The Sacred and Profane Love Machine ***

Murdoch, Iris.
1974 1st Published Great Britain - Chatto & Windus
1974 1st published in U. S. - Viking Press
1976 Penguin Books

A little bit about the author first. She's British and she passed away in 1999. She is a favorite amongst hipsters (as far as I can tell). A friend of mine's wife (an aspiring author) claimed her to be one of her favorite authors and she was also recommended to me and other participants on a Tindersticks forum. Surprisingly, my local library branch had no copies of her books on the shelves even though she has written some 20 odd books. So that says something about her NOT being a mainstream author.

This is my second book by her and the patterns I see (granted reading only two books do not make much for extrapolating patterns) are that she tends to write about relationships between family members. These tend to be dysfunctional families.

What is interesting about her writing is that she really gets into the heads of her characters and she waxes philosophical. At the same time she writes these passages with some lovely poetic language. I like that in a book. I like that a book will follow a tangent and bring up some larger ideas to think about as opposed to a book that just follows the narrative. As long as the tangents don't get too out of control and confusing. Murdoch rarely does this. These passages are for the most part easy to follow and enjoyable to think about. There are some occasions where she goes a little overboard, and I do get a little lost, but those occasions are few. That would be one of my minor quips with the book. She does tend to go very slightly overboard on her tangents.

So this story is about this guy, Blaise, who has a wife and a mistress. The mistress is of course unhappy and wants Blaise to end his marriage. Eventually, though Blaise is afraid of the consequences, the wife finds out because Blaise tells her. Instead of being angry the wife forgives him for his transgressions because she knows that there are kids (both theirs and one that came from the relationship with the mistress) involved. Knowing that Blaise has commitments to both the mother and his second son, she agrees, no insists that Blaise spend time with his second family. Blaise's wife, Harriet, even tries to make friends and socialize with the other woman/mistress (Emily). But Blaise changes his mind after a while and goes back to Emily and then gets tired of being with Emily and tries to reconcile with Harriet his wife. It goes back and forth like that for a while. Basically, Blaise can't make up his mind, and everyone gets hurt. Meanwhile, Harriet has eyes on the second boy (son of Emily and Blaise) because her own son is a teenager and is withdrawing from her emotionally. So she see the other boy as a solution to this problem.

Well, the summary seems to get more confusing as I write it so I'll stop there, knowing that of course there are many details missing. One of the interesting parts of the story is why Harriet is so insistent about keeping the both families together. Apparently it is about control. (A feminist theme here?) If she runs the show, then she's in charge and she has control of the situation. That's her rationale. But when Blaise decides to run back to Emily (and live with her), Harriet changes. She seems at a loss, but she refuses to allow Blaise back into her life, even though that is of course what Blaise wants.

I am always intrigued by the author's point of view and how it relates to gender. Murdoch is woman writing during the seventies. I am going to assume (correct me if I am wrong) that being a woman from that time period that her writings have feminist undertones. If we look at the characters there is some proof of that. She doesn't exactly male bash, because all the characters are seriously flawed, but her female characters do come off a little better. For example:

Male -
Blaise - He's weak. He's grateful for his wife's and mistress' forgiving of him. He can't make up his mind what he wants. He allows Harriet to take control of everything.
David (Son of Blaise and Harriet) - He's lonely and weak also. When given an opportunity to hook up with a beautiful teenager, he's too scared and runs off. He's sullen and off putting.
Monty (neighbor of Blaise and Harriet who gets mixed up in all this) - True he's gone through a major trauma of his wife dying and his suspect role in it, but he is rude and callous to most of the people involved. One of the female characters calls him cold.
Luca (son of Blaise and Emily) - He's an eight year old boy with emotional problems. He won't speak to his parents and is almost mute, though he will speak to some other people.
Edgar (friend of Monty's who gets involved) - He's a hanger on. He sticks around when no one really wants him. He falls in love first with Monty's wife and then with Harriet but that love is unrequited. He's fat and an alcoholic.

female -
Harriet - She's missing the days when her son was young and she was able to be demonstrative with her affection. As discussed earlier, she tried to take control of the situation (Flaw or strength?) but when things fall apart she ends up throwing herself at both Monty and Edgar.
Emily - Blaise fell in love with her because she seemed more his type - more intellectual. Plus there was the physical relationship, which hints at some rough play. As time goes by though, she becomes bitter and shrew/ She's argumentative and always concerned about the worst happening. Of course she may have good reason to.
Sophie (dead wife of Monty) - She was cheating or at least claimed to be cheating on Monty. It made Monty very jealous of course. They were very argumentative even on her death bed.
Pin (Emily's friend and boarder) - She's one of the stronger characters. She rose from a simple char woman to a more middle class status. But she was conniving and there is always the impression that she was up to trouble.
Kiki - (friend of Pin's who made life difficult for Emily when she was Emily's student) - Young , beautiful and perhaps a bit of a schemer, or in the very least her youth makes her unable to empathize with others. She's also one of the stronger characters, but she's minor.

So which gender is painted worse? Maybe the males, but not by much. With the female characters, I see that all of them were strong in some ways, flaws and all.

A feminist book? A question I always like to ask. Another question I always like to think about is how would the characters be different if the book was written by a man. It always intrigues me how authors of the opposite sex treat those characters.

There is one last flaw that keeps me from rating this book a little higher. It gets a little repetitive. Especially with Blaise going back and forth between women. Sure there is a subtle change each time he changes his mind, but his rational is always the same. For Harriet it was how good she was and how calm and loving she was. How comforting she was to come home to. For Emily it was always his guilt. She had waited so long. She deserved her chance. She was always the one. His love for Emily was a "true" love. He simply could not make up his mind and wanted both. But the point is that it was a little repetitive, especially from Blaise's point of view.