In The Name Of Love; Out Of Moral Dilemma

Iris Murdoch is a famous novelist and philosopher in post-war Britain. Her novelsare publicly acknowledged as the reproduction of her moral philosophy. The moraltheme of the novel is the full embodiment of her philosophical ideas. The Unicorn isthe seventh novel written by Murdoch and it still presents the moral theme. This thesiscenters on the binary oppositions hidden behind the gothic atmosphere in the novel.The studies on Murdoch and The Unicorn often center on Platonism,Existentialism，Symbolism，Feminism and Myth-Archetypal Criticism. This thesisproposes to interpret the moral theme of The Unicorn from the perspective of JacquesDerrida’s Deconstruction and attempts to use Derrida’s deconstructive strategy ofsubverting binary opposition to deconstruct three pairs of binary oppositions in thenovel: civilization and nature; freedom and bondage; reality and illusion. In theprocess of the deconstruction from the binary opposition to the polynary coexistence,Murdoch intends to present the process of characters’ moral development fromconfusion and epiphany to the insight of love, freedom and goodness, that is, there aremoral dilemmas everywhere in human world; however, with the guidance of theinsight of love, freedom and goodness, people will finally make the right judgmentsand decisions to get out of moral dilemmas. The deconstructive analysis of TheUnicorn from the subversion of civilization and nature; freedom and bondage; realityand illusion contributes to a deeper understanding of the moral theme of Murdoch’snovels.