“Sacred monsters”: Toward the characterology of Iris Murdoch

The article examines a special type of characters that is constant for Iris Murdoch's novels throughout her career and is best described as “sacred monsters”. The peculiarities of this type of characters are revealed, the motifs and plot complex and narrative techniques associated with them are described, and their functions are demonstrated. Conclusions are made about their connection with the moral philosophy of Murdoch and with the themes of destructive illusions and life's contingency which are the most important for this writer. In the course of the analysis of Murdoch's early and later novels, it is shown that a hero of this type is the center of attraction - both inside the world of characters, that is, for the heroes, and outside it, for the reader, since the horizon of the reader's expectations is bound with such a character, the main motifs are usually “tied” to him (or her), and the plot unravels with his or her direct participation. These are characters-magicians with inexplicable power over the souls of other people, for whom they are always shrouded in a veil of secrecy. Such characters are surrounded by rumors, innuendoes, riddles. They are associated with an “alien” world; a marker of this “alienness” can be a violation of a taboo. The actions and the very existence of these characters are described in terms of “witchcraft”, “magic”, “fairy tale”. Their inherent power and knowledge do not turn out to be illusory, a case of “collective self-deception”, but they leave clear signs of their reality. The intervention of such heroes in the lives of other characters can be both beneficial and disastrous in its consequences. In their images of the savior and the monster, there is an irremovable ambivalence. The “sacred monsters”, endowed with seemingly great power and knowledge, are not omniscient and not omnipotent. Ultimately, they are unable to subjugate reality, which exists according to its own incomprehensible laws. Even more often than other characters, they turn out to be incapable of being happy, and sometimes they experience a real fiasco. The main “beneficiaries” in Murdoch's novels are not “enchanters”, whatever their power over other characters is, but heroes-writers, because, in her opinion, only art takes a person out of a small personal world into the wide real world, helps to get rid of illusions, fantasies - and in this sense it is close to the Good. Ultimately, the “sacred monsters” appear as personalizations of the central myth in Murdoch's work, that is, Plato's myth of the cave. The prisoners of the cave (i.e. life) are unable to look at the light itself because the sun hurts their eyes, but they contemplate the reflected light embodied in the heroes of this type. Therefore, the “sacred monsters” themselves are not the final instance of Murdoch's novels, but the same prisoners of reality. But through relationships with them, defined primarily by love, some other characters are sometimes able to look at the sun, i.e. to know the truth and the Good.

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