdoch's novels and fans of Bayley's own poignant memoir, Elegy for Iris. But more alarming were the hundreds of calls from seemingly well-meaning women, many of whom rang Bayley's doorbell in Oxford, bearing cakes, casserole dishes, and delivering pep talks designed to cheer up the widower of their dreams.
Here, in Widower's House: A Study in Bereavement or How Margot and Mella Forced Me to Flee My Home, Bayley tells the painful, inspirational, and ultimately uplifting story of how he had to grapple with his fate as a man by beginning life anew in his mid-seventies. Like millions of other widows and widowers, Bayley, as he relates it, found himself emotionally unprepared for the responsibilities and burdens that confront people who suddenly find themselves alone. He hadn't realized how differently you are treated when you are not part of a couple, and how you must learn to respond to friends, family members, and total strangers in completely different ways.
With the reassuring, compassionate voice of Iris still a mournful obbligato in the background, Bayley describes the pitfalls a widower must face as he ventures out into the newly virgin world beyond his front door. Finding comfort in recording the day-to-day calamities that marked his reentry into the real world, Bayley uses surprising humor—reflected here in the vivid depictions of his new suitors, Margot and Mella—to get him through his darkest days.
Melodic, irrepressible, and comically comforting, Widower's House, with its heartwarming and surprisingly romantic ending, will reveal yet a new side of the man who has become England's most unlikely symbol of masculine virility.
Here, in Widower's House: A Study in Bereavement or How Margot and Mella Forced Me to Flee My Home, Bayley tells the painful, inspirational, and ultimately uplifting story of how he had to grapple with his fate as a man by beginning life anew in his mid-seventies. Like millions of other widows and widowers, Bayley, as he relates it, found himself emotionally unprepared for the responsibilities and burdens that confront people who suddenly find themselves alone. He hadn't realized how differently you are treated when you are not part of a couple, and how you must learn to respond to friends, family members, and total strangers in completely different ways.
With the reassuring, compassionate voice of Iris still a mournful obbligato in the background, Bayley describes the pitfalls a widower must face as he ventures out into the newly virgin world beyond his front door. Finding comfort in recording the day-to-day calamities that marked his reentry into the real world, Bayley uses surprising humor—reflected here in the vivid depictions of his new suitors, Margot and Mella—to get him through his darkest days.
Melodic, irrepressible, and comically comforting, Widower's House, with its heartwarming and surprisingly romantic ending, will reveal yet a new side of the man who has become England's most unlikely symbol of masculine virility.
254 pages, Paperback
First published March 22, 2001
About the author
John Bayley
119 books24 followersProfessor John Bayley CBE, FBA, FRSL was a British literary critic and writer.
Bayley was born in Lahore, British India, and educated at Eton, where he studied under G. W. Lyttelton, who also taught Aldous Huxley, J.B.S. Haldane, George Orwell and Cyril Connolly. After leaving Eton, he went on to take a degree at New College, Oxford. From 1974 to 1992, Bayley was Warton Professor of English at Oxford. He is also a novelist and writes literary criticism for several newspapers. He edited Henry James' The Wings of the Dove and a two-volume selection of James' short stories.
From 1956 until her death in 1999, he was married to the writer Dame Iris Murdoch. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he wrote the book Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch, which was made into the 2001 film Iris by Richard Eyre. In this film, Bayley was portrayed in his early years by Hugh Bonneville, and in his later years by Jim Broadbent, who won an Oscar for the performance. After Murdoch's death he married Audi Villers, a family friend. He was awarded the CBE in 1999.
Bayley was born in Lahore, British India, and educated at Eton, where he studied under G. W. Lyttelton, who also taught Aldous Huxley, J.B.S. Haldane, George Orwell and Cyril Connolly. After leaving Eton, he went on to take a degree at New College, Oxford. From 1974 to 1992, Bayley was Warton Professor of English at Oxford. He is also a novelist and writes literary criticism for several newspapers. He edited Henry James' The Wings of the Dove and a two-volume selection of James' short stories.
From 1956 until her death in 1999, he was married to the writer Dame Iris Murdoch. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he wrote the book Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch, which was made into the 2001 film Iris by Richard Eyre. In this film, Bayley was portrayed in his early years by Hugh Bonneville, and in his later years by Jim Broadbent, who won an Oscar for the performance. After Murdoch's death he married Audi Villers, a family friend. He was awarded the CBE in 1999.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 7, 2019
You know of John Bayley, right? The professor of literature who was in love with, married to, and cared for Iris Murdoch for 44 years, and later wrote two books in tribute to her? Well, here is book 3. And it's about him. And loss, and grief, and love. And him.
April 9, 2013
Widower's House: A Study in Bereavement (or how Margot and Mella forced me to flee my home)
by John Bayley
W.W. Norton, 2001
Deep in his narrative, John Bayley confides: "The bereaved should maintain at all costs the privacy and, in their own eyes, the singularity of their status. A privilege not to be transgressed."
Following a section break, he continues: "I might have been feeling more and more desperate but I was also getting more and more pompous."
Pages later he writes: "Being a widower had turned me into a monster of egoism."
The back cover proclaims: "A book to be given to anyone dealing with the catastrophic loss of a loved one."
Having recently suffered the catastrophic loss of a loved one (my wife), I disagree.
I disagree with the subtitle. This is not a study in bereavement. It's a study in John Bayley's bereavement, and not really that either. It's well told, written by a highly intelligent and clever man, who is able to generate significant narrative frisson by taking a passive approach to his situation.
Forced to flee? Even Bayley knows that's not true. He ran away. Not a strategy he recommends, no, but not either a strategy outside his character.
But these be quibbles.
