The Bell by Iris Murdoch

I love Iris Murdoch as a philosopher and a novelist. I discovered her work two years ago and I know that I'll slowly make my way through all of it. Every single thing she wrote. A few weeks ago I finished the Bell. I relate to Dora Greenfield so so much. Many of the feelings she has, the way she comes across to the world. Feels true to me (most of it not all). I'm sharing below some things about Dora that I loved in the novel. And just to clarify, Dora just like many characters in Iris Murdoch's novels, is deeply flawed and I hope I'm not like her 100% of the way.

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Her fear of motherhood

She depended, like some unprotesting but significantly mobile creature, upon the knowledge of her instant ability to whisk away. To have to abandon this animal readiness by becoming two people was a prospect that Dora could not face. She did not face it.

How proud she is of her husband. She loves to see him thinking at work. And feels superior just by proxy? This is obviously silly and shallow, but something just so damn cute about it?

His delight whenever she found him at his studies had always struck Dora as childish and touching. She was pleased now to see him so importantly at work, and immediately felt proud of him, regaining her vision of him as a distinguished man, how obviously superior, she felt, to Mark Strafford and those other drearies. 

Whatever she feels in the moment becomes her world. But she doesn't hold grudges. That she had no memory made her generous

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. She was unrevengeful and did not brood; and in the instant as she crossed the room it was as if there had never been any trouble between them.

I was so touched by her attitude when they all went boating on the lake at Imber Court. She's prepared in all the wrong ways but with such genuine enthusiasm. I was that person in many settings/trips that were novel to me. This boating trip shows both her vulnerability and her charming lack of self-consciousness about it.

Dora settled herself in the bows with a little scream, and as she arranged her skirt admitted to the general amazement that she could not swim.

She wore the sandals deplored by Margaret Strafford. At Mark's suggestion, she had drenched herself in oil of citronella to keep off the midges, and the heavy sweetish perfume gave to her person an allure both crude and exotic.

How she mentions "cuckoo clocks" how she participates in the conversation with her own limited but honest experience.

After a few more exchanges about country life and the observation of nature it emerged that Dora had never heard the cuckoo. Peter found this almost inconceivable. 'Surely, in the country, as a child?' He seemed to imagine that all children naturally lived in the country. 'I was never in the country as a child,' said Dora, laughing. We always took our holidays at Bognor Regis. I can't remember much about my childhood actually, but I'm sure I never heard the cuckoo. I've heard cuckoo clocks, of course.

Despite how simple she is, how hard life has been, she has ideas and wants to talk, and tries to dream and stands up for herself. How she does a lot with anything life offers her:

Dora was full of wonderment and distress

She had talked a great deal about herself, and Michael glimpsed, in the stories which she told without bitterness of her unwanted childhood, some of the roots of her present being. No one had inspired her to place the least value on herself; she still felt herself to be a socially unacceptable waif

For all that, perhaps partly because of it, Dora grew and flourished remarkably during those days. Michael felt this especially in the later time when there was a little less to do in the office, and he often found her out beside the lake, using as easel the old music stand from the Long Room, making water-colour sketches of the Court, of which she must have done, before she left, some three or four dozen.

How wonderfully, Michael thought, Dora had survived. She had fed like a glutton upon the catastrophes at Imber and they had increased her substance. Because of all the dreadful things that had passed there was more of her. Michael looked with a slightly contemptuous envy upon this simple and robust creature.

He watched Dora, turning towards life and happiness like a strong plant towards the sun, assimilating all that lay in her way.

Dora was moved but not profoundly shaken by these communications. She pendered over them and answered them with clumsy attempts at argument.