Iris Murdoch: Fantasy Vs. Imagination

Abstract

Iris Murdoch is an exponent of the view that fictional narratives are best written by observing other people realistically and as entirely separate from the author's private life, with its memories and desires. Convinced that it is possible for a novelist to be “objective,” she has written over twenty novels, relying on what she terms “imagination,” i.e., attention to the uniqueness of individuals, without subjective distortion dictated by the author's unconscious conflicts or ideological obsessions. The opposite of “imagination,” in Murdoch's view, is “fantasy,” or the exploitation by the novelist of his or her emotional problems, traumatic experiences, and other “solipsistic” influences. In pursuit of her goal of strict realism, Murdoch paradoxically has embraced Plato's view that ultimate reality, the abstract essence of things, exists outside the illusionary world of appearances. Her novels often are intended to illustrate the difficulties involved in arriving at a “true” reading of what transpires in human relationships, and how, in the absence of truth her self-deceived protagonists are debarred from the pursuit of virtue. The significance of Murdoch's approach for understanding the creative process is that she assigns primary roles to attention and cognition on the part of the novelist and is dismissive of the contribution of conative and affective determinants. Her fictional portraits are nevertheless as compassionate as her view of society is satirical, raising questions as to whether Murdoch has been able to maintain her self-imposed psychological distance from her materials, and whether, indeed, any writer can profitably do so.