The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

It seemed to her that Paul was urging her to grow up, and yet had left her no space to grow up into. He wanted to teach her everything himself, but lacked the time and the patience to

Poor Dora

That was marriage, thought Dora; to be enclosed in the aims of another. That she had any power over Paul never

Trapped in a marriage

He was very slim and wore the wide-eyed insolent look of the happy person.

Happy

How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife.

Disillusioned ageing

She had retained her prejudices when she lost her religion.

Religion

He remembered being told that one never sufficiently realizes at the time the wonder of being young. This was not true in his case. He was privileged to be aware of his youth and to enjoy it in a series of present moments crammed full with intense experience.

Young Toby

that tense look of deserted human places at night.

The place has an atmosphere...

Dora’s capacity to forget and to live in the moment, while it more frequently landed her in grave trouble, made her also responsive without calculation to the returning glow of kindness. That she had no memory made her generous.

Dora

There were many people, she said, and Michael was but too ready to credit her since he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. Work,

oulz

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

It doesn't work

He seemed to Michael a graceful thoughtless animal, without self-knowledge, without sin.

Toby

‘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.’

Imitation

Often it seemed to her that the community were easily, casually even, judging her, placing her. The fact that so little was expected of her was itself significant. This was distressing. The sense that the judgement occurred without their thinking about it, that it happened automatically, simply as it were by juxtaposition, was still more distressing.

Dora at Imber

A bell is made to speak out. What would be the value of a bell which was never rung? It rings out clearly, it bears witness, it cannot speak without seeming like a call, a summons. A great bell is not to be silenced. Consider too its simplicity. There is no hidden mechanism. All that it is is plain and open; and if it is moved it must ring.

Pure and simple

Toby was certain of being awake. He was amazed, when people said that youth was wonderful, only one didn’t realize it at the time. Toby did realize it at the time,

Pleasures of youth

He felt so happy he could almost die of it, invited by that sleep of youth when physical wellbeing and joy and absence of care lull the mind into a sweet coma which is the more inviting since its awakening is charmed no less, and the spirit faints briefly, almost sated with delight.

Ah youth

Patchway had the enviable countryman’s capacity, which is shared only by great actors, of standing by and saying nothing, and yet existing, large, present, and at ease.

The countryman

to know clearly what you surrender, what you gain, and to have no regrets; to revisit without envy the scenes of a surrendered joy, 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.

Freedom

Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people’s imperfection.

Umcertai ty

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.

They stood there in silence, listening to the inaudible yet somehow living and stirring quietness of the darkening wood. They stood there for a long time, not looking at each other, lulled at last in a kind of coma. Then from nearby among the trees, seeming like a signal, there came a hollow clapping sound. The clapping was followed shortly by a low bubbling churr, then by more clapping; and in the thickening twilight of the alley the birds were suddenly present.

The environment embraces them

No good comes in the end of untrue beliefs. There is no God and there is no judgement, except the judgement that each one of us makes for himself; and what that is is a private matter. Sometimes of course one has to interfere with people to stop them doing things one dislikes. But for Christ’s sake let their minds alone. I can’t stand complacent swine who go around judging other people and making them feel cheap.

Belief

‘Dora,’ said Paul again, ‘Dora, is that you?’ Suddenly in the silence that followed another sound could be heard along the wire. For a moment Dora could not think what it was. Then she recognized it as a blackbird singing. The bird uttered a few notes and then was quiet. The telephone box at Imber was downstairs in the hallway by the refectory. The blackbird must be just outside on the terrace. It sang again, its song sounding clear and intolerably remote and strange in the silence after Paul’s voice. Dora put the phone down noisily on the table.

A disembodied birdsong seems to emphasise their disconnection.

They had a secure complacent look about them: the spiritual ruling class; and she wished suddenly that she might grow as large and fierce as a gorilla and shake the flimsy doors off their hinges, drowning the repulsive music in a savage carnivorous yell.

Observing

THE chief requirement of the good life’, said Michael, ‘is that one should have some conception of one’s capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has.’

Good life

One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles.

Needs must

He realized that in this matter, as in many others, he was always engaged in performing what James had called the second best act: the act which goes with exploring one’s personality and estimating the consequences rather than austerely following the rules.

Second best

Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures

The Bishop with unfaltering voice looked down benignly, observing the byplay with the letter. He had seen odder things. Dora rearranged her skirt and clapped her hand over her mouth. It began to rain.

Hilarious

If people want to stop being ordinary useful members of society and take their neuroses to some remote spot to have what they imagine are spiritual experiences I’m certain they should be tolerated but I see no reason why they should be revered.

Neuroses

Dora had become used to thinking of Imber as utterly remote, utterly cut off and private. Imber had retired from the world, but the world could still come to Imber to pry and mock and judge.

Cut off

The first agony passed and Michael found himself still living and thinking. Having at first feared to suffer too much, he later feared to suffer too little, or not in the right way. With strong magnetic force the human heart is drawn to consolation; and even grieving becomes consolation in the end.

Grief

He remembered the souls in Dante who deliberately remained within the purifying fire. Repentance: to think about sin without making the thought into a consolation.

Repentance