Adelaide de Crecy. Adelaide the maid. Although she is a secondary character in the novel, we are privy to her emotional fits and travails as if she were the titular heroine. She has a one sided involvement in the novel’s main love quadrangle (meaning she is “in love” with a character who loves another, but none of the other major players returns her affections) and could be simply written off as a one dimensional character needed to complete the romantic drama – much like a best friend or comic relief supporting character, there to assist in the pathos of the main character but retaining none for themselves. This is not the case for Adelaide, as Murdoch delves into her romantic foibles with Danby, Will and Nigel with a sympathetic third person narration, “{Danby} turned her into a joke, as he turned almost everything into a joke, and it hurt her” (45) as well as her sentiments of being adrift “if there had been a bus she had by now certainly missed it” (44) As if the sympathetic slant Murdoch lends to Adelaide weren’t enough, Murdoch allows Adelaide to own her words, using phrases like “auntie was gaga” (43) which clearly belong to Adelaide and not the author. Consequently, when Adelaide’s dismal situation comes to a head with the discovery of Danby’s love letter to another, her “rigid and tearless” (166) composition is poignant not simply from an objectively sympathetic standpoint, but because you somehow feel the rejection and loneliness. This, I argue, is only achieved through Murdoch’s ability to inhabit, albeit briefly, the character’s mind through the oscillation of her third and first person narration.
If there were to be a need for a new title for this novel, I would suggest that “Danby’s Drama” could be a fitting contender, for if there were a “main” character in this ensemble romance, Danby Odell would fit the bill. Bumbling, bombastic, and brash, Danby’s “man of simple tastes” characterization, much like Adelaide, could play off as a one note tune. But here again, Murdoch allows the reader to access Danby on a more fundamental level, not just simply as a man who lives for women and wine, so to speak, but the deeper rationalizations of his actions. Specifically, despite the fact Danby’s major character flaw (if one may call it that) is his primarily hedonistic nature, we recognize that he has the capacity for greater affections, first in his relationship with Bruno, and then again with his overwhelming, consuming love of Lisa. Danby may be initially brushed off as a dullard but there is psychological dynamism at work in the character that we see most vividly in his encounters with Miles, who, although they are the same age, he regards him as “senior” and experiences “that old familiar humiliating sensation mixed of fear and admiration and bitter hurt resentment.” (72) Now one could argue that these words are, in fact, not Danby’s own, that they are simply Murdoch’s omniscient summary of the situation. However, Murdoch employs another technique with Danby especially to persuade the reader that Danby is more than he seems, the medium of correspondence. We discover, via Adelaide’s investigation of his room, a letter written and unsealed to Lisa. At once both self-deprecating and fervent, he states “I know I’m nothing compared with you, but I love you terribly and one is not mistaken about something like this. I have loved like this only once before.” (165) We see that he is able to make differentiations from his feelings for Lisa versus someone like Adelaide who was “sweet, she was there.” (18) or tells Diana “Men aren’t good at romantic friendships. I want you in bed.” (95) Suddenly Danby is rocketed from a character who simply pursues immediate gratification to one who can yearn, can feel, who is ultimately and entirely human.
Of all the primary characters, Diana is the least accessible. (Perhaps I am personally encumbered by the fact that she exemplifies who I imagine Murdoch to be with the limited information I know about her and her relationship with John Bayley) She first appears in Miles’ recollection, a free spirited failed artist who knows what she wants and goes after it. By the time we are able to reach her on a more intimate level, however, she has changed. She has become a domiciled creature who has lost her sense of identity in the veil of married life and discovers a resurgence of youth in a dalliance with Danby. This seeming contradiction in her character’s introduction is reflected heavily in the amount we see her waffle between being “constantly, consistently, passionately interested” (90) in Miles, telling Danby “no” again and again and yet being discovered by her sister in a compromising position (and to be clear, I am not referring to the foxtrot)
“The fragile pearly shaft sinks into the table and located where there is a dim red blotch, a shadowed unred red, reflection of a flower. Above yet how above it stretched the surface skin of grainy wood, a rich striped brown. Red reddest of words. Brown luscious caramel word. Yet also loneliest of colours, an exile from the spectrum, word colour, wood colour, colour of the earth, tree, bread, hair.” (153) This singular excerpt we get from Miles’ Notebook of Particulars provides insight into the character who, one would expect, would have the greatest amount of reflection and observation. It seems very fitting that Miles would describe anemones in a way which renders the bigger picture indiscernible. Phrases like “red reddest of words” may sound poetic on paper but fail to give an accurate description of the item before him. This Notebook of Particulars is seemingly representative of Miles’ failure later in the novel to recognize his love for Lisa who has been right before him all along. He is caught up in a metaphysical world of high-minded ideas and, although Nigel is presented as the messianic figure, Miles represents an intellectual spirituality. This is conveyed in the words such as “venerable” and “sacred” (154) given to Miles as he reflects on the catastrophic meeting with his father, the reference of William Blake who, although critical of religious institutions, was haunted by the intellectual nature of spirituality (seen in his works The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion) and finally, the hymn he sings to himself, “Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Christe eleison, Christe eleison.” (189) Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, repeated thrice, underscoring Miles’ hallowed and solemn nature.
Now for the true titular character. Bruno Greensleave. It is interesting that this character is heralded on the title cover, as well as the opening line, for his prominence is falsely advertised. That is to say, we begin the novel with Bruno awaking, with the immediate vacillations between third person and first person narration, suggesting that this novel will truly be about this man’s “sombre and lively meditation upon death, love and the pursuit of happiness” (cover) and although we receive of taste of his meditations – his remorse his nostalgia his basic human needs, the novel itself has very little to do with this grotesque and self-pitying man. In fact, the only episode in which we have an extended stay in the urgent tunnel of Bruno’s thoughts is the initial chapter. Most likely this is a sage choice, as this tunnel is crowded with dizzying melodies of the past (e.g. “Hold that tiger, hold that tiger” 13) with piles of books on spiders and crumpled copies of the Evening Standard cluttering the corner, a claustrophobic aura of past regrets permeating the room and a metal prison box obstructing the view. This opening sequence allows the reader to safely store Bruno on the second floor and enter the dramatic interactions of the aforementioned characters. So why is he presented as such an important character if his importance is relegated to a pitiable pile of “so many misunderstandings”? (11) I believe that this introduction provides the gravity needed to handle the romantic entanglements which characterize the majority of the novel without coming across as trite or maudlin. Murdoch trusts that this daunting image of awaiting death, of embittered regrets and self-flagellation, will stick with the reader through the more soapy passages. That the impermanence of existence will rest in the back of our minds as we watch the Danby fall for Lisa, who loves Miles, who is married to Diana, etc. And for my experience, it does. I applaud these characters for pursuing happy days, knowing that the lonely nights are waiting patiently on the second floor for their chapter to begin.
Happy Days and Lonely Nights
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