I started with the chosen quotations above, because they capture something essential about the experience of catastrophic loss. Nobody else has the slightest idea what you are experiencing. Each grief is unique. You are alone, and there is no vocabulary for your experience before you find it for yourself. The uniqueness of your experience can make you a bore. Time to move on, isn't it? Nice to have you back. Move along now. Not sure what happened to your over in your little wonderland, but, chip, chip, tally ho, and all that.
Yes, the risk is you become a "monster of egoism," kind of like Hamlet.
Bayley neatly escapes that fate, turning a passive aggressive retreat into a premeditated conquest. He escapes the tragic ending by seizing the day. Good for him. And good for the book. The ending comes wrapped in a bow.
Part of my problem, of course, is that I'm 43 and suffered my loss in mid-life, and Bayley is a retired Oxford professor. I won't say that he doesn't need to worry about what to do with the rest of his life, but it's of a different scale now, isn't it? He's also without children, so can suffer his egoism without incurring too much penalty. For himself and (non-existent) others.
I had the same problem with a book I read this past Spring, which was about caregiving. The book was loaned to me, and I can't remember the title now, but some of it was excellent, and some of it was shite.
The excellent part was about giving in to the ego of the person who needs care. Let go. Do what they want. Make them comfortable. That's all that matters. Resolve your conflicts in their favour.
Yes, yes, yes.
The shite part (for me) were examples of geriatric couples who were struggling with the fact that one of them couldn't do what s/he had used to be able to do before.
Once you've passed 70, I wanted to yell, what did you expect? This, to me, is unaccountable egoism. That you would think you could reach old age and not have to face death.
Perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect oldsters to be courageous. But, no, I don't believe so. I've known plenty of elderly with courage, and plenty of young without.
Perhaps this is what bothers me about Bayley's fleeing. He was heroic in caring for his dying wife, then he flees his house instead of informing a trespassing female that she needs to leave.
But it's the grief, of course. He's bereaved. He doesn't have the spine at the moment to do it.
Okay, I surrender. Life is hard. It's full of challenges. We can't surmount them all.
But existence precedes essence. You are what you do.
by John Bayley
W.W. Norton, 2001
Deep in his narrative, John Bayley confides: "The bereaved should maintain at all costs the privacy and, in their own eyes, the singularity of their status. A privilege not to be transgressed."
Following a section break, he continues: "I might have been feeling more and more desperate but I was also getting more and more pompous."
Pages later he writes: "Being a widower had turned me into a monster of egoism."
The back cover proclaims: "A book to be given to anyone dealing with the catastrophic loss of a loved one."
Having recently suffered the catastrophic loss of a loved one (my wife), I disagree.
I disagree with the subtitle. This is not a study in bereavement. It's a study in John Bayley's bereavement, and not really that either. It's well told, written by a highly intelligent and clever man, who is able to generate significant narrative frisson by taking a passive approach to his situation.
Forced to flee? Even Bayley knows that's not true. He ran away. Not a strategy he recommends, no, but not either a strategy outside his character.
But these be quibbles.
I started with the chosen quotations above, because they capture something essential about the experience of catastrophic loss. Nobody else has the slightest idea what you are experiencing. Each grief is unique. You are alone, and there is no vocabulary for your experience before you find it for yourself. The uniqueness of your experience can make you a bore. Time to move on, isn't it? Nice to have you back. Move along now. Not sure what happened to your over in your little wonderland, but, chip, chip, tally ho, and all that.
Yes, the risk is you become a "monster of egoism," kind of like Hamlet.
Bayley neatly escapes that fate, turning a passive aggressive retreat into a premeditated conquest. He escapes the tragic ending by seizing the day. Good for him. And good for the book. The ending comes wrapped in a bow.
Part of my problem, of course, is that I'm 43 and suffered my loss in mid-life, and Bayley is a retired Oxford professor. I won't say that he doesn't need to worry about what to do with the rest of his life, but it's of a different scale now, isn't it? He's also without children, so can suffer his egoism without incurring too much penalty. For himself and (non-existent) others.
I had the same problem with a book I read this past Spring, which was about caregiving. The book was loaned to me, and I can't remember the title now, but some of it was excellent, and some of it was shite.
The excellent part was about giving in to the ego of the person who needs care. Let go. Do what they want. Make them comfortable. That's all that matters. Resolve your conflicts in their favour.
Yes, yes, yes.
The shite part (for me) were examples of geriatric couples who were struggling with the fact that one of them couldn't do what s/he had used to be able to do before.
Once you've passed 70, I wanted to yell, what did you expect? This, to me, is unaccountable egoism. That you would think you could reach old age and not have to face death.
Perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect oldsters to be courageous. But, no, I don't believe so. I've known plenty of elderly with courage, and plenty of young without.
Perhaps this is what bothers me about Bayley's fleeing. He was heroic in caring for his dying wife, then he flees his house instead of informing a trespassing female that she needs to leave.
But it's the grief, of course. He's bereaved. He doesn't have the spine at the moment to do it.
Okay, I surrender. Life is hard. It's full of challenges. We can't surmount them all.
But existence precedes essence. You are what you do.
August 14, 2018
Another lovely memoir,funny,erudite and as usual very well written.
May 19, 2012
Not the best book to be reading this week. Final book in a trilogy, haven't read the other two yet. Could never ever get into Iris Murdoch's works and much of this book is similarly above my comprehension. But some powerful insights into the days, weeks and months following the loss of a partner which echoed strongly within me. Examples include the memory flashes triggered by small incidents and the waterfall-like outpourings of sudden grief. Will go looking for the other two books, if I can bear to read them.
October 12, 2016
Love the honesty of this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews