Iris Murdoch - A fairly honourable defeat

Table of Contents

PENGUIN CLASSICS

A FAIRLY HONOURABLE DEFEAT

IRIS MURDOCH was born in Dublin in 1919, grew up in London, and received her university education at Oxford and later at Cambridge. In 1948 she became a Fellow of St. Annes College, Oxford, where for many years she taught philosophy. In 1987 she was appointed Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire. She died on February 8, 1999. Murdoch wrote twenty-six novels, including Under the Net , her writing debut of 1954, and the Booker Prize-winning The Sea, the Sea (1978). She received a number of other literary awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread Prize for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of philosophy include Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1980), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1993), and Existentialists and Mystics (1998). She also wrote several plays and a volume of poetry.

PETER REED was born in London, and is Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches modern British and American literature. His recent publications include a focus on the work of Kurt Vonnegut.

By the same author

Philosophy

SARTRE, ROMANTIC RATIONALIST
THE FIRE AND THE SUN
ACOSTOS: TWO PLATONIC DIALOGUES
METAPHYSICS AS A GUIDE TO MORALS
EXISTENTIALISTS AND MYSTICS

Fiction

UNDER THE NET
THE FLIGHT FROM THE ENCHANTER
THE SANDCASTLE
THE BELL
SEVERED HEAD
AN UNOFFICIAL ROSE
THE UNICORN
THE ITALIAN GIRL
THE RED AND THE GREEN
THE TIME OF THE ANGELS
THE NICE AND THE GOOD
BRUNOS DREAM
A FAIRLY HONOURABLE DEFEAT
AN ACCIDENTAL MAN
THE BLACK PRINCE
THE SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE MACHINE
A WORD CHILD
HENRY AND CATO
THE SEA, THE SEA
NUNS AND SOLDIERS
THE PHILOSOPHERS PUPIL
THE GOOD APPRENTICE
THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD
THE MESSAGE TO THE PLANET
THE GREEN KNIGHT
JACKSONS DILEMMA

Plays

A SEVERED HEAD (with J. B. Priestley)
THE ITALIAN GIRL (with James Saunders)
THE THREE ARROWS and
THE SERVANTS AND THE SNOW
THE BLACK PRINCE

Poetry

A YEAR OF BIRDS
(Illustrated by Reynolds Stone)

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First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus 1970
First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1970
Published in Penguin Books (U.K.) 1972
Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1979
This edition with an introduction by Peter J. Reed
published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 2001

Copyright Iris Murdoch, 1970 Copyright renewed Iris Murdoch, 1998 Introduction copyright Peter J. Reed, 2001 All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESSCATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Murdoch, Iris.
A fairly honourable defeat / Iris Murdoch ; introduction by Peter J. Reed.
p. cm.(Penguin twentieth-century classics)

eISBN : 978-1-101-49567-4

I. Title. II. Series.
PR6063.U7 F3 2001
823.914dc21 00-061138

INTRODUCTION

All our failures are ultimately failures in love, says the Abbess in Iris Murdochs earlier novel The Bell (1958). The fairly honourable defeat that gives this novel its title represents another such failure. Or failures, since there is more than one. Loveits failures, its excesses, its blindnesses, and yes, its modest triumphsis a constant theme in the work of Iris Murdoch. In a conversation, the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson once referred to Murdochs novels as dear Iriss amatory gavottes. The image of a dance in which one moves from partner to partner suits these novels well, for in many, as in A Fairly Honourable Defeat, the interchanging relationships at times suggest parody or soap opera. Relationship is what interests Murdoch, and thus her endless explorations often involve large casts of characters, suspenseful intrigues and complications, and shifting narrative focus. These distinctive characteristics make Murdoch a novelist whose characters stick in the memory less than do her situations and ideas. And that is appropriate for a novelist who began as a philosopher.

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Protestant Irish parents, although the family moved to England when she was only a year old. She has recounted that she began writing adventure stories when she was only nine years old. Murdoch went on to study Greats (the challenging program combining Greek, Latin, ancient history, and philosophy) at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1942 with a First-class degree. Under the wartime conscription she was inducted into the civil service, working first for the Treasury and later for the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Her experience in the latter of dealing with war refugees made a lasting impression, evidence of which emerges in A Fairly Honourable Defeat. After the war she returned to the study of philosophy, with a particular interest in the French Existentialists (her first book would be on Jean Paul Sartre: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist [1953]). By 1948 Murdoch was a fellow and philosophy tutor at St. Annes College, Oxford, and continued in this position until 1963, by which time her growing reputation as a novelist enabled her to devote full time to writing.

In 1952 Murdoch met John Bayley, an English literature don at New College, Oxford, and married him in 1956. Their marriage was to continue until February 8, 1999, when Iris finally succumbed to Alzheimers disease. Those final years together, when her diminished capacities reduced her to an almost childlike dependence from which emerged a new form for their loving relationship, are touchingly recorded in Bayleys Elegy for Iris (1999) and Iris and Her Friends (2000).

Murdochs first novel, Under the Net (1954), appeared at a time when the so-called Angry Young Men were commencing their short reign over the British novel, and in some respects its protagonist resembles the picaros of such comedies as Kingsley Amiss Lucky Jim or John Wains Hurry on Down. But her distinctive brand of comedy, more funny-bizarre than funny-ha-ha, already emerges, and the strong philosophical bent is apparent. From this beginning, Murdoch went on to become extraordinarily prolific, her novels appearing increasingly frequently and also, generally, filling more pages. A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970) falls short of the midpoint of a career in which she produced twenty-six novels in addition to nonfiction, plays, and poetry.

Love and the search for self-identity are twin themes in many of Murdochs novels, including A Fairly Honourable Defeat. Love is the imaginative recognition of, that is respect for, the otherness of another person, she writes in The Sublime and the Good. That means striving to observe and respect the separateness of others rather than projecting identities and roles upon them. Granting others their particular individuality rather than expecting them to conform to stereotypes, characterizations, or expectations that are extensions of an individuals own formulated vision of the world also means extending them freedom. There is no room for possessiveness in this kind of love, or for self-centeredness. In Murdoch the affirmation of love often comes not in the traditional romantic boy gets girl but in boy lets girl go.