IRIS MURDOCH (1919-1999), THE ANGLO-IRISH NOVELIST AND PHILOSOPHER, uses her signature motifs of good and evil, and class, in The Nice and the Good.
The narrative is shot through the complex mental inscapes of the principal characters. This complexity is mirrored in the somewhat convoluted interweaving of their lives. Ducane, the main protagonist is involved with Jessica, a young woman, but also has an intimate relationship with Kate Gray. Kate’s husband, Octavian, offers no objection and is indeed himself a close friend and colleague of Ducane. Kate and Octavian are wealthy and have a country house, which is looked after by their close friend, Mary Clothier. Her young son, Pierce, is attracted to Barbara, the spoilt adolescent daughter of the Grays. Mary invites her university friend, Paula Biranne, who has young twins, Edward and Henrietta. Then there is Willy, an émigré and friend of Ducane, who lives in a cottage on the Gray’s estate, and uncle Theo, who refuses to talk about his life in India. He is a shadowy figure with undertones of homo-erotic tendency towards Pierce.
The reader struggles to warm up to these various characters, who are self-absorbed in their own web of emotions and relationships.
An intriguing character is Radeechy, a civil servant colleague of Ducane and Octavian, who commits suicide at the start of the novel. The episode hints at a gothic underbelly when Ducane and McGrath (the office messenger) examine the cellars below the offices in London. They discover slaughtered pigeons and old mattresses. McGrath then tells Ducane how Radeechy brought young girls to the cellar. However, the suspense that Murdoch injects in this episode fizzles out when Ducane is unable to establish any link between Radeechy’s suicide and his rather gauche ‘black magic’ practices. What does evolve out of it is the troubled relationship of Ducane and McGrath.
A keen sense of class pervades Murdoch’s book. There is a certain unworldly air about the wealthy Kate Gray, who is said to be ‘eternally and unreflectively happy’. It is also shown in this detail:
‘The golden life-giving egoism and rich self-satisfaction of Kate and her husband . . .’
This extends to the rather charmed lives of the other characters as they pursue refuge, romance, friendship and solitude against the backdrop of a beautiful English seaside. Murdoch’s descriptions of the plants, the sunsets, the emptiness of the beach and the sounds and smells of the sea, are quite lyrical and showcase her masterly use of language. There is a particularly beautiful scene in the caves, where Ducane and Pierce are holed up in a high tide and when Ducane has an epiphany-like moment about his life and relationships. He realises that he is in love with Mary Clothier, a long-suffering mother figure to all around her, and his patient confidante. But, before Ducane reaches a resolution, McGrath blackmails him over the intricate triangle with Jessica and Kate. Eventually Murdoch has both women writing Ducane out of their lives, thus setting him free to turn to Mary.
The characters belonging to the so-called lower classes are depicted in a particular – one might add – stereotypical way: McGrath, the office messenger, is an unscrupulous character who uses his enigmatic sexy wife, Judith, to ensnare and blackmail men, richer and of higher office than himself. Ducane, Radeechy and Richard Biranne (the estranged husband of Paula Biranne) are victims of McGrath’s demands for money, following their interest in Judith. Again, Fivey, Ducane’s housekeeper and chauffeur, hints that his mother taught him to ‘steal from the shops’ and he ‘spent time in gaol’ but will not be drawn out by Ducane’s questions about his past.
Murdoch neatly resolves all the dilemmas of her characters towards the close of the story, to the extent that the quarrelling ‘Mingo’ (the dog) and ‘Montrose’ (the cat) come to share a basket! This lacks a certain verisimilitude, given how people experience separation, divorce, infidelity, guilt, suicide and love. Another weakness in the book is Murdoch’s portrayal of children. The young twins, Edward and Henrietta, are stereotypes rather than fully fleshed personalities.
The problem of Murdoch gathering all the strands of her narrative into a neat resolution at the end is based on the other dominant motif in the book – her exploration of Plato’s idea of the ‘Good’ as a reality and not just an ideal or emotional projection, which cannot be reduced to anything lesser such as having a utilitarian value. Two other novels, The Bell and The Severed Head, similarly deal with themes of love, infidelity, inter-relational conflicts and complications, and good and evil.
Murdoch is acclaimed as one of the greatest British writers of the post-World War II period. The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize in 1978.
I’m glad that I read this book, although I can’t help thinking that Murdoch’s philosophical writing (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Sovereignty of Good) is more rewarding than her novels.
– Golden Langur
