Pride And Decline Of The Empire

As a prominent novelist as well as a philosopher in postwar Britain, IrisMurdoch has published nearly forty works including novels, plays and philosophicalworks. Carrying on the traditional realistic writing style, Murdoch depicts a numberof men as her protagonists to show the life of middle class people in the twentiethcentury. Meanwhile, influenced by Existentialism, Murdoch often discusses thephilosophical and ethic problems, especially good and evil in her novel to expressher concerns about human nature. The Sea, The Sea is a novel of this kind which waspublished in1978and won Booker Prize.There are many scholars and critics analyzing Murdoch’s works from theperspectives of philosophical thoughts or writing techniques. However, no oneconsiders it as an ideological text. By close reading this thesis attempts to findanother way to place the text in the context of imperialism and analyze it throughpostcolonial theories so that a different opinion will be pointed out that there is closerelationship between Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea and imperialistic ideology, whichreflects the pride and decline of an old Empire—Britain. Thus a conclusion can bedrawn that similar to some writers in the18thor19thcentury, Murdoch displays herideological thoughts in this novel.The thesis can be divided into three parts, including an introduction, threebody chapters and a conclusion. Introduction summarizes Murdoch’s background,literary status and the critical reception home and aboard; and briefly introduces thepostcolonial theories which are applied in this thesis. Chapter one analyzes thetheatrical factors displaying in the novel, emphasizing on the important effectstheatre has on the life of protagonist and its intertextuality with The Tempest,illustrating the feasibility of the postcolonial study on The Sea, The Sea. Chapter twofocuses on Tibet, a remote area mentioned many times in the novel, discusses thehistorical relationship between Britain and Tibet and makes a contrast of differentattitudes to Tibet and Buddhism between the protagonist Charles and his cousinJames to explore the different Oriental images in the eyes of western people.Combining with the international background chapter three discusses Charles’srelationship with people surrounding him to probe the imperialistic metaphors of Britain. The last part summarizes the traits of imperialism revealed in the novel andpoints out that it is inevitable for Iris Murdoch to have such imperialistic thoughts inthe novel.