The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch
Latent Book Club Review #2308
Iris Murdoch’s deep portrait of the narcissistic, flawed, but compelling former thespian Charles Arrowby’s retirement to the seaside, ostensibly to escape the clutches of a career in the limelight is our contender for book (we’ve discovered) of the year.
We were first turned on to the sublime The Sea, The Sea as a recommendation by our friends
. And we are so glad they made it, because this has to be - alongside The Remains of The Day - one of the the best books we’ve ever tackled. Iris Murdoch’s deep portrait of the narcissistic, flawed, but compelling former thespian Charles Arrowby’s retirement to the seaside to escape the clutches of a career in the limelight is our contender for book (we’ve discovered) of the year.The Sea, The Sea was first published in 1978 by Iris Murdoch, and topically, won that years’ Booker prize. You can read our analysis on this years’
shortlist in our post from 11 October.Murdoch, a British intellectual, philosopher, and novelist was praised for her perspicacity in capturing the inner lives of her characters; and this ability comes across in The Sea, The Sea in spades. In her latter years Murdoch’s for her debilitating battle with Altzhimers became well known, which, in a way, makes the depths and ephemerality of her prodigious talent all the more impressive. If we sound like we’re being saccharine, this is inadvertent - her writing is simply that impressive.
The Sea, The Sea centres on Charles Arrowby, an erstwhile actor and longtime theatre director, who has retired to the seaside, ostensibly to escape the fame he has garnered over a career on the stage which has seen him live in the United States and Japan. On the way, he has collected a stereotypical, but believable crew of hangers-on, cronies, lovers and ‘friends’, all who are revealed as having other motives for their association with Charles.
Charles for his own part is an unreliable narrator, and we anticipate this from the start. Conceited, vain, with more than a touch of the histrionic, Charles is ever the lifelong stage-dweller we are told he is. He claims he is tired with his former life and has retired to the sea for something more relaxing, but we are left wondering if he hopes that his fame will follow him there. And in a way, it does.
As Charles settles into the bucolic life he retreats into reflections about the world, and his past relationships. The novel’s structure itself reflects this: it cannot decide whether it is memoir or journal (in fact it is both) until several hours have elapsed. But the move to the sea, actually allows Charles to become highly introspective. And he begins to muse, increasingly relentlessly, on his previous relationships.
After the first third of the novel, and surprisingly late in the book, Charles comes to mention his childhood love, Hartley. And it is this relationship which comes to define, and even dominate, the rest of the novel. Charles does not realise that he has come to live in the same seaside village as Hartley until a chance encounter forces their worlds together, after a gap of almost 40 years. Her rediscovery fractures him entirely.
The love Charles feels for Hartley borders on the obsessive, and not that of the obsessive lover, but rather the obsessive stalker.
The love Charles feels for Hartley borders on the obsessive, and not that of the obsessive lover, but rather the obsessive stalker. Harbouring bitter jealousy for the spurning he received by Hartley as a young man, Charles claims to have carried a flame for Hartley through all his other relationships, meaning he could never settle with the women who loved him, who sacrificed themselves, and their happiness for him. And in this way, Charles reflects his projections of Hartley back at his lovers, and this does not make him a likeable person, however much we as the audience may sympathise with him.
Charles, by his own admission, has treated the women in his life disdainfully, even spitefully. Although he claims he could never marry anyone after Hartley, however his callous attitude towards their feelings leads the reader to conclude that he displays this attitude towards women generally, and furthermore would have certainly done so to Hartley, had she stayed with him. In fact one of the most sensible decisions made in the book was made by her, viz. to cut Charles out of her life as a young woman.
Charles’ attitude towards women is exemplified in three of his relationships: With Rosina, with Lizzy, and with Clement, an older woman Charles meets when he was an aspiring actor, a Mrs Robinson figure, that teaches him about physical love as a young man.
In the case of Rosina, Charles becomes infatuated with her and persuades her to leave her husband, Peregrine Arbelow, for him. Once he has the object of his desire, however, he discards her, but in some feat of self-delusion persuades himself that he can still be friends with her husband. In Lizzy’s case, Charles toys with her affections for years - she is smitten with him, but he brusquely dismisses her. And finally in the case of Clement, Charles reminisces on her fondly, at least, but again as someone who had a finite use. Clement is the only character to not feature in the ‘present day’ aspects of the novel; she only features as a remembrance.
In Hartley’s case, the borderline contempt Charles harbours towards the women in his life takes a sinister and unbecoming turn, culminating in a disquieting if slightly slapstick attempt to make her his at all costs. This backfires, inevitably, but Charles cannot seem to accept that this ultimate rejection has occurred.
The story centres around this unravelling of Charles’ relationship with Hartley, and as it does so, it locks step with all Charles’ other relationships, sending them into a mutual, inextricable death spiral, in which Charles remains firmly at the eye of the storm.
The story centres around this unravelling of Charles’ relationship with Hartley, and as it does so, it locks step with all Charles’ other relationships, sending them into a mutual, inextricable death spiral, in which Charles remains firmly at the eye of the storm.
