APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

A review essay by Franklin G. Miller
University of Virginia

Iris Murdoch, well known as a prolific and popular novelist and as an accomplished philosopher, has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease the last few years. No longer capable of creating characters, she has become the protagonist in a beautifully crafted and touching narrative by her husband John Bayley, a distinguished writer and literary critic. Elegy for Iris depicts a portrait of a remarkable person in her creative past and in her mind-impoverished present, through the eyes of her loving and admiring husband. Revealing as much, or more, about Bayley as about Murdoch, it also chronicles the challenges, burdens, stress, and satisfactions of taking care, day by day, of a dependent, demented person.

One reads the book with enchantment but also sadness. Alzheimer’s has robbed Murdoch of the life of the mind. Instead of arising early to begin writing, she sleeps late, spends much of her day watching cartoons and sports on television, and repeatedly pesters her husband while he is at work writing. She collects and fondles stray objects picked up on walks—discarded shoes, pens, scraps of paper, and cigarette butts. To the exasperation of her husband, sometimes spilling over into understandable anger, she waters plants that don’t need watering. Though Murdoch remains sweet tempered, she is portrayed as often anxious, confused, almost constantly in need of her husband’s presence and reassurance. The television, absent from the household when Murdoch was writing, functions as a "baby-sitter," though husband and wife enjoy the daily routine of watching Teletubbies together. For me, the television watching is most emblematic of what Alzheimer’s disease has done to Murdoch’s mind. In her Platonistic philosophical vision, explored in depth in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Murdoch remarks that "Television with its flickering series of trivial momentary unreflective uncomprehended images, pictures the state of the prisoners in the Cave who can only see the flickering shadows of things which are themselves copies of real things." Bayley is skeptical whether Murdoch retains any sense of what has happened to her mind, but reports that twice, when questioned about her writing, she has said that she is "sailing into the darkness."

When the spell of this compulsively readable narrative began to wear off, I noticed some faint, inchoate moral qualms—qualms that grew stronger as I tried to articulate what troubled me about this book. Could such an exquisite, loving portrait involve an invasion or violation of Murdoch’s privacy, especially by exposing intimate details about her now-demented existence? The book contains no evidence of ethical reflection on writing about Murdoch’s private life. It is reasonable to suppose that the book was not conceived before Murdoch had become incapable of understanding, and giving permission or endorsing, her husband’s project of writing about her life (Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide for Morals [New York: The Penguin Press, 1992, 19–20]). One senses, or hopes, that Bayley would not have written this narrative if he thought Murdoch would disapprove; however, it lacks any discussion about this. Who would know better than Bayley about Murdoch’s attitude concerning her private life? Hence the silence adds to the moral unease, for it suggests the absence of reflection on the ethical issues posed by the publication of this book. Moreover, is the husband who is a writer with a story to tell sufficiently disinterested to make the judgment that his wife would not disapprove of her private life being revealed?

Are there any signs in Bayley’s portrait of Murdoch that would shed light on how she might react to his having written this narrative for publication if, contrary to fact, she could understand, appreciate, and read it for herself? Bayley observes, "Iris once told me that the question of identity had always puzzled her. She thought she herself hardly possessed such a thing, whatever it was. I said that she must know what it was like to be oneself, even to revel in the consciousness of oneself, as a secret and separate person—a person unknown to any other. She smiled, was amused, looked uncomprehending" (Bayley, 64). Bayley also notes, "Nobody less narcissistic than Iris can well be imagined" (Bayley, 65). These observations suggest that Murdoch might not have felt any deep hurt by having intimate details about her life revealed. Other stories about Murdoch in the book indicate that she was disposed to be forgiving to the transgressions of friends. Yet it does not follow that her privacy was not violated. Furthermore, the narrative provides evidence that Murdoch was reserved about her private life. How might Bayley feel if the tables were turned: that is, it was Murdoch writing about her marriage to Bayley and Bayley’s plight as a demented former writer? This exercise of "the golden rule" would not settle the ethical issue but might prompt the author’s appeal to the moral considerations that might justify the publication of this narrative.

To be sure, ethical perspective requires comparing this narrative with others. There is nothing unusual about narratives that reveal intimate, private details about living persons, especially in an era in which people delight in "letting it all hang out." John Updike notes that "Recent years in America have given rise to what we might call the Judas biography, in which a former spouse or friend of a living writer confides to print an intimate portrait less flattering than might be expected" (John Updike, "One Cheer for Literary Biography," The New York Review of Books, Vol. 46, February 4, 1999, 5). He cites as examples Claire Bloom’s narrative about Philip Roth and Paul Theroux’s about V. S. Naipaul. But Elegy for Iris is a different species. Bayley is not a former spouse but a loving husband who celebrates his marriage to Iris Murdoch.

These ethical qualms cast the narrative in a different light, as a more harsh, analytical gaze replaces the warm glow accompanying the reading of Bayley’s love story. Bayley reports that he typically works in bed, typing on an old Olivetti. Murdoch, now demented, sleeps beside him while he works. Bayley thinks that Murdoch is reassured by the sound of the typing, a sign of her loving husband’s presence that she so strongly craves. Yet unbeknownst and unknowable to her, he is writing about her life, inviting the reading public to glimpse how she, now afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease, spends her mindless day. One suspects that Bayley may have taken liberties in revealing intimate details about Murdoch that he would not have done if she were suffering from a progressive, debilitating condition but remained mentally competent and capable of reading what he wrote. The defenselessness of dementia may make violation of privacy, if a violation occurred, all the more problematic. Not only is trust betrayed but the victim remains in the dark, without any recourse.

Bayley’s devoted caregiving appears exemplary. He naturally takes a paternalistic posture now that his wife is wholly dependent on him; and it is not surprising that he gets exasperated and occasionally overtly angry. At times, however, the author seems condescending: "She also puts water—sometimes her drink—on the potted plants by the window, which are now wilting under the treatment. But she never does this with a real drink, an alcoholic one. Sensible girl-her old fondness for bars still stands her in good stead" (Bayley, 226).

One senses that writing this narrative had therapeutic value for the author, as a way of coping with the demands of taking care of his now-dependent wife. The ethical questions I have posed are not directed to the writing of the narrative but its publication, especially those portions portraying Murdoch’s demented existence. This raises the puzzling issue whether publication after her death might make a difference. A violation of privacy while Murdoch lives would also be a violation of her privacy after her death. Since Murdoch in her current state can’t be consciously harmed, the timing of publication would seem irrelevant ethically. Yet I can’t help feeling that there is something especially problematic in taking liberties with the privacy of one still alive though incapable of recognizing the violation. At the end of Philip Roth’s Patrimony, a book about his father that also reveals intimate, potentially embarrassing details, the author mentions a dream about his father which refers to his book, "this book, which, in keeping with the unseemliness of my profession, I had been writing all the while he was ill and dying" (Philip Roth, Patrimony [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991], 237.) Roth’s book, however, was published after his father’s death; and the relationship of son to father differs from that of husband to wife in ways that may be relevant to the ethics of narrative. More significant than the timing of Elegy for Iris is the source and type of the narrative. Marriage depends on trust in the partner’s words and deeds. A celebration of marriage should not betray the trust and privacy bound up with married life. The betrayal of trust that comes from violating a spouse’s privacy is in no way extinguished by the fact that he or she lacks the mental capacity to become aware of it and suffer as a result. In this case, the unseemliness of the writer’s profession appears more pronounced.