They live in an existential routine that seems fixed they are stuck. The characters, mostly middle class professionals, each might have ‘issues’ but all are nevertheless cradled in the social solidity of a 1950’s bourgeois English culture that hopes against hope that it will remain 1939 forever. And it certainly creates a distinctive atmosphere, one so dense, thick, and humid in the Summer heat that it feels like green cotton wool - simultaneously inhibiting and cushioning movement. Byatt in her introduction calls The Bell Murdoch’s first ‘English’ novel. One way to interpret Murdoch’s novel is as just such an interruption in the lives of its characters.Ī.S. Paradoxically: a routine that interrupts routine. I have come to believe that this slight disruption, this interruption, is precisely the bell’s function, intended or not. The midday call to the Angelus therefore is somewhat disconcerting for passers by who nervously check their watches. The sound of the bell does indeed create a definite atmosphere in the place as also does its timing since it rings, like its larger fellow at Christ Church College, according to solar time - about six minutes behind GMT. A few years ago Blackfriars acquired a bell to call the friars to prayer. I work as tutor and librarian at Blackfriars Hall Oxford, the smallest and most medieval of the University of Oxford colleges and also a Dominican priory.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |