A Severed Head

The more I read of Iris Murdoch the more of a trend I start to see.  I feel like every one of my posts about her books says the same thing- I liked it, but all her characters are ridiculously pompous academics.  I’m starting to wonder if she was ever exposed to the grittier side of life.  I mean, she lived through the War; she must have had to eat Spam or scrimp a bit at some point.  Her characters aren’t posh, except in the way that they’re never troubled by money, but it often seems that they can all afford to live in a world that’s not quite the one the rest of us populate.  Theirs is the world in which everyone has affairs and, at the very least, a master’s degree.

Take A Severed Head, for example.  The title in itself is evidence of my entire point.  A severed head is, to renowned anthropologist Honor Klein, a symbol of devotional love- a thing worshipped by tribes as a symbol of their gods and power.  When the book’s main character, Martin Lynch-Gibbon, falls madly in love with her, this is how she refers to herself while asserting that it is not her that he loves, but the idea of her and this is not truly love.  To be fair to her, this part is wonderfully written; Honor’s speech to Martin is probably my favourite part of the book.  It is just fantastic.

The point when the book crosses the line from typical Murdoch to slightly farcical comes when Martin, upon discovering that he adores Honor, rushes to tell her only to discover her in flagrante with her brother… with whom Martin’s wife is having an affair.  The entire book’s in this vein, like an incredibly high brow Hollyoaks.  Anyway, when Martin discovers the incest his first reaction is not, “Oh my god!” it’s a rumination on whether he is disgusted by incest, why people in general are disgusted by incest and whether this potential disgust, or darkness, actually heightens his desire for Honor.  It is not a believable human reaction.

My only other niggling issue with this book were the constant references to Honor as a Jew.  Her beauty, as described by Martin, is Jewish beauty.  For someone who earlier calls himself an atheist for the most cynical of reasons, he seems a bit too caught up in the importance of religion and religious heritage.  I know that this is a sign of the changing times and I don’t doubt for a second that if this book was written much after 1961-when it was first published – there would have been no mentions of Honor’s irrelevant Jewishness, but it just frustrated me.

That’s it then.  Expect a very similar log post in a few months when I read my next of Murdoch’s books and don’t bother going back to see what I’ve written about her previously.  Unless she ever felt like throwing a bit of a curve ball and writing a book about anything other than middle class academics and well-to-dos who aren’t half as stuffy as they seem.

My next read is Silas Marner by George Eliot.  It’s actually sitting on my shelf already finished thanks to a trip to the Lake District and the series of car and train journeys that entails.