All the attempted, repeated interventions of Charles’ friends and relations to make him reconsider his course are futile. He is the architect of his own destruction. He needs this apotheosis for him to grow as a character. He has to hit the depth of his despair before he can move beyond it. And move beyond he ultimately does, gaining some much needed perspective as he does so.
There are tragedies aplenty on the way, revolving around Hartley’s adopted son, Titus, whom Charles befriends, and James’, Charle’s cousin and (he believes) enemy. Both of these characters ultimately take their leave, but as they do they also leave Charles changed.
If the plot, then, is an odd type of love story, its main theme is the romantic, Charles, who fails to deal with reality; particularly when reality is at odds with how he wishes it to be. In this way, the book has a deep insights to shed on the subject of desire, and of jealousy. Bertrand Russell famously cautioned that jealousy will destroy love, and it certainly does does in Charles’ case, when his desire to possess Hartley almost overwhelms his every other concern.
Charles is not completely unmoored from reality. He shows real moments of genuine introspection, and empathy. In this way he is a strong reminder that we, as human beings, are never one thing: never wholly irrational or rational, but merely a flawed and complex whole.
It should be highlighted that Charles is not completely unmoored from reality. He shows real moments of genuine introspection, and empathy. In this way he is a strong reminder that we, as human beings, are never one thing: never wholly irrational or rational, but merely a flawed and complex whole.
The symbology Murdoch offers in The Sea, The Sea is as rich and almost as effective as the insights she throws on her characters. Charles lives in Shruff End, a strangely designed home: it has a tower, and a room with no windows; it appears to have adopted the characteristics of its pervious owners; it is a desolate house in disrepair.
Shruff End has its ghosts: It is recurringly described as ‘cold’. It has curtains that move of their own accord, and chills blow through it at prominent points in the novel. A mirror crashes to the floor in the middle of the night. In fact, at times, the house becomes decidedly creepy. Charles senses this; although he is never afraid of the house, at one point he elects to sleep outside, rather than within outside. On the first pass the reader is left wondering whether a spirit of the house will be a feature of the novel or, just a prominent symbol.
Then there is the sea itself. The sea appears to defy Charles’ attempts to swim in it. To torment him it sweeps the ropes he affixes near his house to aid him getting out of the water away, leaving him scrambling, bruised and bloody on the rocks. It vexes him. It rages in tempests. And on other times, reflecting his own personality, it is calm. On a notably horrifying occasion, Charles appears to see a sea monster, a leviathan, raise itself from the waves to terrify him. This sea serpent haunts Charles for the rest of the novel.
Charles’ own personality is reflected in the sea: It is deep, and dangerous; tempestuous and chaotic. It boils and, like Charles, is capable of delivering tragedy.
The theatre is another metaphor employed throughout the novel. Charles sees things through his director’s eyes. He (and we) see the various characters in his life performing their respective roles, as if cast by Charles himself. Some of Charles’ colleagues, like Peregrine, are unmasked as merely particularly good actors, and not real friends at all.
Building on this theatrical theme, we have the fact that Charles is dealing with the loss of his youth. Though we are told (by Charles, take that for what you will) he is still vigorous beyond his years in looks and vitality, less can be said of his peers. Some appear to have become victims of decrepitude early, others are on their way to that, or to depression, to nihilism, to alcoholism.
In dealing with the themes of aging, and acting, one can only be reminded of Jacques’s seven ages of man speech in As you Like It:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
As You Like It, Act II Sc VII.
It is hard to conceive that Murdoch did not have this speech either in conscious or unconscious mind when writing.
The final act of the novel is its culmination: Charles abandons Shruff End, and returns to London - something we suspect is much more suited to him in any event, to lead a slightly penitent life. In doing so, we are left with the impression that Charles is coming to understand the relationships of his life more deeply, and perhaps crucially, more empathetically.
The Sea, The Sea pushes the reader to question their own moral and philosophical judgments, as they, like Charles, do not get what they expect, or feel they are due in life. Though Charles has been successful, the isolation he believed he craved only serves to magnify his innermost conflicts.
Murdoch shows us that, like Charles, we have a duty to unpack the conflicts of our own lives and perhaps set them in their proper context to gain the much needed equanimity and perspective that navigating them successfully requires. When such messages are received, hopefully we are not too blinded by our own egoism to see them.
Before you go…
Read Our Catalogue of Long Form Literary Criticism
If you like our long form literary criticism series, be sure to check out our previous reviews:
Fellow Booker Prize Winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of The Day ,
Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift,
Breakout Australian Novelist Amy Taylor’s Search History
Miles Franklin Award Nominee Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost
Get Our Recommended versions of The Sea, The Sea
The Latent Book Club could not be more vocal in our recommendation of the print version of The Sea, The Sea.
However, the Audiobook version read by Richard E Grant is nothing short of masterful, and may be even better. Grant is Charles Arrowby, and brings all the characters to life with aplomb that makes this audiobook in particular a compelling listen.
Subscribe to The Latent Book Club for free
A fan of Iris Murdoch? Look out for our upcoming review of The Bell. Make sure you don’t miss it, and other great recommendations and analysis by subscribing, for free, to The Latent Book Club.